Servant or Slave
Thousands upon thousands of Aboriginal girls were taken from their families and pressed into domestic servitude by the Australian government during the Stolen Generations. They were ostensibly employed as servants, but with complete control over their movements, wages, and living conditions, their lives all too frequently became an inescapable cycle of abuse, rape, and enslavement, with consequences that reverberate powerfully to this day. Servant or Slave is a powerful piece of first-person testimony to a dark and unacknowledged corner of Australian history, recounting the stories of five of these women: Rita, Violet, and the three Wenberg sisters. Servant or Slave, directed by Steven McGregor (Croker Island Exodus, MIFF2012), is a work of great sadness and urgency, bringing to life the human tragedy of Australia's Indigenous history in the unadorned words of those who lived it.