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Date
2019-03-??
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英語學系
Department of English, NTNU
Department of English, NTNU
Abstract
This essay analyzes how contemporary Australian Aboriginal storytelling,exemplified by Doris Pilkington Garimara’s book Rabbit-Proof Fence (2002)and its film adaptation by director Phillip Noyce, transcribes the variousexperiences of displacement and resistance of Aboriginal peoples andprovides a basis for a collective listening/rereading of the nation’s complexcolonial history. The various guises of displacement and resistance examinedin this essay include: the involuntary migration of Aboriginal peoples,especially the Nyungar and the Mardudjara, along the rabbit-proof fencetowards government-assigned settlements such as Jigalong (equivalent to“reservations” in the US); the forced relocation of mixed-race children (theStolen Generations) to missionary camps to be made culturally white; and thechildren’s heroic journey of escape and homecoming—again navigatedthrough the rabbit-proof fence. The essay aims to demonstrate that Aboriginalstorytelling not only discloses a history of disruption imposed by Europeansettlement, but, perhaps more importantly, registers Aboriginal peoples’strength to resist, adopt, and reconnect.