AustLit

Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, Indigenous Australian faces, voices and perspectives emerged in cinema. Initially, Indigenous Australian films were unpopular among non-Indigenous audiences; in 2002 Rabbit-Proof Fence broke this trend, earning 1.2 million dollars in its first week on screen (Collins 133).

Rabbit-Proof Fence was produced in response to Bringing them home (1997), an inquiry into the Stolen Generation. From 1900–1970, the government forcibly removed Indigenous Australian children from their homes. Rabbit-Proof Fence was the first film to bring the trauma of the Stolen Generation to national attention (133).

The film is based on Doris Pilkington Garimara’s novel, Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence, and tells the true story of three Aboriginal girls who were taken from their family and placed in a re-education camp. Molly, Daisy and Gracie escape the camp, and undertake a 2400 km journey along the rabbit-proof fence in the hopes of returning home.While government authorities view the girls’ escape as an act of lawlessness, Rabbit-Proof Fence’s audiences will applaud the girls’ courageous anti-authoritarianism in the face of the government’s immorality. Molly, Daisy and Gracie are three among thousands of Indigenous children who suffered, and their story is one of countless Stolen Generation histories.