https://newmatilda.com/2016/08/02/serva ... s-history/
If you are not aware of our own history of slavery, this film tells a big story, with a human face.
The Indigenous filmmakers introduce us to five Aboriginal women, now grandmothers, who describe their own childhoods without knowing family. Stolen as small children by Australian governments, they were raised by institutions, deprived of the love of parents and siblings.
They did farm labour and trained as domestic servants for white families. They suffered harsh discipline and all variants of child abuse. The women’s stories are told with the perspective of survivors: hurt but also wisdom; pain but also pride.
This film does not feel primarily political, but succeeds in explaining injustice through personal experience. We understand the deprivation and abuse of children under deliberate and long-term government policies through the warmth of these women talking about their own lives.
I was not the only woman in the theatre wiping my eyes, feeling the fear of a young girl who has just been raped and whipped by the man in whose family home she is a domestic servant – slave – who has nobody to go to for help, and whose survival instinct has her polishing his boots the next morning to avoid further reprisals.