Rabbit-Proof Fence: The True Story of One of the Greatest Escapes of All Time

#288
Title: Rabbit-Proof Fence: The True Story of One of the Greatest Escapes of All Time
Author: Doris Pilkington-Nugi Garimara
Publisher:  miramax/hyperion
Year: 1996
Country: Australia
150 pages

Best read in conjunction with the film, this memoir fills in details of the girls' trek that are not as explicit in the screen version. What the film provides is both a dynamism lacking in the book, and a broader context for why the Australian government would separate biracial children from their families. I was particularly fascinated by the expenditures made to recover three girls; no comparable manhunt would be mounted in our era for non-criminal escapees.

It would be interesting to compare the rationales for the general removal of native children to boarding schools in different countries, particularly the covert reasoning. The film does a better job of identifying the more pernicious aims of the program.