The Moore River Native Settlement, 1931
Doris PilkingtonÆs Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence focuses on the colonization of the Western desert Mardu people. In Chapter 7, The Moore River Native Settlement, 1931, Pilkington (1996) recounts the removal of her mother and aunts to the Moore River Mission. The colonization of the Mardu, like the colonization of most peoples, involved disenfranchisement. By removing the Mardu to the Moore River Mission, the colonizers successfully disenfranchise the Mardu from society while also providing them a focus of unity. For even though the removal to the Mission represents a step in the creation of an ôinferiorö other by the colonizers, it also provides the Mardu with a focus on survival in the imaginative construct of returning home. The meaning of the Chapter 7 is to illustrate how colonizing a people also serves to unite resistance to colonization. Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence is a story of the defeat of a people at the hands of colonizing forces, but it is also a story that demonstrates the ability of some Mardu to survive. As Brewster (2002) maintains, ôThe figuring of a decolonized, mythic space is an important political and imaginative act providing indigenous people with a sense of autonomy and solidarity and enabling their survival amidst a continuing legacy of dispossession and lossö (2). It is this ideology, reinforced through figurative language and imagery, that provides Chapter 7 with its themes, purpose, and meaning.
In Chapter 7, Molly, Daisy, and Gracie, ôdaughters of sistersö, discover life at the Moore River Mission. The austere conditions and the prison-like environment are reinforced by the author through figurative language. Molly finds the dormitory to be more ôlike a gaolö more than like a school, while ôoffalàwas more tasty than what was provided by the cook and staff at the kitchenö (Pilkington 1996, 66). The superintendentÆs living quarters is ref...