English And Acculturation In Baby No Eyes

Comparing and portraying the acculturation of native children in New Zealand and Australia is difficult if we only take into account the views provided by Rabbit Proof Fence and Baby No Eyes, sincethose two views, although crude, are biased due to the mere fact of being told by only one side of the story, this is more evident in Baby No Eyes.

Language has always been used as a weapon ofcontrol, but regarding the indigenous communities, it has been a painful one: those communities, deeply attached to their traditions, were forced to hear that their languages and, therefore, their talesand oral-legends, were wicked: “I thought what an evil thing our language was to do that to my tenia” (1998:38). Authorities always used language to control the indigenous population – somethingpromptly expressed by T.B. Macauly’s Minute on Indian Education (1835):

In India, English is the language spoken by the ruling class. It is spoken by the higher class of natives at the seats ofGovernment […] Why then is it necessary to pay people to learn Sanscrit and Arabic? Evidently because it is universally felt that the Sanscrit and Arabic are languages the knowledge of which does notcompensate for the trouble of acquiring them. […] We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern, - a class of persons Indian in blood andcolour, but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals and in intellect.

New Zealand and Australia’s administrations took two different ways of achieving that: New Zealand tried to “adapt” the Maorisslowly, but giving them some befits –for instance, they could keep their children. On the other hand, Australia showed a crude and barbarian attitude of thoughtlessness in believing that onlyhalf-blood were to be “saved”, as Neville utters in Rabbit Proof Fence: “Or should they be advanced to white status and be absorbed in the white population?”, so actually, those totally Aboriginal were to...