02 ISSUE I
DECEMBER 2024
DECEMBER 2024
Taking Back Stolen Generations
Subjected peoples struggling to gain recognition, respect, and reparations from their colonizers and oppressors find that art becomes a powerful political tool for recognition.
By Jasmine Harmston
Raphael Lemkin, a Polish-Jewish lawyer, coined the term “genocide” in 1944 in response to the atrocities committed by the Nazis against European Jews during the Holocaust. By 1951, the United Nations had codified the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, establishing a legal definition of genocide in its text. More than 70 years later, members of communities who carry the weight of generational trauma from the slaughter and oppression of their ancestors continue to struggle for recognition, respect, and forms of reparation from their colonizers and oppressors. In the meantime, the arts have become a powerful political tool, retelling stories of the past that demand recognition. Philip Noyce’s 2002 film “Rabbit-Proof Fence,” based on the 1996 nonfiction book “Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence” by Aboriginal author Doris Pilkington Garimara, is a powerful example of art that demands acknowledgment of historical injustices.
“Rabbit-Proof Fence” is set in the 1930s in Jigalong, a remote region located amongst the endless desert plains of the Western Australian outback. We follow the story of three young Aboriginal girls, Molly, Gracie, and Daisy. Molly is the mother of Doris Pilkington Garimara. They are representatives of the “Stolen Generation” how the Aboriginal victims of Australia’s system take young children away from their parents and subject them to forced assimilation, a racist caste system, and a ‘scientific’ playground that draws on eugenics to conjure an all-white population. The girls are abducted to Moore River, a school run by nuns. The girls escape. The bulk of the film is taken up by the girls’ nine-week-long journey across the dangerous vast desert land to return to their homeland. The rabbit-proof fence of the title refers to a government-built pest-exclusion barrier built between 1901 and 1907 to prevent rabbits and other agricultural pests from the east from entering Western Australian pastoral regions.
Aboriginals were subordinated and treated as sub-human, subjected to harsh environments, and their sexual vulnerability exploited by white settlers. Mavis, an Aboriginal housekeeper the girls encounter, hides from her employer, fearing she will become a victim of rape once again. Mavis symbolizes what the Moore River settlement sought to create in these children: objects for the white community, masked under the pretense of providing “work opportunities.”
The villain is Mr. A.O. Neville, Chief Protector of Aborigines. The girls call him “Mr. Devil.” Neville especially targets mixed-race Aboriginal children, labeled ‘half-castes.’ They are sent away to segregated settlements and “given the benefit our [white] culture has to offer.” “For if we are to fit and train our children of the future, they cannot be left where they are.” Underpinned by eugenics and scientific racism, the policy sought to systematically interbreed “half-castes” with “quadroons” and eventually “octoroons,” with the ultimate goal of erasing native characteristics—both physical and genetic—through successive generations.
Noyce and the screenwriters (Pilkington and Christine Olsen are credited) depict Mr Neville as placid, organized, and rational - traits that evoke Hannah Arendt’s concept of the “banality of evil.” Mr Neville embodies the same bureaucratic mentality as Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi officer who organized the mass killing of Jews from behind a desk. Modernist theorists of genocide argue that such ‘banal’ elites, like Mr Neville and Eichmann, do not act out of innate barbarism but from a racially entrenched rationality aimed at modernizing and developing society. These racial ideologies are passed down the bureaucratic chain, eventually becoming desensitized orders, where hatred manifests in acts of violence by those carrying out the orders.
This is also why prosecuting individuals or groups for genocide is complex, as it hinges on intent and the perpetrator’s mens rea. However, this complexity does not diminish the fact that Aboriginals were victims of genocide.
There are no depictions of actual killings in “Rabbit Proof Fence” and the word genocide is never used. However, included in the Genocide Convention is a section classifying “forcibly transferring children of the group to another group” as a violation. Australia’s policy of forcibly removing Aboriginal children from their parents lasted well into the 1970s. The Australian Museum in Sydney estimates that during the active period of the policy, between 1 in 10 and 1 in 3 Indigenous children were removed from their families and communities. The policy continues today under the guise of child protection.
Mr Neville’s protection policies, involving the segregation, cultural re-education, and forced assimilation of Aboriginal people and their children, are undeniable acts of genocide, albeit cultural. In one scene, a nun in Moore River scolds Daisy for speaking in her native tongue, saying: “This is your new home. We don’t speak that jabber here.” Stripped of their culture, identity, and language, the Aboriginal people face genocide by attrition, resulting in social death.
Although the fence was originally built to keep out rabbits, it represented a division between English culture and the Aboriginal world. For white settlers, it served as a symbol to ‘herd’ and ‘keep out’ the Aboriginal people. For Molly and the girls, however, the fence represented security and a guide to follow. The fence symbolizes the strength of the Aboriginal people. The contrasting meanings of the fence highlight the inhumanity and incompetence of the colonial government. While the state pushed for a modernized society, it was the use of traditional Aboriginal methods that ultimately outwitted Mr Neville and his men, guiding the girls back home.
However, Noyce does not end the film on this happy note. Viewers learn that Molly and her children, including Doris, were sent back to Moore River, continuing the vicious cycle. Through the non-linear and cumulative process of genocide by attrition coupled with the intertwining of modernity and colonialism, the native Aboriginal people were exploited and ultimately fell victim to genocide.
The persistent efforts to dilute the legacy of genocide against Aboriginal people, upheld by figures like former Prime Minister Tony Abbott and elements of the Australian state, remain a significant barrier to achieving transitional justice. Aboriginal leaders continue to challenge the rhetoric of denial, demanding acknowledgment of Australia’s colonial history and its consequences. Senator Lidia Thorpe famously refused to swear to Britain’s Queen Elizabeth, a “colonizer,” during her parliamentary swearing-in. In October 2024, Thorpe disrupted a parliamentary reception for the visiting King Charles, demanding recognition of Indigenous rights. As justice is delayed, Aboriginal voices – including in films like “Rabbit-Proof Fence –ensure the demand for accountability, self-determination, and respect remain unyielding.
Jasmine Harmston is completing an MA in International Affairs at The New School.