The Issue Of Cultural Identity In The Rabbit-proof Fence And Castle

Identity is being who you are or who a person is. Individual identity is the concept you learn about yourself and it slowly evolves everyday for the rest of your life. It may include aspects of your life that you can’t control like where you were born, where you grew up, your skin colour, your family and even your name. It also affects the choices you make in life, such as your beliefs or how you spend your time. Cultural identity is the feeling of wanting to fit in within a group. It relates back to your nationality, ethnicity, religion, social class, locality, generation or social group. My focus is to show how texts explore the relationship between culture and individual identity in The Castle and Rabbit-Proof Fence.

The Castle is an Australian movie about the Kerrigan family. The Kerrigan family own a home which they have lived in for years and it is right next to the airport. The airport wants the Kerrigan’s to sell their house and move out because they want to build new buildings on the soil the Kerrigan’s have been living on for these many years. The father of the Kerrigan family who is Darryl Kerrigan does not want to leave his home, so he decides to fight for it via taking the airport to court. Which tells you a lot about the kind of man Darryl is, he is a fighter who is willing to keep his home and his even more motivated when his family backs him up in his fight with the airport. Sadly, he loses the court case because the lawyer they had did not have enough experience, but they did not backdown and they luckily met a very good lawyer who helped the Kerrigan’s win the battle to keep their home.

The Castle is about an ordinary Australian family, they don’t have a lot of money, but they have each other and are good people. The reason Australians like this movie is because it shows a hardworking man not giving up even though life throws many difficult obstacles his way a quote from the movie is “A man’s home is his castle” which really captures Australia’s cultural identity the way it captures it is Australians always fight to achieve what we want.

Another movie which is based on the book by Doris Pilkington Garimara is Rabbit-Proof Fence it is a 2002 Australian film inspired by a true story from the author’s mother, Molly, Molly was part of the Stolen Generation. It tells a story of three young girls forcibly removed from their home and taken to the Moore River Native Settlement which is a camp to re-educate the aborigines back in the 1930s where the story takes place in. The three young girls are considered “half-casters” a term that was used when a child has one white and one Aboriginal parent. They where removed from there homes to become less Aboriginal and more like a white person. They learnt the white people’s ways and they were forced to have kids when they grew up to a white man to make their children more of a whiter person than dark. The Australians where trying to breed the Aborigines out of existence.

The girls eventually escaped the camp and spent around nine weeks following the Rabbit Proof Fence back home, they had to travel about 2400 KM which is 1500 miles. This shows that the girls are had workers just like Daryll Kerrigan is. In both the castle and Rabbit Proof Fence they did whatever they could for their family the girls travelled for 9 week to get to their family and Daryl Kerrigan took the airport to court even when he failed once he didn’t give up so his family could have a home this shows how important family is and how it helps shape your individual identity. When the first fleet arrived, they brought rabbits with them and they started to wreak havoc, so the Australians built the fence all the way back in 1901 and they finished up in 1907 to help keep rabbits and other off Australia’s agricultural areas.

While they where trying to head home an Aboriginal tracker went after them, but the girls cover their tracks well. Unfortunately, one of the girls is recaptured along the way but two of the girls make their way back to their family. The girls lived in a place called Jigalong. Once they get back, they go into hiding in the desert with their mother and grandmother.

A quote from Rabbit proof fence is “You gotta forget it and talk English all the time.”

The Moore River Native Settlement was an adaptation centre it used to teach boys and girls of mixed race how to forget about their Aboriginal root which was part of their identity. The quote that was told to the girls was to stop them from talking in their native language and talk English more. Language is one of the largest parts of your culture and if you take that away you become someone completely different and that’s what the Western Australian Government wanted to achieve they wanted the aborigines to forget their indigenous ways and act more white just like a true Australian.

The castle has some similarities to rabbit proof fence a major one being Indigenous or non-Indigenous Australians don’t tend to give up during hard times we always fight for what is right and that tells a lot about our culture and that helps shape out individual identity.

Therefore, knowing about our culture influences someone’s personal identity because it gives you the label for the group you belong in. Within your culture you will find different beliefs and learn how to interact with people who are just like you. Culture is the glue that holds humans together and thanks to The Castle and Rabbit Proof Fence we can learn a lot about Australian Culture in the early 1900s and early 2000s. In the early 1900s Australians where not multicultural and hated on the Indigenous Australians who lived here before the First Fleet settled and that changed the Aborigines entire culture. In the early 2000s Australians became more chilled out.

Over time people’s identity and culture changed and The Castle and Rabbit Proof Fence really help capture that change in Australian culture and it also helped capture the change from the early 1900s and how the Australian’s now accept the aborigines for who they are.

Bibliography 

• https://www.dictionary.com/browse/a-man-s-home-is-his-castle
• https://www.gradesaver.com/follow-the-rabbit-proof-fence/study-guide/quotes