Rabbit Proof Fence

Rabbit Proof Fence - A Film that depicts the lives of the Aborigine People and there struggle survive in a time where ideologies were imposed by British Govern law within Australia. My Personal reaction to the film is somewhat mixed with anger, frustration, distress, and a little bit of empathy. The British who settled from Europe were brought up on this mentality that you can just come into a new piece of land and claim that anything and everything you see is yours, which is sort of funny since the early stages of the film the Australian farmer states to Molly that the "Fence" separates themselves from the "Rabbits" which is sort of counter productive since the whole point of colonizing according to Loomba's  Situating Colonial and Postcolonial Studies "Colonialism can be defined as the conquest and control of other people's land and good" (25). Clearly this ideology is sort of bleak from the British mentality if they just want to reform those with a mixture of another race and leave the others people in case the Aborigine out to dry like a raisin in the sun. Watching this film I was beginning to think that all Western European ideologies on colonialism are somewhat derivative and redundant in a sense that throughout history it just hasn't work out in there favor nor the other conquers of other countries as clearly stated by Loomba, "...various European powers into Asia, Africa or the Americans...has been a recurrent of human history...Roman Empire...the Mongols...The Aztec Empire...Inca Empire...various kingdoms in India...and the Ottoman Empire" (25-26). So while I was saddened to see three young kids along other basically being programmed what to think, what to feel, how to talk, look and/or act in society I am not really surprise at all since history have this chronic tendency of repeating its self at nauseam and it makes me wonder have we ever really evolved at all as a human species as far as our raw emotions manifesting into something that eventually snowballs into something unimaginable?

Throughout the film you see examples of the  ideals being played out, for instance right before the Molly and her siblings were taken away you get a glimpse into the tactics that are were going to be imposed onto those Aborigine people when the white man who is  referred to as  "the devil" in Rabbit-scared Fences clearly states, "the Aborigine will be bread out of the native", this is further illustrated throughout the film with examples of the kids being stripped of there native tongue of language at become adept to speaking English, impose new faith onto them like religion and have them go harsh labor like when the Aborigine kids were sewing clothes and cleaning floors. It was appalling to watch that happen on film. Linda Smith uncovers the foundation of these ideals of the British colonizers in her article Decolonizing Methologies, "In Africa, the Americas and the pacific, western observers were struck by the contrast...by the indigenous peoples. Representation of 'native life'...and of the native people being lazy, indolent, with low attention spans" (31) and this type of attitude to the British was considered to be an "association between race...darker skin peoples being considered more 'naturally' indolent" (32). Although I believe this film horrific and tragic for its truth on the surface in relation to the treatment of the aborigine natives, it cuts much deeper into the psyche of people as whole on how we are driven by in my opinion a primal instinct like any animal to want to claim territory except in the case of people these primal instincts has manifested to our emotions such as fear, hysteria, insecurity. This all factors in to the mindset of colonialism and imperialism to a large extent and continues somewhat to this day.