Pilkington Garimara was born Nugi Garimara. In 2008, the Australian government formally apologized to that stolen generation. The focus of the day, held annually on May 26, is the 'stolen generation': the Aboriginal children ripped away from their families.

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. Pilkington Garimara wrote three other well-received books about her life, and used her celebrity to press for the Aboriginal cause.

The Australian Film Institute named the movie version the year's best film, and it won prizes at a dozen film festivals around the world. 'Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence,' which helped awaken Australians to the plight of the Aborigines, was translated into 11 languages. Kelly shared her story of her first escape and trek home, following a fence that bisects the length of Australia from north to south to protect farmland from hordes of rabbits. Pilkington Garimara found out where she lived and took her children to meet her. Not until Christmas Eve 1962 did Doris see her mother again. (Brent Bignell/European Pressphoto Agency) The cause was ovarian cancer, Australian press reports said. Neville, was based on the book 'Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence' (1996), by Doris Pilkington Garimara, who died at 76 on April 10 in Perth, Australia. The movie, which starred Kenneth Branagh as Mr. The effort, little-known outside Australia, drew newfound attention when the movie 'Rabbit-Proof Fence' came out in 2002, telling the story of a young girl who was taken from her family, escaped from a government re-education camp, and with two other girls walked for nine weeks through harsh desert, with only plants and small animals to eat, to reunite with her mother in their hometown. Neville, chief protector of Aborigines in Western Australia, asked in 1937. '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. Mixed-race aboriginal children were taken from their families and forbidden to speak their native language.

In the 1930s, Australian authorities undertook a campaign to force the native Aborigines into white culture, with the hope that intermarriage would eventually eliminate their race.

Doris Pilkington Garimara 1937 - 2014 (Sydney Morning Herald)ĭouglas Martin The New York Times 20 April 2013Ĭredit Brent Bignell/European Pressphoto Agency

Doris pilkington garimara books