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About five thousand children’s books, among which were novels and encyclopedias and comics from Asterix, Tintin O Lucky Luke, have been burned or removed from thirty schools in Canada on the grounds that “they showed prejudice against indigenous peoples”. The Providence school commission, responsible for these Catholic and French-language centers in the southwestern Canadian province of Ontario, has justified the action by claiming that the contents of these works were “out of date” and “inappropriate.”
The events took place in 2019 and have now come to light thanks to an investigation by the public radio station Radio-Canada, at a time when the country is still trying to rebuild itself from the discovery of more than a thousand unmarked graves on land of former boarding schools for indigenous children. According to information from the aforementioned media, the commission purged the books for contain racist and discriminatory images and even a series of burning ceremonies as a “gesture of reconciliation”. Most of the works were sent for recycling.
“Is about a gesture of reconciliation with the first nations and an openness towards the other communities present in the school and in our society “, has justified the national radio Lyne Cossette, spokesman for the school council of this association, referring to those works that he describes as “outdated and inappropriate content.” Faced with the controversy that arose, the group of schools announced on Wednesday that suspended the destruction of nearly 200 other specimens that were being evaluated.
The author of one of the recordings of the burns is Suzy Kies, a member of the review committee and defined by Canadian radio as a “guardian of indigenous knowledge.” This woman was co-chair of the Indigenous Peoples Commission of the Liberal Party until this Wednesday, when she resigned, and one of the promoters of the project, which was slowed down by the pandemic. “We bury the ashes of racism, discrimination and stereotypes in the hope of growing up in an inclusive country where we can all live in prosperity and security, “was explained in one of the published videos.
“I will never agree with the burning of books,” said the prime minister. Justin trudeau, although he has highlighted the importance of reconciliation with the indigenous people. The Québec journalist and writer André Noel, one of the censored authors – his children’s novel Traffic among the Hurons it has been included in the committee’s list – he pointed out on his social networks that “its destruction surprises me and seems excessive to me.”
Among the retired works are Tintin in America, which, according to the report prepared, incurred “unacceptable language” and a “negative representation of aboriginal peoples”; Asterix and the Indians, for “developing what is called sexual savagery, an image of indigenous women as easy women “, or three copies of Lucky Luke for” imbalance of power “, that is, for representing the aborigines as the bad guys.
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This outrageous, Canada is following the steps of Nazi Germany, while these catholic school folks are just repeating the atrocities of the Inquisition.
It isn’t by erasing the past that you rectify it. This shows distrust in people’s ability to discern. I grew up with Tintin and Asterix. I am not a racist. I do not personally like the two books mentioned, and would not choose them for children. But they should be published as examples of past attitudes, and criticised; not destroyed.
When I think back on Tintin in America, of course, the native Americans in it are cartoons, because everyone in it is a cartoon. Tintin saves them by exposing the machinations of a white scammer who attempts to cheat them of their land.
Tintin in America also exposes the production line Fordism of American industry and its desensitizing removal of the person from the process of production.
This isn’t like the nazi book burning (Bücherverbrennung – 1933)?