Loss, Dispossession, and Reclamation Theme Analysis

The history of the indigenous population of Australia is marked by loss and dispossession. In the early chapters of Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence, Doris Pilkington, writing imaginatively about the early days of English colonization of Australia, explores how English settlers systematically stripped Aboriginal Australians of their land, property, and culture from the moment they set foot on Australia’s shores. This pattern continued unabated up to and well beyond the 1930s, when the main action of Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence takes place—a time when “half-caste” (that is, mixed-race white and Aboriginal) children were forcibly removed from their families, confined to internment camps, and cut off from their native roots, deepening their loss of cultural heritage. Through Molly, Gracie, and Daisy’s story of internment and escape, Pilkington demonstrates the ways in which the legacy of colonialism in Australia is one of loss and dispossession—not just of land or material goods, but of spirit, agency, and destiny. Nevertheless, she argues that even as the Aboriginal people may appear to have lost everything, there remains a fierce desire for reclamation of Aboriginal rights, independence, and the dignity of “planning [one’s] own destiny.”

Pilkington describes her mother and aunt’s childhood, saying that “the girls were fortunate to be part of a loving family who tried to compensate for all the nasty insults and abuse” the girls suffered due to their mixed racial heritage “by spoiling and indulging them at home.” Knowing that their daughters would face prejudice from both their Aboriginal friends and relatives as well as from white Australians, Pilkington’s grandparents—Daisy and Molly’s parents—sought to reclaim a measure of comfort, stability, and acceptance for their daughters. The story of Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence is ultimately the story of Molly, Daisy, and Gracie reclaiming their own lives and narratives. After being captured by Constable Riggs (an Australian government official whose title was “Protector of Aborigines”) and taken to the Moore River Settlement, the girls escaped into the Australian bush and began a thousand-mile trek home to Jigalong, using the rabbit-proof fence as a guidepost to light their way home. The journey took them months to complete, during which time they bravely overcame opposition from nature and from the people (Aboriginal and white Australian alike) that they encountered along the way, as well as from within their own hearts and minds as they struggled to remain determined and motivated to find their way home.

In recording her family’s history in this book, Pilkington herself is also doing the work of reclamation of history in the face of loss and dispossession. Determined to tell the story of her mother’s struggle and of the destructive effects of colonialism, Pilkington ultimately reclaims her family’s narrative from the white colonizers who worked so determinedly to see such stories erased and forgotten. Although loss and dispossession have no doubt shaped the history not just of her family but of her people, Pilkington’s drive to relay that history—creating art out of the ashes of dispossession and disenfranchisement—demonstrates the power of storytelling to heal and redeem. Pilkington’s book is an act of recovering her family’s narrative, at least in part, from the devastation of loss.

The cultures and customs of the Aboriginal people vary greatly across the vast Australian mainland, and their persecution and dispossession are ongoing to this day. Therefore, Pilkington can’t—and doesn’t claim to—speak for all Aboriginals.  She has crafted a story which uplifts the act of reclaiming one’s story or one’s destiny as an act of heroism. In mirroring her mother’s reclamation of her own fate by reclaiming her family’s narrative in the pages of Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence, Pilkington demonstrates the importance of the work of reclamation, and the power it has to subvert the effects of loss and dispossession.