Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver has pulled his new children's book from shelves after being accused of stereotyping Aboriginal Australians.
The 400-page fantasy novel Billy and the Epic Escape, published earlier this year, features a young Aboriginal girl with mystical powers living in foster care and abducted from her home in central Australia.
Some First Nations leaders have called the book “offensive,” saying it contains language errors and contributes to the “erasure, trivialization and stereotyping of First Nations people and experiences.”
Oliver – who is currently in Australia promoting his new cookbook – apologized and said he was “devastated” to have caused harm.
“It was never my intention to misinterpret this deeply painful issue,” he said in a statement.
The book's publisher, Penguin Random House UK, said Oliver had requested that Indigenous Australians be consulted on the book, but an “editorial oversight” meant this did not happen.
Among the complaints is that the character has the ability to read people's minds and communicate with animals and plants because “that's the native way”, which, according to Sharon Davis, of the national First Nations education organization, reduces “complex and diverse belief systems” to “magic.”
The girl is also at the center of a kidnapping plot – which community leader Sue-Anne Hunter called a “particularly insensitive choice”, given the “painful historical context” of the Stolen Generations. For decades in Australia, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children were removed from their families as part of a policy of assimilation by successive governments.
The girl, originally from Mparntwe or Alice Springs, also uses the vocabulary of the Gamilaraay people of New South Wales and Queensland, which Ms Davis said demonstrates “a complete disregard for the vast differences between languages, cultures and practices of the First Nations.
“There is no place in Australian publishing (or anywhere else) for our stories to be told through a colonial lens, by authors who have little or no connection to the people and place they write about “, Dr Anita Heiss, author of Wiradyuri and publisher told Guardian Australia.
Oliver said he and his publishers had decided to withdraw the book from sale worldwide.
A statement from Penguin Random House UK added: “It is clear that our publishing standards were not up to par on this occasion, and we must learn from this.”
