Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver stops selling his children’s book, criticized by Aboriginal people

The story of Billy and the Great Escape (Billy and the Epic Escape), a fiction, takes place mainly in England but briefly passes through Australia, where the villain of the book kidnaps a young Aboriginal woman from her foster family, says the Guardian. This act present in the work aroused the anger of indigenous communities in Australia. A corporation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander authors considered the work to be “disrespectful” and contributed to “erasing, trivializing and stereotyping First Nations people and experiences”formula to designate the first inhabitants of Australia. This collective called for the sale of the book to be stopped, according to the Guardian. Billy and the Great Escape was thus removed in “all countries where it holds rights”, particularly in the United Kingdom and Australia, said Sunday Guardian its publisher Penguin Random House UK.

“That was never my intention.”

Thousands of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were abducted and placed in foster care under an Australian government policy that continued into the 1970s. These cohorts of children are known as the name “Stolen Generations”.

Jamie Oliver, who is in Australia promoting his latest cookbook, said:devastated“for having offended these communities and assured them of having presented his “sincere“apologies, still according to the Guardian. “It was never my intention to misinterpret this deep and painful problem,” added the chef to 11 million subscribers on Instagram, confirming the end of the sale of the book. According to the Guardianseveral indigenous terms are misused. “It is clear that our publication standards were not up to par”recognized Penguin Random House UK in a statement. However, it was still possible to order online Billy and the Great Escape Sunday.

Jamie Oliver, made famous in 1999 by the show “The Naked Chef”, has participated in a multitude of television programs and published numerous Books in addition to having become a widely followed personality on the networks social.