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Dark Emu: Black seeds agriculture or accident?

Bruce Pascoe

4.50 · Rating details · 1,511 ratings · 286 reviews

Dark Emu puts forward an argument for a reconsideration of the hunter-gatherer tag for precolonial Aboriginal Australians. The evidence insists that Aboriginal people right across the continent were using domesticated plants, sowing, harvesting, irrigating and storing – behaviours inconsistent with the hunter-gatherer tag. Gerritsen and Gammage in their latest books suppor ...more

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Published April 7th 2014 by Magabala Books (first published January 1st 2014)

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Feb 27, 2016 PattyMacDotComma rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: australian-author, history, non-fiction, indigenous, chcc-library

5★
“Imagine you are riding beside the explorer and surveyor Major Thomas Mitchell (1792-1855). He’s an educated and sensitive man and would have been great company, if a little eccentric.”

I’ll say! Pascoe has written often about Aboriginal history, but this is the first book of his I’ve read. He has included extensive references to original diaries and papers as well as to research. There are several photos, but the ones I’ve included here are from other sources.

I’ve read some of this information ...more

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Feb 28, 2019 Trevor rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: economics, food, history, language, science, race

This book ought to be made compulsory reading for every Australian. There is a Ted talk by Bruce Pascoe that covers some of the ground covered here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqgrS...) but this book goes into much more detail.

The standard understanding of Australia prior to white settlement, even in the kindest versions, is that the Australian Aboriginals were trapped in a land without domesticable plants or animals. This meant they had to live the nomadic lives of hunter-gatherers, and it This book ought to be made compulsory reading for every Australian. There is a Ted talk by Bruce Pascoe that covers some of the ground covered here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqgrS...) but this book goes into much more detail.

The standard understanding of Australia prior to white settlement, even in the kindest versions, is that the Australian Aboriginals were trapped in a land without domesticable plants or animals. This meant they had to live the nomadic lives of hunter-gatherers, and it also meant they were very unlikely to be able to develop any other forms of technology - they were effectively trapped in the Stone Age. Sure, they had clever sticks they could throw like the boomerang or to help them throw spears further, like a woomera, but really, all this was very prehistoric. They had no agriculture and no permanent settlements, so, when they came into contact with our much more advanced civilisation, really, the outcome was inevitable.

Of course, this says something particularly disgusting about western civilisation – that we can’t come into contact with a civilisation less developed than our own without completely destroying it – but then, if the last 1000 years or so have taught us anything about white people, surely it is that.

This book provides lots of evidence that the Aboriginal peoples of Australia had much more advanced agriculture and fishing technologies than we have ever given them credit for. That they farmed extensive areas of land, including grains and yams, and that their management of the land proved much more sustainable than anything we have achieved, where they have turned deserts into food bowls, we've done pretty much the exact opposite - as the million or so fish we have just killed over summer in the Darling River shows all too clearly. One of the major arguments of this book is that modern Australia has much to learn from Aboriginal Australia in terms of how to manage our land and waterways. Including the types of crops we should grow.

The line I kept thinking of while reading this was from Paul Simon’s The Boxer: ‘All lies and jests, still a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest’. A lot of this book is taken from the journals of explorers who had first contact with Aboriginals. Often the explorers only lived because they raided the grain stores of the Aboriginal people’s whose land they were passing through. Sometimes they would describe Aboriginal women bent over picking yams in cultivated fields that stretched for as far as the eye could see – or came across huts that had clearly been there for years and years. And yet the myth of the hunter-gatherer Aboriginal persisted despite the evidence of their eyes.

Of course, this 'confusion' was ‘motivated’. That is, if Aboriginals were hunter-gatherers then they only had a loose connection to the land, certainly nothing like 'ownership'. But if they were farmers, then our dispossession of them might be more difficult to justify. The extensive efforts made by early white settlers to destroy evidence of Aboriginal settlements, farms, houses, and fishing harbours are remarkable and are clearly vandalism on a scale that is hard to comprehend.

This book is something else. I feel embarrassed I never knew any of this stuff. We were certainly never taught anything like this at school. It is possible that Australian Aboriginals were among first farmers in the world. This ought to be something Australians more generally should celebrate, but the fact is that we don’t even know it is the case. Honestly, and particularly if you are Australian, you need to read this.
...more

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Aug 11, 2014 Mat rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

When world-famous Australian rapper Iggy Azalea was asked on a US radio show about Aboriginal people in her country, she replied: "The thing about Aboriginal people is they don't believe in living in enclosed structures, houses... They all want to live under the stars because that's their culture, even now... The government build houses and the Aboriginal people trash them and take the beds outside cos they don't believe in houses and they want to live under the stars." Perhaps the rapper - who ...more

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Jul 31, 2016 Morgan Blanch added it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2016, aussie-authors, historical, non-fiction-memoir

I debated for a long time on whether or not I should properly review this. I didn’t really feel like I could adequately review a book of non-fiction without sounding like a total noob. But at the end of the day, I may be a noob, but this work explores a lot of really important issues about aboriginal culture and land pre-colonisation and I think it’s really important that people are at least aware that this knowledge exists and is publicly available.

In saying that however, 1) I haven’t rated it ...more

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Jan 01, 2019 John Purcell rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

This should be required reading. And all the money needed to do the further research suggested in this book should be given over now. Read it.

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Jun 23, 2014 Jenny Schwartz rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 2014, non-fiction

In "Dark Emu" the author, Bruce Pascoe, refers to some other books discussing land use in Australia pre-European intrusion. I've read Bill Gammage's "The Biggest Estate on Earth" and thoroughly enjoyed its challenge to read our landscape differently.

Bruce Pascoe has Bunurong/Tasmanian Heritage and brings a more overtly political and personal approach to the question of how humans have managed and lived in the Australian country through the millennia.

The book isn't long, and I'm not going to try ...more

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Jan 29, 2017 Ian Tymms rated it it was amazing

Shelves: australian, history, books-to-read-again, favorites

This Christmas I visited a friend who gave me two precious things: a copy of Bruce Pascoe’s book Dark Emu and an envelope of seeds from the daisy yam, Microsceris lanceolata, known as “murnong" in the Boonwurrung language.

Dark Emu begins by challenging the received historical wisdom about Australian Aboriginal peoples which says that they were hunter-gatherers who lived opportunistically in a kind of harsh subsistence at the hands of nature. Pascoe argues that this description suited early settl This Christmas I visited a friend who gave me two precious things: a copy of Bruce Pascoe’s book Dark Emu and an envelope of seeds from the daisy yam, Microsceris lanceolata, known as “murnong" in the Boonwurrung language.

Dark Emu begins by challenging the received historical wisdom about Australian Aboriginal peoples which says that they were hunter-gatherers who lived opportunistically in a kind of harsh subsistence at the hands of nature. Pascoe argues that this description suited early settlers who wanted to see indigenous people as passive and childlike; unable to take responsibility for the land on which they wandered and undeserving of its possession.

By contrast, Pascoe shows a very different indigenous relationship to land and nature. Working systematically through early white accounts of contact with Aboriginal people and their land, Pascoe shows how accomplished Aboriginals were as farmers.

The daisy yam is a case in point. This highly nutritious tuber grew prolifically across much of southern Australia and was common in the areas south of Melbourne where I grew up. It is now rare. Within a few short years of white settlement in the mid 19th century, sheep had almost completely wiped it out.

It’s easy to take this history at face value and conclude that it was an unfortunate but relatively inconsequential side effect of agricultural development which caused the demise of the daisy yam. What this surface analysis hides is a much more complex understanding of the farming practices of Aboriginal people. When white settlers arrived, they saw an environment which they often described as “park-like”. Early descriptions I have read of the Mornington Peninsula talk about its open grasslands reminiscent of an English park. As a kid on weekend hikes battling my way through the thick scrub of the Otway Ranges, I remember being amazed to recall the stories of an elderly neighbour who had grown up in the area. He talked about the descriptions of the early bushmen who described the area as open and grassed, shaded by the enormous eucalypts that now were just stumps amid a younger generation of regrowth.

Pascoe shows that it wasn’t just sheep and logging that changed the environment but a loss of indigenous farming practices. Aboriginal people systematically burned and managed the environment to produce food sources when and where they needed them. The daisy yam requires a loose, friable soil and the harvesting practices supported regrowth and soil conservation in a form of sustainable agriculture which modern Australian farmers are only beginning to understand. Sheep ate the yams, but what was far more destructive was their trampling of the earth which prevented regrowth. Within a few years, parklands were replaced with compacted soils which encouraged erosion and supported far fewer animals - including sheep. Indigenous populations collapsed and their complex management of the land ended.

This story alone would make Dark Emu a compelling and important book to read but Pascoe’s analysis goes further:

"Some say the idea that the world trajectory is driven by conquest followed by innovation and intensification is satisfying to the Western mind because of our psychological dependence on our imperialist history. But if we give consideration to the idea that change can be generated by the spirit and through that to political action, then the stability of Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture might be more readily explained. (p.136)"

In the later part of the book, Pascoe explores visions and versions of what it means to live well. Against the history of Western imperialism, Pascoe contrasts at least 40,000 years of carefully evolved environmental understandings deeply embedded in the cultural practices of Indigenous Australians. As the world looks forward to a more sustainable future through aspirations like the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, Dark Emu is a timely contribution to alternative views of history and a reminder that much of the knowledge we need may already exist.

I have passed my seeds on to a colleague who will grow them with students at UWCSEA as part of a project to support natural diversity. I’m not hopeful that these temperate climate seeds will grow in the tropics of Singapore, but I hope to do my best to nurture the story they represent. ...more

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Sep 23, 2015 Sammy rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, science

A rather important, worthwhile read for all Australians. "Dark Emu" is one of several recent books (another being the comprehensive "The Greatest Estate on Earth") seeking to shatter the many misconceptions about the way Aboriginal Australians lived before their land was taken over by the white man.

"Arguing over whether the Aboriginal economy was a hunter-gatherer system or one of burgeoning agriculture is not the central issue. The crucial point is that we have never discussed it as a nation. T ...more

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Sep 23, 2018 Kat Kennedy rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: australian-writer, leaves-awesomeness-behind, tomes-of-information

An amazing journey, well-written and researched.

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Feb 02, 2017 Mel Campbell rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: australian-authors, non-fiction, read-in-2016, history, nature-writing, indigenous

This beautifully researched survey of Australian indigenous agriculture is jam-packed with fascinating information about some very sophisticated land management, infrastructure-building and primary production practices. Pascoe's innovative approach combines archaeological evidence from contemporary fieldwork with meticulously researched archival accounts of the earliest white colonisers, whose observations of the local peoples they encountered reveal much more now than they did to 18th- and 19th ...more

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Jul 18, 2017 Michael Livingston rated it really liked it · review of another edition

This is a brilliant summary of the evidence that Indigenous Australians had much more developed societies than we were taught about in school. Farming, aquaculture, stone houses and more - all described by early colonial explorers, but lost in the broader narrative of terra nullius. The writing's pretty dry, but this is an important and necessary piece of work, with major implications for Australia today.

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Jul 20, 2016 Olwen rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction

It was painful as well as enlightening to read this book. Painful because my ancestors who invaded this land so brutally over-ran the indigenous inhabitants. Enlightening because I learnt so much about aboriginal management of the land as well as culture and spirituality.

It's technically an academic text, I guess, but very accessible for the layperson.

In the final chapter the author suggests ways we can heal from past events and reconcile. It's do-able too.

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Dec 29, 2016 Inga rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Fascinating and essential reading for all Australians.

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Sep 07, 2018 Eda Günaydın rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

my brane is in tatters. havent read such a thorough & destabilising & systematic challenge to colonial thought, eva. i am on the floor

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Sep 20, 2018 Philipp rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: australia, history, non-fiction

I've been living in Australia for about 6 years now, maybe more - by now I learned that you can predict how white Australians feel about their indigenous population based on their political spectrum. Someone on the 'right' will say that Indigenous Australians were lucky that the British colonisers arrived, they weren't using the land and without the British they would have lived in the dirt forever. Someone on the 'left' will say that Indigenous Australians were peaceful children of the earth, l I've been living in Australia for about 6 years now, maybe more - by now I learned that you can predict how white Australians feel about their indigenous population based on their political spectrum. Someone on the 'right' will say that Indigenous Australians were lucky that the British colonisers arrived, they weren't using the land and without the British they would have lived in the dirt forever. Someone on the 'left' will say that Indigenous Australians were peaceful children of the earth, living in harmony off the land, taking what was needed and not changing anything. Of course, I exaggerate, but the 'right' story above is close to what's being taught in schools here.

What Pascoe is trying to do here is to reevaluate all the evidence there is on pre-white Indigenous society. He looks at explorers' notes and diaries, shows how their preconceptions and their racism made indigenous buildings, installations, traps etc. 'invisible' to them - for example, food storage buildings were interpreted to be natural formations. From there it followed that Australia was terra nullius, an empty unused country with a bunch of hunter/gatherers running around. Terra nullius was overturned in 1992, and the concept itself is still widely accepted (again, see above).

That 'hunter/gatherer' tag is what Pascoe is trying to overturn using this book, and for that he looks at numerous aspects of Indigenous Australian history. There's farming, aquaculture (fish traps), housing/architecture, storage, fire, spirituality, and law, and from there, how Australia's future could be shaped in light of this knowledge.

I work in plant breeding and this has given me dozens of ideas for future research - it will be so interesting to look for patterns of artificial selection in the yam daisy (Microsceris lanceolata), for example - did Indigenous Australians have a breeding program, can we find evidence of that in the genome? Australian food culture is a strange thing, imported Western European food, not much local food (bar the occasional kangaroo sausage or steak). It is hard to farm Western staple crops in Australia, but that is still what the large majority of farmers are doing (see BBC a few days ago).
Australian native plants are seen not as a source of nourishment, but as an occasional source of novelty. So much to change!

I think this is one of the most important books to come out of Australia, and if you're at all interested in this country then you should go and read it. The tone isn't dark in anyway, but taken together, it makes for a depressing read - so much knowledge has been lost.

If we can reform our view of how Aboriginal people were managing the national economy prior to colonisation, it could lead us to reform the ways we currently use resources and care for the land. Imagine turning our focus to the exploitation of meat-producing animals indigenous to the country. Imagine freeing ourselves from the overuse of superphosphates, herbicides and drenches, freeing ourselves from the need of fences and instead experimenting with grazing indigenous animals and growing indigenous crops.

[...]

It seems improbable that a country can continue to hide from the actuality of its history in order to validate the fact that having said sorry we refuse to say thanks. Should we ever decide to say thanks, the next step on a moral nation’s agenda is to ensure that every Australian acknowledges the history and insists that, as we are all Australians, we should have the opportunity to share the education, health and employment of that country on equal terms. Many will say that equality is insufficient to account for the loss of the land but in our current predicament it is not a bad place to start.

If there's one thing that's to be criticised - Pascoe tries to overturn all aspects of thought on Indigenous Australians, so that the book becomes sometimes a bit muddled. Ah well. ...more

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Jul 30, 2016 Jennifer (JC-S) rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: librarybooks

‘The first British sailors sailed to Australia contemplating what they were about to find, and innate superiority was the prism through which their new world was seen.’

In this book, Bruce Pascoe argues that the common perception of Indigenous Australians leading a ‘hunter-gatherer’ lifestyle before European settlement ignores strong evidence of sophisticated farming and agriculture practices. While there was a lot of movement by Indigenous Australians, there was also more sedentary living, invol ‘The first British sailors sailed to Australia contemplating what they were about to find, and innate superiority was the prism through which their new world was seen.’

In this book, Bruce Pascoe argues that the common perception of Indigenous Australians leading a ‘hunter-gatherer’ lifestyle before European settlement ignores strong evidence of sophisticated farming and agriculture practices. While there was a lot of movement by Indigenous Australians, there was also more sedentary living, involving the construction of buildings. He mentions explorers who saw building large enough to contain 30 to 40 people. Mr Pascoe has drawn on work by Bill Gammage, Rupert Gerritsen and others as well as his own research to support his argument.

‘It is exciting to revisit the words of the first Europeans to ‘witness’ the pre-colonial Aboriginal economy. In Dark Emu my aim is to give rise to the possibility of an alternative view of pre-colonial Aboriginal society. In reviewing the industry and ingenuity applied to food production over millennia, we have a chance to catch a glimpse of Australia as Aboriginals saw it.’

I found this book absolutely fascinating, and reading it has made me keen to look at some of the work Mr Pascoe has drawn on. The common perception that Mr Pascoe refers to is exactly what I was taught at school fifty or so years ago. There was no discussion of any alternatives.

‘To understand how the Europeans’ assumptions selectively filtered the information brought to them by the early explorers is to see how we came to have the history of the country we accept today. It is clear from their journals that few were here to marvel at a new civilisation; they were here to replace it.’

One of the saddest anecdotes in this book is when Mr Pascoe recounts when a Land Council was duped into allowing non-Indigenous people into entering a culturally restricted zone. He writes:

‘But when next the Aboriginal Elders brought their young men to the initiation site they found it full of bullet-riddled beer cans.

The most disturbing thing about the event was that it undermined the authority of the Elders. They were trying to impress on their young men the importance of maintaining culture and a responsible, alcohol-fee way of life. The young men would have seen immediately that Australia had no regard for the authority of the Elders.’

That last sentence is a sad indictment and, as much as I’d like to believe differently, I doubt that this is an isolated incident.

In fewer than two hundred pages, Mr Pascoe presents a far broader picture of Indigenous Australian land use. A picture which is largely drawn from early explorers’ accounts as they moved across Australia. If, like me, you were taught that Indigenous Australians were only hunter gatherers, you may wish to read this book and consider the possibilities. As Mr Pascoe writes, much of what Indigenous Australians learnt over thousands of years has value to us today.

‘It seems improbable that a country can continue to hide from the actuality of its history in order to validate the fact that having said sorry we refuse to say thanks.’

Jennifer Cameron-Smith
...more

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Jun 16, 2017 Carolyn McDonald rated it really liked it · review of another edition

As a literature review of early writings of Australian explorers, this is selective and feels bitty. And some of the jumps to conclusions don't seem to be supported by the evidence provided (reminds me of my Philosphy 101 class - A=B, B=C, A=C - not always!). The strenuous arguments provided for why historic labels about aboriginal culture and practices are invalid or inaccurate seem rather pointless - by all means change them but doing so doesn't change history.

But all the same I really enjoyed ...more

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May 01, 2018 Cake rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

If, like me, you were taught in Primary School that Australia’s First Peoples were simple hunter-gathers who ate witchity grubs and told dream time stories this excellent book will disabuse you of that notion. Bruce Pascoe uses various European colonisers own observations as well as artefacts to refute this commonly held belief. I now have a clearer understanding of how intimate the relationship between the First Peoples and the Australian was/is/should continue to be. I highly recommend this bo ...more

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Aug 04, 2017 Kate Whitfield rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Incredibly eye-opening. I wish every Australian would read this book.

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Oct 08, 2018 Alexandra added it · review of another edition

Every non-indigenous Australian should read this book.

I would hope that an indigenous Australian read this book would experience a lot of punching the air and YEAH! and "that's what grandma/uncle/cousin always said!" moments. I fear, though, that instead there would be a lot of anger ('why weren't we told?'), bewilderment (ditto), dismay (ditto, and 'where is it now?') and sheer sadness for what's been lost - physically, and as knowledge - and for what's been taken away.

People like me - not indi Every non-indigenous Australian should read this book.

I would hope that an indigenous Australian read this book would experience a lot of punching the air and YEAH! and "that's what grandma/uncle/cousin always said!" moments. I fear, though, that instead there would be a lot of anger ('why weren't we told?'), bewilderment (ditto), dismay (ditto, and 'where is it now?') and sheer sadness for what's been lost - physically, and as knowledge - and for what's been taken away.

People like me - not indigenous, benefiting from ancestors who colonised this land, taking it away from the original owners - should be humbled to learn what was here for tens of thousands of years, which we then screwed up, and denied knowledge of.

Dark Emu is Bruce Pascoe's exploration of the evidence that Aboriganal Australians had far more agricultural experience, knowledge, and activity than tends to be acknowledged in the standard Australian story. The general line is that when the British arrived, they found nomadic inhabitants who followed game and picked fruit from trees. More recently, you might hear people talk about Aboriginals using fire to move game or set up places where game would come for easy hunting. Pascoe shows that the agricultural acitivites of Aboriginal Australians went far, far beyond that.

As as historian, I really liked the way Pascoe built the evidence for his argument here. One of the things that's often said about it being hard for writing pre-British invasion history is that the original folk left so few records, and because modern white historians privilege writing. Pascoe does multiple things to that. Firstly, he discusses the archaeological record, which is there if you accept what you're looking at. Secondly, he shows that there is writing to be used: it's the journals and letters of white explorers, who simultaneously recorded what they saw indigenous Australians doing and denigrated them. And thirdly, he makes some excellent points about how modern writers categorise societies and civilisation. My favourite bit is in talking about the use of pottery. Just because ancient Greek, Roman, and Chinese civilisations used pottery doens't make pottery a marker of civilisation... it makes pottery a marker of those civilisations, of a particular way of doing society. And Pascoe quotes Bill Gammage in drawing a distinction between farming, and being a farmer: "one is an activity, the other a lifestyle" (14). Brilliant.

I also want to mention how much I appreciated and enjoyed Pascoe's style. This is not a dry historical account, with the author attempting or pretending to absent himself from the discussion. Instead, Pascoe is very much present - commenting on where sections have been updated with further information from various sources, pointing out how Australian farmers could benefit from the knowledge of how Australian Aboriginals did things, occasionally making snarky comments about the explorers' notes. It's a very honest history, since no author is truly objective and aloof from their topic.

Before the British arrived, indigenous Australians had extensive methods to cultivate food, both on land and as aquaculture; they had various means of preserving and saving food for later; and they lived in houses of various construction types. That most Australians today don't know this is because things were destroyed by squatters or ignored by archaeologists, historians, and others. This book is an incredibly important addition to the way Australia today should view its past, and consider its future. ...more

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Jan 27, 2019 Cathy rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Every Australian should read this, or at least become familiar with the material.
Dark Emu is a first rate extended essay. It presents the heretofore unknown history of Australian Aboriginal agriculture, economy and ways of life, and describes the way European immigrants and hero-worshipped explorers ignored the clear signs (and some that were apparently too subtle) of civilisation and of the manipulation and interaction with the landscape. Pascoe writes about the native crops that were cultivat Every Australian should read this, or at least become familiar with the material.
Dark Emu is a first rate extended essay. It presents the heretofore unknown history of Australian Aboriginal agriculture, economy and ways of life, and describes the way European immigrants and hero-worshipped explorers ignored the clear signs (and some that were apparently too subtle) of civilisation and of the manipulation and interaction with the landscape. Pascoe writes about the native crops that were cultivated and the ways they were managed, and suggests ways of bringing back the farming methods that sustained Aboriginal people for millennia - that seem to work on this dry continent with its particular soil.

The style is - well, I've described it as an essay - documentary and somewhat academic. Pascoe writes with real conviction, making his own position clear and encouraging the reader to take the same position and also to feel curious to learn more about Aboriginal ways of life.
One thing that I found strange in reading Dark Emu was the insistence against the perception that Aboriginal Australians were 'mere' hunter-gatherers: rather, they did build towns and work the land. That's fine, but what's so bad about hunting and gathering? Pascoe seems to argue that it's seen as primitive, whereas farming is seen as a sign of a more developed way of life. I'd thought that hunting and gathering was supposed to be kinder to the land, whereas farming was harder on it - but Pascoe reckons it's just that Western farming methods and crops/stock aren't designed for Australian conditions. Either way, I imagine Pascoe's dispute with the 'hunter-gatherer' label must be partly because it's not accurate and partly because the stereotype worked against Aboriginal people when it came to Native Title - maybe the white guys were arguing that 'they're not farming the land, they're just wandering around and taking from it' to deny Aboriginal entitlement to the land.

Excellent writing, not only for Australians.
Now I'm going to check out some of Pascoe's other stuff as well as this novel 'Taboo' by Kim Scott that I heard about on the radio the other day about some people in Western Australia. Any Pascoe recommendations? ...more

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Jul 12, 2014 Yvonne Perkins rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: australian-indigenous-history

I had a wonderful day reading Dark Emu: Black seeds: agriculture of accident? by Bruce Pascoe. Engagingly written, full of interesting material and a modest 176 pages , it was the ideal end-of-conference read.

Pascoe draws on the work of Bill Gammage, R Gerritsen and others as well as his own research to make a strong argument for the reconsideration of our understanding of the way Aboriginal people lived in colonial times. He draws extensively from the journals of explorers to present a remarkab ...more

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Dec 17, 2016 Rommel Cesena rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

If I could give this book 1000 stars I would.

As someone about to become an Australian who refuses to pledge allegiance to a British queen and who acknowledges the disaster that it was not to become independent at the beginning of the century therefore taking us trough two murderous world wars...I am dumbfounded to find that Australians (in general) choose the Anzac spirit as the main national identity symbol.
People know very little about Aboriginal culture (and the little they know is tainted b ...more

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Dec 03, 2014 Blue Mountains Library rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: what-library-staff-have-read

I want everyone to read this book. It enlarged my understanding of the culture and lifestyles of Aboriginal people at the time of early European settlement and exploration, particularly the agricultural and fishing practices. Early records are revealing of so much descriptive material that did not see the light when I was at school and in tertiary education. The picture of thinly spread wandering nomads needs to go. I was startled at how populated certain areas of Australia were, with substantia ...more

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Dec 16, 2016 Gail rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Heard Pascoe speaking on RN radio and what he said was riveting. The book, however, is not. The content is very interesting, and debunks many of the myths about the original owners of this land (Australia). But it's written in a very academic style...almost as if it is a dissertation. That was a disappointment after hearing what an engaging speaker Pascoe can be. Still, I'm glad I followed up the radio program.

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Jan 04, 2019 Eli rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

The eye-opening revelation this book provides about the agricultural achievements of the pan-Australian indigenous civilisation is equally matched by the tragedy that most Australians and most of the world knows nothing about it.

The extraordinary revelation is that “aboriginal people did build houses, did build dams, did sow, did irrigate and till the land, did alter the course of rivers, and did construct a system of pan-continental government that generated peace and prosperity”. It’s astoundi The eye-opening revelation this book provides about the agricultural achievements of the pan-Australian indigenous civilisation is equally matched by the tragedy that most Australians and most of the world knows nothing about it.

The extraordinary revelation is that “aboriginal people did build houses, did build dams, did sow, did irrigate and till the land, did alter the course of rivers, and did construct a system of pan-continental government that generated peace and prosperity”. It’s astounding and tragic that we don’t know and celebrate this. Particularly amazing is the revelation that large aboriginal communities were farming and prospering throughout the arid centre of the continent, areas that conventional wisdom dismisses as worthless or unproductive. And equally so, the fact that the aboriginal civilisation managed to adapt and prosper through major climatic change.

Aboriginal civilisation managed to sustainably prosper for likely 80,000 years or longer on this continent, intensively farming the entire landscape and oceans without the horrendous conflicts that characterise European and Asian civilisations, and without pushing the environment to the point of collapse. In just 200 years Europeans have managed to do both. As Pascoe says: “the idea to pour boiling oil on enemies seems not to have occurred to anyone in australia”. This incredibly lasting pan-continental peace was supported by a shared principle of “continuity, constancy, balance ... it rules out so much that is destructive of stability. There are no wars of invasion, they do not enslave each other. There is no master-servant relation. There is no class division. There is no property or income inequality. The result is homeostasis, far reaching and stable”.

The most exciting thing about this book is the possibility it raises of re-learning the aeons of aboriginal knowledge about how to sustainably manage this dry land especially as we face the inevitable disruptions of climate change.

I felt humbled at the achievements that have occurred here, appalled and saddened at the losses sustained in the European invasion, and determined as an australian to learn much much more about the original owners and managers of this amazing country. ...more

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Jan 30, 2019 Alice Belle rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 2019, audio

There's a palpable urgency within the gathering of resources and execution of this book. Pascoe writes with a pleasant lucidity, making the content both accessible and comprehensible to contextualise its place in the Australian narrative.

I find it loathsome when books are insisted as "essential reading" especially when the call to action is one for an entire nation, but every Australian should read this book. I have two main reasons for this plea.

1. There needs to be a radical reform of the "Aus ...more

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Jan 27, 2019 Natasha (jouljet) Reid rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: aboriginal-australia, poc

An examination of the evidence of Aboriginal Australia and it's practices a
of agriculture, aquaculture, building of villages and burial grounds, and peaceful trade. Which contradicts much of the historic narrative in Australia. A review of the important sustainable methods of taking from the land, and ensuring such taking is only what's needed, and will continue.

The destruction and rewriting of pre-colonial Australia is laid out - and is maddening to the point of needing to stop reading to refle ...more

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Jun 16, 2018 Les Daniel rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

By Emmanuel Les Daniel
An Aboriginal/Torres Straight Islander, now having a big city life.

Dark Emu: A book about seeing what's invisible.
Novelist Bruce Pascoe has written a non-fiction book that shows we original people of Australia were not hunter-gatherers, but farmed in a way that was so harmonious with nature, that if you wanted to, you could pretend not to see our farming at all. Bruce’s book is called ‘Dark Emu, Black Seeds: Agriculture or Accident’, and it won a heap of awards, including By Emmanuel Les Daniel
An Aboriginal/Torres Straight Islander, now having a big city life.

Dark Emu: A book about seeing what's invisible.
Novelist Bruce Pascoe has written a non-fiction book that shows we original people of Australia were not hunter-gatherers, but farmed in a way that was so harmonious with nature, that if you wanted to, you could pretend not to see our farming at all. Bruce’s book is called ‘Dark Emu, Black Seeds: Agriculture or Accident’, and it won a heap of awards, including Premiers’ literary awards in 2016. This book collects and presents evidence such as objects in museums and stories from explorers diaries that show we sowed and reaped crops, built houses, and arranged for animals to turn up on cue. We could catch and dine on these fish from traps and cornered kangaroos as reliably as you can go to the supermarket. I would like to argue that Black Emu is about how to see things that are invisible, and how people come to look right through things that are as clear as day.

The ‘Dark Emu’ from the book’s title is something most Australians cannot yet see. I can see it tonight, in the Autumn sky here in Gippsland. Its an emu-shaped dark patch in the milky way, right beside the Southern Cross, made by an absence of stars. Now you know its there, its so easy to see. Just like our invisible agriculture.

One reason our agriculture is invisible is because instead of using physical fences, and military defences like Europeans, we used invisible fences. For example, on page 122 Pascoe quotes from ‘The Biggest Estate on Earth’ (Gammage 2007) describing the ‘psychological fences’ that protected daisy yams from hungry kangaroos. The caretakers worked out when the yams in the patch we had planted would be delicious and vulnerable, and when the kangaroo mob were going to come. If it were my people, we would us songs and stars to help with timing. Then they burned the surrounding forests so that a few weeks later there was a long corridor of delicious green sprouts that would distract them, and take them away from the yam fields. They needed no traps, no poison. For this to succeed, they had to co-ordinate with their neighbours, who shared the kangaroo corridor. We all knew our neighbours would not come and take the harvests we had planted. We depended on good manners, not good weapons. They did the same. One of my jobs as an indigenous performer is to do smoke ceremonies, and Acknowledgment of Country ceremonies in cities. Now I realise that a welcome to country ceremony is also an invisible fence, an agricultural tool. What it really means is “you have been a good neighbour, and I trust you will not pollute our water, or take from our grain fields when they aren’t ready’, and more. I think I should tell some of my clients that if they don’t get their act together and look after the neighbourhood better, I might have to do an ‘unwelcome to country’ ceremony.

Something that Pascoe uses in his book to surprise everyone, including me, are diary entries and drawings of what Australian Explorers such as Michell first saw, when they came across indigenous towns. They recorded Aboriginal villages with sturdy houses, grain harvesting, bread baking, and happy, industrious lives. Bruce also talks about how this disappeared in just a handful of years. He explained how sometimes this might have been unintentional. British sheep would go ahead of the shepherd and eat the daisy yams before anyone even knew they were there. The sheep would get fat, and sheep owners feel lucky, on this wonderful rich land, mysteriously without too many trees. Then hard hooves would compact the soil, and the daisy yams would not grow back, or only the tough stringy ones would. Rain soon ran right off the lifeless soil, and the farmers felt suddenly unlucky, not realizing they were both the villains and the victims in this tragedy.

A more common reason our Indigenous agriculture was invisible was because newcomers needed to pretend it wasn’t there, so they could take our land and be rich. Even for the British at the time this was immoral and illegal. So they made a useful story that we weren’t actually people, just fauna, that we weren’t using the land, that it was ‘Terra Nullis’, up for grabs. On page 83 of Black Emu is the story of and article explorer Captain Stokes published on our villages, including a sentence on their ‘Winter habitations, substantially constructed’. Five years later this whole article was re-published but with one sentence removed. Yes, the sentence that showed we already lived there. Caught red handed. But nobody cared, because everyone else was doing the same thing, hiding the evidence they were in fact stealing, and soon, much, much worse.

Pascoe acknowledges with his readers acknowledge the horrors and waste of the killings and destruction of culture. Yet is is a positive book, full of suggestions for meaningful, healing work any reader could just start doing: reviving strains of daisy yam, starting trendy bakeries with nutritious aboriginal grain, making fancy possum skin cloaks again. I was lucky. As a child in the Torres Strait, I planted yam gardens with my grandmother. I made sardine scoops from single bamboo sticks with my uncles, and saw how to arrange rocks in the rivers so the water flowed through, leaving the fish waiting for us to scoop them up. We had wooden carvings, like a map, to remind us which parts of the delicious dugong were for old ladies, which for children, and that the hunter got the leftovers. Tragically, few indigenous Australians had this privilege, to know they come from an advanced culture that had found ways to feed everyone, enjoy each other, live mostly peaceful lives, something westerners haven’t yet figured out. We’ve had sophisticated, low-tech answers to Australia’s problems, great and small, from erosion of land to family breakdown, and we are happy to share.
I’m not a great reader, and this book had many words I didn’t understand. But my friends helped me, and I heard recordings of Bruce on the internet. I hope that someone makes an easy version of this book for all my indigenous brothers and sisters who aren’t great at reading, so more than just ‘Sorry’, they can feel the big ‘Thank-you’ that Bruce says should now be coming our way. ...more

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Oct 15, 2018 Anne Fenn rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: history

This is an astonishing book, one in the latest eye-opening indigenous histories revealing previously little known aspects of our land's history. Its focus is on Indigenous ways of life revealed mainly in explorers' reports made during the early years of white settlement. It covers all aspects - group size , skills, houses, agriculture, clothing, social behaviours. Much of this evidence was destroyed by a mixture of disease and 'dispersal' of people, plus destructive animal and human encroachment ...more

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About Bruce Pascoe

Bruce Pascoe

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Bruce Pascoe was born of Bunurong and Tasmanian Aboriginal heritage in the Melbourne suburb of Richmond and graduated from the University of Melbourne with a Bachelor of Education. He is a member of the Wathaurong Aboriginal Co-operative of southern Victoria and has been the director of the Australian Studies Project for the Commonwealth Schools Commission.

Bruce has had a varied career as a teach ...more