Racism and Colonialism Theme Analysis

English settlers claimed Australia as a British colony in the late 1700s, marking the beginning of a long and insidious process of displacement and extermination for Australia’s indigenous people, the Aborigines. In Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence, Doris Pilkington writes that in the early days of colonization many Aboriginal tribes believed their colonizers to be spirits (or gengas) rather than human beings, and thus underestimated or failed to understand what a grave threat colonizers posed to their land, culture, and lives. British colonizers not only killed and enslaved Aboriginal people systematically—they also systematically laid waste to Aboriginal culture, forbidding Aborigines to speak their own languages, practice their own traditional laws, and perform their tribes’ sacred rituals. In examining the effects of racism and colonialism on her own family’s history, Pilkington shows how the English tried repeatedly to skew their actions as beneficial to Australia’s indigenous population. This attitude led to the creation of government settlements like the one described in Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence, where half-castes (Aboriginal children of mixed racial descent) were held in captivity with the intention of being forcibly assimilated into white society.

In their writing, English colonizers frequently described the ways in which they deprived their “black servants” of wages and dignity, paying them “little more than rice” and assuring both themselves and one another that the Aboriginals were “grateful for small things.” One newspaper article from 1861 described the annual distribution of blankets to Aboriginal people as an “insult”—an insufficient and degrading means of making “reparations.” Yet the article stated that “the scanty supply of food doled out to this miserable remnant of a once numerous people is received by them with the most lively gratitude.” This destructive line of thinking—that the dispossessed and bereaved Aboriginals were grateful to accept these meager handouts in recompense for the decimation of their people—led directly to the creation of “government settlements” (in practice, internment camps) such as the Moore River Settlement, where Pilkington’s mother Molly, along with her sisters Daisy and Gracie, were sent as young girls. The children of this “Stolen Generation” (as well as Pilkington’s own) were constantly being surveilled by officials from the Department of Native Affairs, who saw the “ever-increasing numbers of half-caste children” in Australia as a threat to white supremacy. As a result, government officials separated as many part-Aboriginal children from their families as they could, forcing them into settlements where they would be “educated” and distanced from their Native roots.

The devastating effects of racism and colonialism are encapsulated in this vicious system. White settlers came to Australia, conquered the Aboriginals, and often raped Native women or otherwise coerced them into exploitative sexual relationships. As for the mixed-race children who resulted from these unions, the British soon contrived an elaborate bureaucracy whose sole purpose was to assimilate them into white society. A.O. Neville, Chief Protector of the Aborigines (an ironic title indeed), made his dreadful purpose even clearer; he hoped to “merge [mixed-race children] into our white community and eventually forget there ever were any Aborigines in Australia.”

Pilkington writes about her mother and aunt’s escape from the settlement and their return home, after which A.O. Neville wrote a letter in which he stated, “it’s a pity that those youngsters have gone ‘native’ […] They were attractive children, and ought to have been brought in years ago.” Neville’s letter highlights the sinister ways in which white Australians masked the violence of their actions, hiding behind titles like “protector” and feigning benevolence and “pity” even as they express feelings of ownership of and disgust for the Aboriginals. Racist attitudes such as these perpetuated the mechanisms of Aboriginal oppression and internment until the mid-1970s, still just seven years after Aboriginals were granted equal rights in 1967.

The racism faced by Doris Pilkington’s family (and virtually all other Aboriginal people) at the hands of white Australians is rooted in the colonialist practice of exploiting and eventually eradicating entire peoples and cultures under the banner of “civilization.” This process is made possible by the false idea that colonizers are somehow “protecting” or “helping” the people they oppress, saving them from their “primitive” ways. By writing about the racism her family encountered under colonial rule, Pilkington situates the far-reaching effects of racism and colonialism within the history of Australia, and the much longer history of the Aboriginal people.