A Single Mother's Rabbit Proof Fence

It's not often that I allow myself to stop moving, but just recently, I took a brief break from laboring over the one-woman show I've started writing based off of my book Raise the Red Teddy: A Single Mother's Guide to Dating. Without hesitation I popped in a movie I just received from Netflix called, Rabbit-Proof Fence. I had never heard of it before, but the title sounded interesting and the cover looked intriguing so I added it to my queue.

I wasn't prepared to be heartbroken. Rabbit-Proof Fence is about a 14-year-old Aborigine girl named Molly, her cousin and sister in the 1930's when the Australian government tore Aborigine families apart in order to stamp out their native blood by placing half white Aborigine children into orphanages and grooming them for servant positions where girls can be can be taken advantage of sexually to ensure their children (who would also be taken away) are even whiter.

Molly, a clever, strong willed girl who had not grown to know her white father, escapes the orphanage, and uses her native tracking skills to guide her, cousin Gracie and little sister Daisy back home to their family. While Gracie decides to take a detour to find her mother who is nearby, Molly and Daisy trek over 1,500 miles through the desert without any supplies trying to allude a government employed Aborigine tracker and the Australian police. And what's more amazing, is this film is based on a true story.

After watching this film, I was left wondering, "Where was this in my history books?" Why am I just now learning that these were the conditions that Aborigine people were living with all the way through the 1970's? Why did I not know that there were countless Aborigines known as the "Lost Generation" who experienced an identity crisis because they found it difficult to relate to both white Australians and native Aborigines?