Rabbit-proof fence: “a true story”? by Keith Windschuttle
excerpt:
Despite this, a number of influential critics of the “stolen generations” report and of Noyce’s film have emerged. They have argued that the only exploitation involved has been of the credulity of the public who, in both cases, have been fed gross misrepresentations of Australian history. Rather than being stolen from loving parents to fulfill a nationalist policy of racist eugenics, the only cases where Aboriginal children were removed involved serious parental neglect.
In many of these cases, the parents were alcoholics who were not providing proper nutrition or health care and the authorities would have been culpable had they not acted. In some Aboriginal communities, half-caste children were treated as outcasts, especially the girls who became easy sexual prey for both whites and blacks. In some tribes, half-caste children were commonly subject to infanticide.
Forcible removals, like that depicted in the film, were rare. Indeed, the scene Noyce created is pure fiction since, according to the book, Molly was taken without a struggle and with the acquiescence of her stepfather who was present at the time. Moreover, institutions like that depicted in Rabbit-Proof Fence usually housed Aboriginal children placed voluntarily by their parents to be educated.
Evidence from a 1934 enquiry showed that of the 1,067 admitted to the Moore River Native Settlement, only sixty-four were unattended or orphan children. That is, only 6 percent could possibly have been removals from their mothers. Yet the film depicts them all as stolen children.
The Human Rights Commission based its entire report on claims made by Aborigines themselves and did not test their evidence by calling witnesses from among the officials who allegedly removed them. Three test cases subsequently came before the courts, accompanied by claims for compensation. The evidence of the litigants contrasted dramatically with the records of their removal.
In one case, a baby boy had been placed in a rabbit burrow by his grandmother and left to die. He was rescued later by his aunt. His teenage mother subsequently agreed to place him in an orphanage. Despite sympathetic judges, none of the three claimants could demonstrate they were forcibly removed, and no government policies were found to support a racist or “stolen generation” thesis.
Documentary evidence also emerged to show that some high-profile Aborigines who claimed to have been stolen had invented their stories. Fabricators included the former head of the Aboriginal and Torres Straits Islander Commission, Lois O’Donoghue, whose white father had placed her and her sisters in a Catholic boarding school where he paid for their upkeep.
At the same time, descendants of A. O. Neville sprang to his defense, producing a biography and a string of documents from his career to demonstrate that, far from being a racist who wanted to see the Aborigines die out, he had dedicated his life to their well-being. When he died, his wife received about 500 letters from Aborigines praising his efforts to rescue abandoned children and protect them from exploitation.
In other words, rather than demonstrating that Australia had “lost its humanity,” Aboriginal policy has consistently been based on humanitarian intentions. This is not to say these aims have been uniformly successful
