On Christmas Eve in 1962, Doris Pilkington took her children for a surprise visit to see their grandmother in Balfour Downs Station, western Australia.
They arrived very early in the morning and found Molly Kelly asleep. Pilkington nervously tapped her mother on the shoulder to awaken her.
"Do you know who I am?" Pilkington asked.
Her mother shook her head. She did not recognize her daughter.
Pilkington, 65, had last seen her mother in 1941, when Kelly escaped from the Moore River Native Settlement, where the Australian government was holding Kelly and her two daughters, Doris and Annabelle, captive. Kelly had managed to take Annabelle with her, but had been forced to leave Doris behind.
Kelly and her children were being held because they were Aborigines and Australia was determined to assimilate the continent's indigenous peoples into its white majority.
Besides confining Aborigines to reserves — a system that devastated traditional lifestyles — the government forcibly removed great numbers of Aborigine children from their parents, raising them in orphanages until they were adopted by white families, often to be used as servants and laborers.
It was hoped that these abductions, which continued until the 1970s, would force the children to forget about their heritage. A 1997 government study estimated that between 1905 and 1970, 1 out of 10 indigenous children were taken from their homes; about 100,000 people were affected, historian Peter Read says.
"The policeman — our protectors, supposedly — had total control to fulfill the government's plan of breeding out aboriginal people within several generations," says Pilkington, who wrote about the "stolen generations" in her book, "Rabbit-Proof Fence." Published in 1996, the book recently was released in the United States to tie in with a new movie by Miramax Films.
"Because of brainwashing, we were forced to believe that we were unintelligent, that our culture was evil, that our mothers had given us away because they didn't love us."
When Kelly left Moore River with her baby daughter, she faced a daunting trek: More than 1,500 miles of Australian outback, much of it inhospitable, stretched between her and home. But Kelly knew the way — she had figured it out in 1931, when she escaped the first time, a frightened but determined 14-year-old pulling her reluctant 10-year-old cousin, Gracie, and her 8-year-old sister, Daisy, behind her.
With no supplies and nothing to eat but what they could catch and scavenge, the three girls eventually learned to follow the No. 1 Rabbit Proof Fence, built to contain Australia's exploding rabbit population.
Police trackers went after them, and only Gracie — who had separated from the others so she could find her mother — was recaptured. About nine weeks after they left Moore River, Kelly and Daisy were reunited with their family.
"It's a real story that, in many ways, is more fantastic than the made-up screenplays I deal with," says Australian director Phillip Noyce, who was shooting "The Sum of All Fears" when he read Pilkington's book, which sold 60,000 copies in Australia.
"It seemed so far away from these huge blockbuster productions I had been doing. But the story wouldn't leave me."
Throughout the film's production, Noyce says cast and crew had a mission: They all wanted to celebrate the amazing feat of the girls, as well as the skill of the indigenous actors who portray them. The film earned more than $4 million in Australia during an 18-week run, plus two preview weekends. To date, it has earned nearly $2 million in North America.
"For some Australians, given the ignorance in which we've celebrated our half-history, it's been very hard to accept this new history that has emerged in the last 15 years through indigenous writers and historians — people who … didn't think their experiences mattered," Noyce says.
Australia is beginning to take pride and interest in its indigenous people, and more Aborigine writers are emerging and being recognized.
"The number of published aboriginal writers grows each year," says author Anita Heiss, whose works include a historical novel, "Who Am I⢠The Diary of Mary Talence, Sydney 1937," and a poetry collection, "Token Koori."
Pilkington has just finished writing "Under the Windamarra Tree," the sequel to "Rabbit-Proof Fence" and the final book in a trilogy that began with "Caprice: A Stockman's Daughter." Now, she plans to write children's stories based on Aborigine creation myths.
Pilkington "is finally being recognized for the work she has done in bringing stories of history, survival and aboriginal life to a mainstream audience," Heiss says.
And Pilkington is determined to reintroduce the culture that was kept from so many Aborigines.
Unlike her mother, Pilkington remained within the enforced welfare system until she was an adult. Her mother-in-law persuaded her to seek a reunion with Kelly.
"She told me, 'I've just lost my mother; you go find yours,'" Pilkington recalls.
The 1962 homecoming, though, was bittersweet. Pilkington has become close to her parents, but her younger sister, Annabelle, was recaptured by the government in 1965 and has refused all contact with her family.
Details: www.rabbitprooffence.com.au .
CITY THEATRE CHOOSES WORKS
City Theatre audiences should expect to see at least two world premieres, one Pulitzer Prize-winning drama and some earlier curtain times during the 2003-04 season.
To fill three of the seven available slots in City Theatre's 2003-04 season, artistic director Tracy Brigden has chosen Suzan-Lori Parks' "Topdog/Underdog," which won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for drama; the world premiere of "Gompers," which Adam Rapp wrote for City Theatre; and the world premiere of "String of Pearls," by playwright Michelle Lowe, whose "The Smell of the Kill" recently debuted on Broadway.
The theater also will offer a 7 p.m. curtain time for Tuesday performances.
"We got a lot of requests from people wanting not to have a late night," Brigden says. Also in answer to ticketholder requests, each of those Tuesday performances will be followed by talk-back sessions that give audience members an opportunity to discuss the production with the theater's artists and administrators.
In choosing the first three titles for the season, Brigden went with artists and works that had excited her:
"I loved that play from the moment I saw it. In a smaller venue it would be so much better. I'm impressed with the way it's so funny and so disturbing," Brigden says.
Brigden confesses that commissioning a playwright to create a play for a theater always contains an element of risk. "In this economic climate, I can't afford to do bombs," she says. But, she adds, "There are a lot of reasons to do (Rapp's) play."
"Gompers" is a big-cast (10 actors), big-journey play about a depressed American city, not unlike — but not necessarily — Pittsburgh, that's hoping to revive itself with riverboat gambling.
When a golden greyhound is born beneath a tree, the citizens learn that miracles can be elusive. Squonk Opera's Jackie Dempsey has agreed to write a score to accompany "Gompers," and Brigden will direct.
"Each of the women is (part of) a vivid, interesting menagerie of characters," Brigden says. "It's warm, touching, at some points disturbing and smartly but not harshly comic."
Dates for each play's run will not be announced until the 2003-04 season's other four plays have been chosen. Brigden has set the March 6 start of performances of "Fair Game" as her deadline for those decisions.
Subscription prices for the complete seven-play season range from $154 to $231, a 10 percent increase over this season's $140 to $210 package prices.
Details: (412) 431-4400.
CONCERT ANNOUNCEMENT
The "It" girl of the moment, the antidote to belly-baring sexy teen pop, the girl who fought her record company handlers to bring back the rock — Avril Lavigne is finally coming to Pittsburgh. Now that Christina Aguilera seems intent on alienating her preteen fan base in favor of Maxim-reading males, Lavigne has stepped in to fill the void.
Her hits "Complicated" and "Sk8er Boi" are everywhere these days, so to catch her while she's hot, you can get tickets for her April 16 show at the Petersen Events Center, on sale at 10 a.m. Saturday. Tickets are $22.50 and $27.50, and are available at the Petersen, all Kaufmann's and select Giant Eagles, online at www.ticketmaster.com or by calling (412) 323-1919.
NEW HARRY POTTER BOOK
More Muggles mania is expected after J.K. Rowling's publishers announced that her fifth book about wide-eyed junior wizard Harry Potter will be published in Britain, the United States and several other countries on June 21.
Much anticipated and somewhat delayed, "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" is 768 pages long, and by word count one-third longer than its predecessor, "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire," published in 2000.
That's just about all that was revealed in a joint statement Wednesday from Britain's Bloomsbury Publishers and Scholastic Children's Books in the United States. Details of Harry's latest adventure remain as secret as the whereabouts of Diagon Alley, where Harry famously buys his wizard supplies.
But young fans were delighted.
"I am so excited — it has been much too long since the last one," said 10-year-old Phillip Weekes, who heard the news as he came out of his primary school near Bishop's Stortford, 30 miles north of London. "I'll buy it as soon as it comes out."
"Cool," said his friend, Alexandra Ball, 11. "I am dying to know what's in it."
The plot remains a mystery, but the publisher did reveal how the book begins: "The hottest day of the summer so far was drawing to a close and a drowsy silence lay over the large, square houses of Privet Drive. …The only person left outside was a teenage boy who was lying flat on his back in a flowerbed outside number four."
And youngsters will have a few months to ponder what Hogwarts headmaster Albus Dumbledore means when he tells Harry, some pages on, "It is time … for me to tell you what I should have told you five years ago, Harry. Please sit down. I am going to tell you everything."
Rowling's books have served as rebuttals to those who predict the death of reading. Kids anticipate a new Potter the way teenagers once hurried out to buy Beatles records.
Fans have pestered book sellers and obsessed on Web sites about the next installment. Hunger for news about Potter V drove an American collector to pay more than $45,000 last month for a card full of clues about the plot that contained 93 words, including "Ron," "broom" and "sacked."
Kids aren't alone in celebrating Wednesday's news. Publishers, too, are elated. The industry endured its slowest holiday season in years, with many complaining about the lack of a "must-have" book to get shoppers in stores. Few books are more "must-have" than a Harry Potter story.
"It's an emotional lift, something to drive business and put books back in the news," says Carl Lennertz, publisher and program director of BookSense, a national marketing campaign for independent bookstores in the United States.
Some fans might have to squint through the "Order of Phoenix." One reason for all those pages is that publishers have used a smaller type. "The last book was pretty chunky, and we wanted to prevent this one being too big," Bloomsbury spokeswoman Rosamund de la Hey says.
When the book failed to make it into print last year, as expected, there was speculation that Rowling — now one of Britain's richest women — was suffering from writer's block. She denied it, but the book has taken far longer to complete than its predecessors, published every year from 1997.
With readers eager to hear about Harry's meetings with monsters and Muggles (non-magic people), and his fast-moving games of quidditch (a sort of aerial hockey played on flying broomsticks), booksellers now anticipate another bonanza. After all, fans stood in line at bookstores to be the first to buy previous volumes.
"With the amount of interest and excitement surrounding Harry Potter, we expect the interest in advance reservations to be enormous," says Lesley Miles of book chain Waterstone's. "We know Harry's fans can't wait to get a copy of the new volume." In Britain, it is possible to reserve books in advance.
Rowling's four published titles have sold an estimated 192 million copies worldwide in hard- and softcover, and the books have been published in at least 55 languages and distributed in more than 200 countries. The first two books have been adapted into hit movies.
