In Canada, this summer not only has the small town of Lytton burned because of the extreme heat, 49.5 degrees, the highest temperature ever recorded in so many parts of the planet and in those lands that are not exactly hot. It has also been known that two years ago books were burned in a school auto-da-fe, although not due to the effects of the climate crisis. For racists. Tintin, Asterix and Lucky Luke, were burned in an Ontario school in a funeral pile, accused of propagating negative stereotypes of the indigenous natives, today called inhabitants of the First Nations.
I have not read any of these comics in a lot of years but I would not be surprised if so many arguments and situations in their pages made me laugh for not crying. The archetypes outlined in so many popular comics feed on themselves, it is a continual turning to established prejudices. At most, Asterix rebels against the invading Romans at the same time, that yes, of raising the best of the worlds, which is the Gaul. Until, at the end of the last century, the history comic arrives, the one that decides to tell so many things in vignettes that they run the risk of not being known by readers who do not frequent history books, of which Sacco would be one of its major authors. But the Ontario thing goes further, it is the tail (for now) of the current tensions with respect to the colonized and destroyed indigenous peoples. In parallel to the “politically correct”, and much more.
The ceremony was supposed to take place in other schools, but the coronavirus pandemic prevented it
The thing has been known at the beginning of this month. Radio Canada revealed that in 2019, the Providence Catholic School Board, which runs some thirty French-speaking schools in southwestern Ontario, decided to withdraw some 5,000 youth books from its library pool. They were thrown (it is not known very well where) and a few, about thirty, were subjected to fire in one of the schools, their ashes buried to plant a tree and thus “turn the negative into positive.” In a ritual, a purification ceremony, with pedagogical objectives that a video aimed at students explains as follows: “We bury the ashes of racism, discrimination and stereotypes in the hope that we will grow up in an inclusive country in which everyone they will be able to live in prosperity and security ”. The ceremony was to continue for the other schools, but the COVID pandemic prevented it. And now the matter has been disclosed.
Tintin has burned for its representations of indigenous Indians, The conquest of the west of Lucky Luke for the same word “conquest”, Asterix and the Indians by a young Indian woman judged too seductive. Youth novels, history books and even manuals for making Indian dresses and outfits also went to the pyre. They are books branded as maintaining prejudices against the natives: savages, alcoholics and lazy.
Voices here and there have been raised on the matter. Burning books has a terrible reputation, which is linked to dictatorships, be it Hitler’s or Franco’s, who burned thousands of copies of volumes in Catalan in Plaça de Catalunya, including the entire Pompeu Fabra library. It is not frowned upon, no, burning books. The Ontario thing is a bit scary, of course. It transcends fire, it is one more symptom of the malaise of culture today. If we can’t believe the great stories about the past, everything can be pilloried.
If we cannot believe the great stories of other times, everything can be pilloried
It is also a greater reflection. The burning has become known after the unrest in Canada caused by another recent revelation: a mass grave of 215 bodies of indigenous children. In May, it was learned that the grave was in a former boarding school in a town in British Columbia, according to the First Nation Tk’emlúps te secwépemc reported. Chief Rosanne Casimir explained to the press that the causes are not yet known, but that some bones were from children less than three years old. The upheaval in society was high and the country’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau, was forced to react, “dismayed by the shameful policies that have stolen indigenous children from their communities.”
Also now there is social disgust for burned books. The simplest thing is to relate the burning to the wave of the cancellation, the censorship against the vestiges of practices today considered abusive. They almost always were, and it is also true that their judgment today can be outrageous, but deep down we are talking about how to deal with and live with the shame of the past.
–
