On Rabbit-Proof Fence - Ira M.

The ironies in Rabbit-Proof Fence (film) carved themselves into my memory. The title “Chief Protector of the Aboriginese” given to A.O. Neville (as depicted in the film) could not have been more ironic. His actions showed the exact opposite of what his title meant to me: forced assimilation, indoctrination, and the erasure of all things Aboriginese (language, tradition, culture, etc.). He declared, along with his intention to do so, that the Aboriginese can be “bred out” from the hybrids by forcing them to mate with whites through as many generations necessary. He also claimed that “the native must be helped despite himself” - this reveals a flawed rationale whose purpose is to mask and justify British hegemony. First of all, the act of “helping” is a voluntary action on part of the doer – to be accepted or rejected by the receiver. To “help” someone while robbing them of choice is contradictory. To say that “the native must be helped despite himself” is to say that the native is ignorant, inferior, and unable to make sound decisions as if he is a child. The previous idea shows a “binary opposition” where the colonizer labels the indigenous people as “irrational” and “childlike” and therefore (by opposition) calls himself “superior” and “patriarchal” to borrow conviction for his atrocities. 

While I acknowledge that some supporters of the British effort of that time might have had genuinely good intentions, and that it is easy for us to sit and hurl criticisms at their entirety because we do not live in the same time and place, what was depicted in the film is sheer tyranny by the British colonizers. The colonizers saw a world that differed greatly from theirs and labelled it "savage" to justify changing that world into the spitting image of theirs and fulfill their need for homogeneity (and perhaps justify the current state of their own "superior" society). The colonizers brought with them their concepts of time, space, and "progress."  The idea of "progress" and "salvation" were associated with the British way of life: the emphasis on structure and work ethic. This eurocentric belief, in contrast with the Aboriginal way of life, "provided ideological justification for exclusionary practices..." (Smith 54). These exclusionary practices separated the "black" and "savage natives" from the "fair," "proper," and "rational."

The scene in the film where Mr. Neville tries to garner sympathy from the British settlers also upset me. By highlighting the difference in skin color between the Aborigines(including hybrids) and the British, and their purported differences in temperament he persuades the settlers that their cause is "just," all the while sweeping the inhumanities that the Aborigines had to suffer (inhumanities that the Aborigines never knew existed) under the rug. This reminds me of how a dominant force "rewrites history," divorcing itself from blame and criticism. This is the same peculiar maneuver that Ania Loomba exposes in "Situating Colonial and Postcolonial Studies" where she shows how the Oxford English Dictionary removes any possibility of "conquest and domination" from the word "colonialism" (1). Though I recognize a dictionary's need to stray away from controversial discourse, I can't help but scoff at how inaccurate the description is for historical application. The mask of innocence and "goodness" that such a definition gives for colonization casts a thick veil of ignorance that the world must see through.