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My review of Rabbit-Proof Fence:
http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/culture/rabbit_proof_fence.htm
It can be rented on Amazon and iTunes.
NY Times, June 28, 2018
Daisy Kadibil, 95, Whose Australia Trek Inspired a Film, Dies
By Jacqueline Williams
SYDNEY, Australia — Daisy Kadibil, an Aboriginal Australian, was about 8
years old and living in the vast, sparsely populated Outback in the
early 1930s when her country’s government forcibly separated her from
her parents and sent her to a resettlement camp hundreds of miles away.
Her removal had been ordered under an Australian assimilation policy
that sought to absorb Aboriginal people into the country’s white society
by taking children from their families and indoctrinating them in the
ways of that dominant culture.
Daisy was taken from her home in Jigalong, an Indigenous community in
the Pilbara region in northwestern Australia, where she had grown up. A
sister, Molly, and a cousin, Gracie, were also seized, and all three
girls were sent to an Indigenous settlement near the Moore River, just
north of Perth, the nearest city, about 800 miles to the south.
There, longing for home, they sought to escape. In 1931 they succeeded,
embarking on foot on a treacherous nine-week trek north across rough
terrain and using as their guide a barbed-wire fence that had been built
to keep rabbits away from pastureland — an astonishing feat that
inspired a book and the acclaimed 2002 Australian movie “Rabbit-Proof
Fence.”
Ms. Kadibil, the last remaining of the three, died on March 30 in South
Hedland, Western Australia. She was 95. Her death, which was not widely
publicized at the time, was confirmed by a grandson, Darryl Jones, who
said she had dementia.
The film that depicted the girls’ journey, directed by Phillip Noyce,
won numerous awards on the international festival circuit. (Ms. Kadibil
was played by Tianna Sansbury.) It also brought the issue of the
so-called stolen generation of Aboriginal Australian children to
audiences around the world.
In his review in The New York Times, Stephen Holden described the movie
as a “devastating portrayal” of Australia’s “disgraceful treatment” of
its Aboriginal population.
“On the side of wrong is the Australian government,” he wrote, “which,
for more than half a century, carried out this appalling program of
legalized kidnapping.”
The movie was based on the book “Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence” (1996),
by Doris Pilkington Garimara, who died in 2014. The author was the
daughter of Ms. Kadibil’s sister, Molly Kelly, and her book was partly
based on her mother’s experiences during the journey, though she
interviewed Ms. Kadibil, her aunt, extensively in her research.
Ms. Kelly died in 2004, and the sisters’ cousin Gracie Cross died in 1983.
The girls were among thousands of Aboriginal Australian children
forcibly removed from their families and transported to settlement camps
hundreds of miles away. Once in the camps, as they were taught the
customs of white Australian society, they were forbidden to speak their
native language. The assimilation policy started in the early 1900s and
lasted into the early ’70s.
“This was an incredibly destructive policy which left in its wake a real
trail of heartache and pain in Indigenous communities, which continues
to be felt today,” Paddy Gibson, a senior researcher at the Jumbunna
Institute for Indigenous Education and Research, told the Australian
Broadcasting Corporation.
Tributes to Ms. Kadibil poured out across social media after her death.
“May you finally rest in peace with your sisters, Aunty Daisy Kadibil,”
the South Australian Film Corporation posted on Instagram.
Samina Yip, who works for the Papua New Guinea Tribal Foundation in
Australia, tweeted: “In this year of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander Woman, why was she not given a state funeral?”
A private funeral was scheduled for Saturday in Jigalong.
Ms. Kadibil spent many years working as a cook and housekeeper on
ranches in the Pilbara and lived much of her later life in Parnngurr, a
community near Jigalong where her descendants continue to live. She was
part of the Martu group, the traditional owners of a large part of
central Western Australia.
It was Ms. Kadibil’s strong connection to her family and her country and
a desire to keep her language and culture that motivated her to go back
home after she and the other children were taken away to the settlement
camp, said Sue Davenport, advisory director of Kanyirninpa Jukurrpa, an
organization working with the Martu people, who knew Ms. Kadibil in her
later years.
“What it indicated is the strength of character of Daisy that then
pervaded the rest of her life,” Ms. Davenport said in an interview.
Ms. Kadibil’s daughters became strong advocates for the Martu people.
One daughter, Noreena Kadibil, returned to Martu land with her husband
to establish the Parnngurr community in the early 1980s.
Ms. Kadibil’s grandchildren are now leaders of that community, Ms.
Davenport said.
Her grandson Mr. Jones said of Ms. Kadibil, “She used to tell us about
her journey because I forced her.” He recalled pleading, “Nana, tell me
more, tell me more, I like it, I like it.”
Ms. Kadibil lived in Parnngurr well into her 80s before moving to a
nursing home, where she died. Besides Mr. Jones, her survivors include
her daughter Noreena and three other children, Elizabeth, Jerry and
Margaret Kadibil, as well as several other grandchildren.
“Daisy’s remarkable story is an indelible part of the history of the
Shire of East Pilbara,” said Lynne Craigie, president of the shire, or
local government region, “and one that will always be shared and never
forgotten.”
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