The Australian
DORIS Pilkington Garimara, author of Follow the Rabbit Proof Fence, says Keith Windschuttle is "distorting history" by claiming her mother and another girl were removed from their community because they were having sex with white men.
Pilkington, whose book was the basis for the acclaimed film Rabbit-Proof Fence, said her mother, Molly and another girl Gracie, were sent away because they and other mixed-race children were an embarrassment to whites.
In the preface to the third volume of his work, The Fabrication of Aboriginal History, Windschuttle cites an archival reference to the girls "running wild with the whites" as evidence that Molly and Gracie were having sex with white men.
But Pilkington said she had come across the same reference when researching her 1996 book and had asked her mother what it meant.
"I asked Mum about that, and I did some reading," Pilkington told The Australian.
"It was mustering time at the station and, of course, all the young girls were on the rails watching musterers catch and brand calves, cheering them on and all that. So that's her interpretation of running wild."
Pilkington said that was the closest the girls would have come to white men and denied they would have had sex with them.
"They were watched and chaperoned all the time. If they wanted sex with a white man, they'd have to sneak off somewhere," she said.
"At Jigalong, they have laws and they are given husbands when the time is right. They wouldn't have let the girls have sex with the white men working around the fence.
"He's distorting history again to serve his purpose. He needs some publicity."
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