The Aboriginal woman whose life inspired the acclaimed film Rabbit Proof Fence about the so-called ”stolen generations” of indigenous Australians has died at the age of 87, national radio reported on Thursday.
Molly Kelly died in her sleep on Tuesday in the Western Australia town of Jigalong, it said.
In 1931, the then Molly Craig and two younger girls were taken from their families and placed in a government-run institution as part of a policy of trying to raise part-Aboriginal children as domestic servants.
The three girls escaped the next day and walked 1 600km back to their home through the West Australian desert following a fence erected to halt the spread of feral rabbits.
Molly was taken back to the government school again in 1940, this time together with two young daughters, and she escaped and returned home a second time with one of the girls.
The second daughter, Doris, would not be reunited with her mother for another 21 years and later recounted Molly Craig’s remarkable journey in the book Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence, which was later made into a film by director Phillip Noyce.
From 1910 until the 1970’s, some 100 000 indigenous children, many of mixed Aboriginal and European parentage, were taken from their parents under laws based on the belief that Aborigines were a doomed race and that it was humane to place the children in foster care and give them a Western education.
In 1997 a national inquiry found that many of the children were abused and suffered long-term psychological damage from the loss of family and cultural connections.
The conservative government of Prime Minister John Howard has refused calls to make an official apology for the forced removal of children or other abuses against Aborigines, who today number about 400 000 out of a total Australian population of 20-million. – Sapa-AFP