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Ya Minyah Doris!
Follow The Rabbit-Proof Fence author dies aged 76.
Doris Pilkington Nugi Garimara passed away earlier this year from ovarian cancer aged 76. Doris helped awaken Australians and the rest of the world to the plight of the mixed-race children of Aborigine and white Australians who were forcibly removed from their families in a bid to decimate the Aboriginal people.
'Are we going to have a population of one million blacks in the Commonwealth, or are we going to merge them into our white community and eventually forget there ever were any Aborigines in Australia?' A. O. Neville, chief protector of Aborigines in Western Australia, asked in 1937.
The book Follow The Rabbit-Proof Fence was based on the story of Doris' own mother, Molly Kelly who escaped one of the government camps many mixed-race people were sent to by following a fence that bisects the length of Australia from north to south to protect farmland from hordes of rabbits.
The book was eventually made into an award winning movie Rabbit-Proof Fence, which was translated into 11 languages. The Australian Film Institute named the movie version the year's best film, and it won many prizes at film festivals around the world.
Doris wrote three other well-received books about her life, and used her celebrity to press for the Aboriginal cause. She was an original member of the government-sanctioned Reconciliation Committee to repair relations between the white and native peoples and a principal promoter of National Sorry Day, an annual event started in 1998 to commemorate the government's mistreatment of Aborigines.
Her first book, Caprice: A Stockman's Daughter (1991), was a short novella inspired by her family and centered on the changing role of women over the course of the 20th century. Her other books were Under the Wintamarra Tree (2002) and Home to Mother (2006), a children's version of Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence.
Those that were removed from their families are known as the stolen generation and since 1997, May 26 every year is known as National Sorry Day to remember and commemorate their mistreatment. In 2008, the Australian government formally apologized to the stolen generation.
Doris' whose first name was originally Nugi, took the name Doris from the woman who employed her mother as a domestic. She is survived by four children, 31 grandchildren and 80 great-grandchildren, what a legacy!
Ya minyah' means goodbye in the Wiradjuri Aboriginal language.
Related Article: Mixed-Race Film Rabbit-Proof Fence
Click here for more on Doris Pilkington Nugi Garimara
Source:thenytimes.com
