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The Secret Path is quickly gaining the same prominence in Canadian schools as Rabbit-Proof Fence has Down Under. It is reportedly being used as a teaching aid in 40,000 classrooms nationwide. It’s part of the official curriculum in Alberta and has a notable presence in Ontario and several other provinces as well. The Manitoba Teachers’ Society even offers a series of lesson plans for teachers from Grades 1 to 12 explaining how to use it everywhere from in art class to English to history. Despite their large pedagogical footprints, however, neither can be considered honest recitations of their stories. Both Rabbit-Proof Fenceand The Secret Path are burdened with fabrications and exaggerations meant to enhance the shame felt by white viewers or readers. The truth, it seems, is never bad enough.

The truth, it seems, is never bad enough

“The movie Rabbit-Proof Fence is just complete bullshit,” snaps Windschuttle, drawing a sharp distinction between the film and its source material, a book written by Doris Pilkington, daughter of Molly. The most obvious reversal of truth is in why the girls were taken from their parents in the first place. The villain of the movie is Australian bureaucrat A.O. Neville, played by Kenneth Branagh, who is seen ordering the three sisters’ removal and later explains his scheme to “breed out the colour” of Aborigines through planned intermarriage with whites. “In the third generation, or third cross, no trace of native origin is apparent,” he says chillingly.

Despite the movie’s allegation the girls were abducted as part of a government plan for genetic conformity, however, Windschuttle points out they were actually taken for reasons of child welfare and parental neglect. Contemporary reports observed that 14-year old Mollie and her 11-year old sister were “running wild” with local white fence repairers. In today’s parlance, they were being sexually exploited. “This was something that was a fairly regular occurrence in the area,” Windschuttle explains, noting that young white girls were also routinely taken from their homes for the same grim reason. While this detail doesn’t absolve white society from its responsibility for the girls’ condition, or the morality of moving them 1,600 kilometres from home, it certainly adds ambiguity to their tale.

Windschuttle further points out the girls arrived in Jigalong at the end of their epic journey not after crawling parched through the desert while on the lam from white police and an Aboriginal tracker, as the movie portrays, but on the back of a camel provided by a concerned white stockman.