the outback...

In the past week Ive seen two films set in the same time period, similar in theme, yet distinctly different in perspective. Both are set in the 1880s - 90's Australian Outback, when it was still being colonized by the British. Due to the American Revolution in the late 1700's Britian, who before this time as an alternative to hanging some of British socities worst, offered to transport the guilty to Maryland, now had to seek other locations to transport its criminals. Eventually they began using Australia for this purpose. After originally using Autralia, home of thousands of Aboriginal people, as a criminal dumping site, the Europeans decided to continue to grace, New South Whales, with the presence of more refined British citizens. This continued occupation of course led to all kinds of problems both with the tons of convicts and the Aboriginal people who's land and way of life were being taken away from them.
The first film I saw "The Rabbit Proof Fence" was a story of three girls who were "half-caste" meaning that their mothers were Aboriginal and their fathers were European. The government haveing already established that the whites of Australia were civilized and indeed human and that the Aboriginies were clearly sub-human, did not know what to do with this new half breed. Rather than rethink their dichotomous worldview, they decide to capture all the half-caste children and civilize them, meaning teach them english and how to do household chores and farm. The line of thinking was that if they could keep them from reproducing among themselves or force reproducing with whites that in three generations there would be no more black in the blood line.
In the film the three half-caste girls are taken to a training school 1500 miles away from their home, but decide to run away and try to make it back to their family.
There was a hopeful thread throughout, a sense that there was some greater power than the Europeans that would lead the girls back to their families. The people under such persicution were the people with the most determined faith.

The second film is called "The Proposition." The story again of family. This time a family of convicts sent from Ireland, left to rot in the outback. The men continue to commit crime in Australia leading to the arrest of two of the three brothers by the captian of the state police. The police makes a deal with the middle brother, that he will not hang the youngest if the middle will murder the eldest.


Throughout this movie you see the mindset of the Europeans, "I will civilize this land." Referring to the criminals as well as the Aboriginies. There were a few interesting things to me about this film. One was how the refined Europeans in many ways were the most barbarrac. They were the ones with the worldview that said, "blacks are sub-human, of a different origin than us." While the more you see the criminal brothers interact, they are the ones that have a deep love and concern for eachother, though it plays out rather oddly. They all are well read and quote poetry, one even has a small library of his own. Also the most barbarrac of the brothers lives with an Aboriginal man, and considers him equal. The second thing that struck me about this film is the one thing that stands the most in contrast to the other film, the overarching godless worldview held by each character. A bounty hunter captures the sentiment in a breif conversation with the middle brother. The middle brother asks something to the effect of, "Are you a believing man?" The bounty hunter responds, "I once was, before I came to this God-forsaken land. Now all the God in me just seems to have evaporated."

Both of these films, I thought, were fantastic, though quite different. Seeing two films about this particular time period in the same week has sparked a lot of thought in me about a group of people believing that their way of thinking is correct and then living accordingly, at the expense of others. The Europeans thought that the Aboriginies needed to be civilized or killed, so they captured them, forced their way of life on them or killed them.

I guess for me the question continues to be how do I live in light of a worldview that says there is one correct belief system by which to live?