Lisa Guliani
The Living Force
Movie: Rabbit-Proof Fence
Just watched this last night and it was excellent, one of those little gems you find tucked away at Blockbuster.
It's about how many Aborigines people had their lives destroyed up through 1970 by whites going in and ripping their children away from them and putting them in "white" development type camps, like the one on the Moore River. They would only take the ones who were considered "half-castes", the ones with Aborigines mothers and white fathers.
The Aborigines (white) "protector" was in power for 25 years, and during that time, countless Aboriginal families had their lives torn apart by this, as the children were literally stolen and kidnapped, not allowed to speak their own language and forced to adopt "white" customs, language, etc. If they tried to escape the camp, they would be tracked and recovered, beaten, and placed in isolation as punishment.
The white people doing all this were trying to breed out the Aborigines for their "protection".
It's sickening and heart breaking, the things they did to these people.
The woman whose own story this movie depicts was one of the children who escaped and WALKED 1200 miles to get back home to her family, and she made it with her little sister in tow. Incredible, just to think about, as they were little girls at the time and people were after them trying to recapture them and bring them back to the Moore River camp. She ends up losing her own child to one of these camps when she got older and never saw her again. This must have happened over and over to the Aborigines people, their children ripped from them, never to be seen or heard from again. It hurts to even think about that.
It's a true story and a real gut twister, depicting man's inhumanity to man (and to child).
I recommend this movie if you haven't yet seen it.
Lisa
Just watched this last night and it was excellent, one of those little gems you find tucked away at Blockbuster.
It's about how many Aborigines people had their lives destroyed up through 1970 by whites going in and ripping their children away from them and putting them in "white" development type camps, like the one on the Moore River. They would only take the ones who were considered "half-castes", the ones with Aborigines mothers and white fathers.
The Aborigines (white) "protector" was in power for 25 years, and during that time, countless Aboriginal families had their lives torn apart by this, as the children were literally stolen and kidnapped, not allowed to speak their own language and forced to adopt "white" customs, language, etc. If they tried to escape the camp, they would be tracked and recovered, beaten, and placed in isolation as punishment.
The white people doing all this were trying to breed out the Aborigines for their "protection".
It's sickening and heart breaking, the things they did to these people.
The woman whose own story this movie depicts was one of the children who escaped and WALKED 1200 miles to get back home to her family, and she made it with her little sister in tow. Incredible, just to think about, as they were little girls at the time and people were after them trying to recapture them and bring them back to the Moore River camp. She ends up losing her own child to one of these camps when she got older and never saw her again. This must have happened over and over to the Aborigines people, their children ripped from them, never to be seen or heard from again. It hurts to even think about that.
It's a true story and a real gut twister, depicting man's inhumanity to man (and to child).
I recommend this movie if you haven't yet seen it.
Lisa
