After receiving concerns that his new children’s book was based on an indigenous Australian, celebrity chef Jamie Oliver has removed it from the shelves.
An Indian girl with spiritual forces who is abducted from her residence in northern Australia is the subject of the 400-page fiction book Billy and the Epic Escape, which was published earlier this year.
Some First Countries officials have called the reserve “offensive”, saying it contains language problems and refers to the “erasure, trivialisation, and discrimination of First Nations cultures and experience”.
Oliver apologized and said he is “devastated” that his actions have caused harm. He is already in Australia promoting his newest guidebook.
” It was never my intention to interpret this deeply distressing issue”, he said in a statement.
The book’s publication, Penguin Random House UK, said Oliver had requested Aboriginal Australians been consulted over the text, but an “editorial supervision” meant that did not happen.
The figure is reportedly able to communicate with animals and plants because” that’s the Indigenous way,” according to Sharon Davis of the national First Countries ‘ learning system, which reduces” complex and diverse idea systems” to “magic.”
In light of the “painful traditional framework” of the Stolen Generations, community leader Sue Anne-Hunter described the abduction plot as being “particularly callous.” Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children have been expelled from their families for years in Australia as part of a government’s integration strategy.
The woman, who is from Mparntwe or Alice Springs, even uses vocabulary from the Gamilaraay persons of NSW and Queensland, which Ms Davis said showed” total disregard for the huge disparities among Second Nations languages, cultures, and techniques”.
Authors who have little to no connection to the people and places they are writing about, according to Dr. Anita Heiss, a Wiradyuri author and publisher, for the Guardian Australia,” There is no space in Australian publishing ( or elsewhere ) for our stories to be told through a colonial lens.”
Oliver claimed that he and his publishers had made the decision to stop selling the book internationally.
” Our publishing standards fell short on this occasion, and we must learn from that,” said Penguin Random House UK, in a statement.