At the height of the Stolen Generations, the Australian government abducted thousands upon thousands of Aboriginal girls from their homes and forced them to work as domestic servants for the benefit of the government. They were supposedly employed as servants, but because their employers had complete control over their movements, wages, and living conditions, their lives all too frequently devolved into an unbreakable cycle of abuse, rape, and enslavement, with consequences that continue to reverberate to this day. Servant or Slave is a powerful piece of first-person testimony to a dark and forgotten corner of Australian history, recounting the tales of five of these women — Rita, Violet, and the three Wenberg sisters – in their own words. It's a work of profound grief and urgency that brings to life the human tragedy of Australia's Indigenous history in the unadorned words of those who lived it, thanks to Steven McGregor (Croker Island Exodus, MIFF 2012).
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At the height of the Stolen Generations, the Australian government abducted thousands upon thousands of Aboriginal girls from their homes and forced them to work as domestic servants for the benefit of the government. They were supposedly employed as servants, but because their employers had complete control over their movements, wages, and living conditions, their lives all too frequently devolved into an unbreakable cycle of abuse, rape, and enslavement, with consequences that continue to reverberate to this day. Servant or Slave is a powerful piece of first-person testimony to a dark and forgotten corner of Australian history, recounting the tales of five of these women — Rita, Violet, and the three Wenberg sisters – in their own words. It's a work of profound grief and urgency that brings to life the human tragedy of Australia's Indigenous history in the unadorned words of those who lived it, thanks to Steven McGregor (Croker Island Exodus, MIFF 2012).
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