Rabbit-Proof Fence

Rabbit-Proof Fence is a powerful film based on the true story and experiences of three young Aboriginal girls – Molly, Gracie and Daisy – who were forcibly taken from their families in Jigalong, Western Australia in 1931. The film puts a human face on the Stolen Generations, a phenomenon that characterised relations between the government and Aboriginal people in Australia for much of the twentieth century. The girls were taken away to be trained as domestic servants at the Moore River Native Settlement, north of Perth. This was consistent with official government assimilationist policy of the time decreeing that ‘half-caste’ children should be taken from their kin and their land in order to be ‘made white’.

Focusing on the escape of the three girls from Moore River in the 1930s, the film highlights the despair experienced by mothers whose children were taken, and the terror and confusion of those children, snatched from familiar surroundings and forced to adapt to European ways. Led by fourteen-year-old Molly, the girls defy all odds to travel 1500 miles through unfamiliar territory to return to their land, their homes and families in north-western Australia, with the authorities chasing them all the way.

Rabbit-Proof Fence is a true story, based on the book Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence by Doris Pilkington Garimara, Molly’s daughter.