Reacting to colonialism and its aftermaths, and opposing any ideology that intends to destroy cultural bio-diversity for a globalised culture, the Burkinabe Prince Lamourd Thiobiany’s self-published novel written in English, Before the Fires I was Black: a Blueprint for a Brighter Future (2018), ecologically examines the ways in which African traditions and values can survive in an increasingly globalised world and be strategically essential to further development. Using the counter-discursive and autocritical paradigms of postcolonial ecocriticism theory, through which postcolonies respond to the issues of colonialism and the environment with their diverse implications, this paper focuses only on the environmental and religious issues developed in this novel and shows that, resorting to the metaphors of “tree”
for African traditional culture, and “fires” for external foreign aggressive invaders, the author blames colonisers for “othering” and firing away African culture and age￾long traditions and looting its natural resources regardless of the then existing taboos. The rehabilitation of African traditional religion, care of Mother Nature and inculturation are, therefore, ways and means the author strongly puts forward in favour of a peaceful coexistence between the different religions in Burkina Faso.

Religion; Nature; African Traditions; Peace; Colonialism