What are the motifs in Rabbit-proof Fence by Doris Pilkington?

Sexual abuse is a motif that is embedded throughout the book. When the first white men came to Australia in the early 1800s, many of them were violent and cruel men. Some of the men were crew members of whaling vessels while others were pirates on the high seas. At first they deceived the frightened, naïve Aboriginal natives by offering them friendship and doing them favors. However, what these men were really after were the Aboriginal women who they kidnapped, raped and murdered. They would throw the dead bodies of the women out to sea just as they did their garbage.