Rabbit Proof Fence: The True Story of One of the Greatest Escapes of All Time: by Doris Pilkington.

Europe went on exploration of the world for various gains - spices needed to preserve food for life in Europe before refrigeration, so the traders from China to Arabia that brought the goods need not be paid their due and Europe could have the gold, the spices, the jewels, whatever the lands offered. One perhaps unforeseen gain was discovery of lands unknown to most of Europe - Nordic men, especially fishermen, of course did go west in search of catch and did not tell everyone about their finds since it was a matter of competitive making a living, but not only they had reached Iceland and Greenland, they arrived in continent further west and called it Vinland, and they even had colonised as far south as slightly west of Boston where their proof of being can be seen in the brick tower that remains.

The discovery of new lands was greatest in the sense of giving those nations that were leading in the discovery and settling of the lands a huge lebensraum, since any opposition to their taking over the lands was brutally as well as with use of machiavellian skills and worse - recall the natives given infected blankets around the formation time of US.

Australia, with even the land of the name wiped out and changed to suit Europe just as was done with America, was less of a battle with natives in settling the land
with European, then mostly British, and mostly convicts to begin with. But this did not earn any friendship or gratitude from the settlers for the natives, and they were seen as primitive (they are still called aboriginal rather than native Australians) creatures to be used for European settlers like animals domestic and farm variety are. There is no other way to see the story of this book.

There was no slavery as such, no buying and selling, only a catching and using much like that of wild animals for domestic use. And inevitably part of this usage was that of native women by settler men. It was not marriage, not even love affair, just a use of helpless women by men with power, for convenience. Disgusting behaviour from the said men in power.

The children from this contact were seen to be not quite so dark and that is where the trouble began in Australia for the natives - unlike their counterparts in continent across the Pacific where slavery was the rule and a drop of slave or even emancipated free slave blood still counts to have a person being called black, no matter how white they look - in Australia it was seen that breeding of natives with settlers results in washing colour out, and this was seen as a desirable objective, to be enforced with physical force and legal and more.

So native half blood children were separated from their mothers and their roots, all caring and identity, and put in residential facilities where European nuns and legal authorities replaced their native elders, requiring them to forget their identity and learn to be European. Not that this would give them an equal or half equal status, but that then they were to work for settlers in towns (natives to be shunted off to remote farmlands or out completely) and to be expected to breed with Europeans by choice of latter. The breeding part was intended for half blood girls, work for both genders.

This story is of a tremendous courage of three little girls who escaped such a facility after a short while and tracked back, walking the length of the continent north to south, back to their mothers - only, one got waylaid by the lie of a native greedy man who trapped her into being caught. The other two arrived still alive, walking, and united with their mother and grandmother.

The film is impossible not to be affected by, the visuals bringing it all to one, the grief and helplessness of the mothers and daughters as they are separated, the well meaning nuns who are harsh in imposing a "no native dialects" rule, the legal authority officer who inspects the colour of exposed bodies in public, the punishment shaving of head of a girl that dares to talk to a native boy, the courage and cunning of the three girls in escaping and walking back across the country, the tracker who accompanies the policemen on search and refrains from informing how close they might be, the kind European woman who gives them food and clothes and informs them about the rabbit proof fence that helps them get back and the European man out in the wilderness who sets them straight about there being two fences and the short cut to the right one.

One cannot just see or read this, one travels with the three little girls, the eldest carrying the youngest much of the way, taking initiative and responsibility as befitting the maternal culture she is brought up in, using all that was taught her to find her way and going far beyond the strength of a small girl. She, the eldest, was still only about ten or so, less if anything.

The separation of children from mothers, children born of forced contact with settler males, continued until 1974. Later the government apologised, but it might have helped a bit more if they - the aptly named Stolen Generations - had been reunited with what relatives could be found. If record of those deprived mothers were kept, that is.