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Dark Emu: Black seeds agriculture or accident?

Bruce Pascoe

4.42 · Rating details · 6,811 ratings · 1,107 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 28, 2019 Trevor rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

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

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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Jun 09, 2019 Manny rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: history-and-biography, australia

Check your conspiracy theories! A free cut-out-and-keep guide

Quickly read the following stories. For each one, decide whether you believe version A or version B.
_____________________

The Shoah

Version A: Between 1941 and 1945, the Nazi German government systematically arrested, interned and murdered about six million Jews.

Version B: Reports of the so-called "Holocaust" were greatly exaggerated by the international Jewry in order to further their Zionist aims. The so-called "death camps" had no gas ...more

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

Shelves: history, indigenous, australian-author, non-fiction, 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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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: aussie-authors, historical, 2016, 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 being that most of my reading is based in fiction. 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 and, 2) it’s going to be fair ...more

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Jun 04, 2019 Marianne rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: borrowed-copy-returned

4.5★s
Dark Emu: aboriginal Australia and the birth of agriculture is a non-fiction book by lecturer, researcher and award-winning author, Bruce Pascoe. Pascoe is of Bunurong and Tasmanian Aboriginal heritage. In this book, he tries to convey a wealth of information about Australia’s indigenous population before white settlement with which many readers will be unfamiliar.

Contrary to previously accepted belief that the Australian aboriginals were hunter-gatherers, Pascoe details evidence of agricu 4.5★s
Dark Emu: aboriginal Australia and the birth of agriculture is a non-fiction book by lecturer, researcher and award-winning author, Bruce Pascoe. Pascoe is of Bunurong and Tasmanian Aboriginal heritage. In this book, he tries to convey a wealth of information about Australia’s indigenous population before white settlement with which many readers will be unfamiliar.

Contrary to previously accepted belief that the Australian aboriginals were hunter-gatherers, Pascoe details evidence of agriculture, of engineering and of game management. Much of the evidence comes from the journals and diaries of early explorers and settlers. They were often amazed at the sophistication, extent and beauty of aboriginal architecture and constructions, including stone houses, dams, weirs, sluices and fish traps. That all this was known but never officially acknowledged, nor taught in schools, is a sad indictment on the greed of early settlers and government seeking to rationalise their theft.

The aboriginals maintained permanent fisheries and were experienced in aquaculture: the Brewarrina fish traps are possibly the oldest known human construction. It’s perhaps the ultimate irony that at the time of first settlement, abalone were referred to as mutton fish and deemed only suitable for the blacks, but now that Asian markets increase demand, they are prosecuted for harvesting this traditional food source.

They milled flour from disease-resistant, drought-tolerant native grains and rices, stores of which were then pilfered by settlers. The indigenous crops and methods produced yields that astonished western observers who then proceeded to ignore the long-held knowledge of the race and introduced their own unsuitable crops and methods to deplete the soils.

Pascoe discusses what is meant by civilisation, maintaining that a race which builds permanent structures, engages in vegetation management by cooperative controlled burning, sows crops and stores the excess yield, produces elaborate clothing such as cloaks, shoes, skirts and hats, such a race cannot be called primitive.

He also suggests that farming emu and kangaroo, and planting native grains, tubers and rice would be more suited to the Australian climate as these are indigenous to the land, thus likely drought-proof and sustainable. Niche markets for innovative farmers would be guaranteed.

Today’s nations could learn much from the pre-settlement Australians who led a peaceable existence through co-operation and sharing of resources and culture instead of conflict and conquest for sovereignty over land and resources.
This audio version is read by the author, and while it is easy enough to listen to, it is perhaps not the best medium for conveying detailed information, or for recalling more than a few points. An eye-opening book that is a must-read for all Australians.
...more

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Jun 03, 2020 Paul Christensen rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Pascoe tries to paint Aborigines as some kind of rustic, pastoral race, ignoring overwhelming amounts of evidence (found in the journals of explorers like Sturt) that they actually invented differential calculus, built gothic cathedrals full of esoteric symbolism (Europeans simply ripped these off), and even had the first intergalactic civilisation, before evil white supremacists like Pascoe conspired to cover up the full, awe-inspiring scale of their achievements.

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Mar 27, 2019 fourtriplezed rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: history, my-non-fiction, australia

This book proves that there is a need for a more comprehensive coverage of this subject of Aboriginal Australians and their pre colonial agriculture. At 156 pages of text far too short so therefore not as in depth as I would have thought possible.

None the less fascinating. Recommended.

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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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Sep 03, 2019 Nick Grammos rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: australian, history

The diaries and journals of early Australian explorers and settlers tell a different story of Aboriginal settlement than the later historians and especially contemporary conservatives and politicians. That is, the land was managed for hunting, fishing, agriculture. Some newcomers described the landscape as a kind of park, not unlike the managed estates of English gentry, open fields, woods and farms. Those diaries therefore tell us that the premise of Australia's settlement, ie, the rights of Br ...more

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Jun 12, 2020 Jonathan O'Neill rated it liked it · review of another edition

‘Dark Emu’ is Bruce Pascoe’s impassioned plea for further research into the history of Australia’s indigenous people pre-colonisation and closer analysis of evidence that would suggest a much higher level of sophistication than we are currently taught to believe is true. He suggests that letters and journal entries attributed to the first explorers from 1770 onwards prove this. The explorers marvelled at the capabilities of the first people with regards to construction, agriculture, aquaculture ‘Dark Emu’ is Bruce Pascoe’s impassioned plea for further research into the history of Australia’s indigenous people pre-colonisation and closer analysis of evidence that would suggest a much higher level of sophistication than we are currently taught to believe is true. He suggests that letters and journal entries attributed to the first explorers from 1770 onwards prove this. The explorers marvelled at the capabilities of the first people with regards to construction, agriculture, aquaculture and the peaceful nature of the civilisation that they observed. Only, these signs of sophisticated culture and permanent attachment to the land were covered up with malicious intent.

“The suspicion is that there was intent to discredit evidence of permanent settlements [,agriculture, aquaculture and methods of storage] because of the implications this may have had for the morality and legality of the colonial dispossession.”

“The insistence on using the hunter-gatherer label is prejudicial to the rights of aboriginal people to land.”

We have since, conveniently, labelled the first people of our nation as mere hunter-gathers and “the prevailing orthodoxy [is] hunter-gatherers were considered capable of only the most tentative claims to land ownership”. Pascoe rejects this label and pushes for further research.
In this cause, I completely support Bruce. I think further research based on the suggestions set out in this book could only be a good thing for our country. To be able to acknowledge and celebrate great achievements of the original owners of our land, the oldest civilisation on Earth, would be a source of great pride and I would be a huge supporter of taxpayer-funded research into this area.

So, why the 3 stars? Well, it gets a little murky. I was looking up a bit of info on this book when I was only 20-30 pages through and found that there is a bit of controversy regarding a lack of primary and verifiable sources to back up some of his more outlandish claims and a misuse of the quotes held within the explorer’s journals. In many instances, readers have highlighted stark inconsistencies regarding what appears in his claims and what is outlined in the respective primary source. Some have gone as far to say that the ABC have blindly backed and lauded the book, ignoring any discrepancies in order to push a liberal agenda. For the record, I find the claim ridiculous!

I tried to push these concerns to the back of my mind so I could create my own opinion, as well as possible, after completing the book but I would be lying if I said it didn’t affect my reading of the text. Instead of marvelling at the revelations within, I was constantly questioning what I was reading and proceeded with a suspicious mind. Perhaps that’s the way we should always read historical texts, with a healthy dose of scepticism. That said, if I’m going to read fiction, I’d prefer to be clear on that fact going into it.

I have neither the time nor the ability, to accurately fact-check every work of non-fiction that I read. That said, my opinion is that there is definitely some truth to Pascoe’s claims. There are just far too many instances in which explorers made comments contrary to what we have been taught about the ‘purely’ hunter-gatherer lifestyle of the aboriginals and the benefits of covering up the ruthless slaughter and dispossession of land from a highly sophisticated society are immeasurable. As are the examples of Europeans doing the exact same thing throughout the rest of the world. I would love the examples of indigenous ingenuity and sophistication given in this text to be proven factual and would strongly encourage further research into this area.

“Settlers and explorers were united in their assumption of superiority and entitlement. The hoofs of the horses and the tramp of their feet never paused, despite their knowledge that they were displacing a sophisticated society with a complex economy.” ...more

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Jan 29, 2017 Ian Tymms rated it it was amazing

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

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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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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Nov 22, 2019 Ted rated it did not like it · review of another edition

People, why are you all signing up to Pascoe's fantasy? If you truly want to know what the early explorers observed, go to Project Gutenberg. There you'll find many copies of early explorers journals. After downloading them and thoroughly reading the eyewitness accounts, come back here and write a knowledgeable review based the real evidence of those early explorers, not Pascoe's fabrications and wishful thinking.

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Nov 12, 2019 Dr M. rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. There is no proof of Pascoe's claims in this book.

Much worse, with minor effort at checking his claims I was able to immediately prove that he had entirely misrepresented the diaries of the explorers he had quoted. These range widely. The most egregious examples I noted were:
1. Misrepresenting a report of wild grasses growing along a creek for nine miles and evidence of hunter-gathering to be nine miles of harvested agricultural land.
2. Stating ...more

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Oct 20, 2019 Monte rated it did not like it · review of another edition

While only 1/3 the way through the book I've seen enough to let me know that Pascoe has failed to come to grips with the material he is working with.

Some examples: Quotes frequently don't match up with the sources. Important claims often have no source given for them, or the source is unavailable and Pascoe won't give a quote. There is no critical engagement with his material: There is no attempt to question or contextualise his historical sources - Pascoe treats them literally and as though th While only 1/3 the way through the book I've seen enough to let me know that Pascoe has failed to come to grips with the material he is working with.

Some examples: Quotes frequently don't match up with the sources. Important claims often have no source given for them, or the source is unavailable and Pascoe won't give a quote. There is no critical engagement with his material: There is no attempt to question or contextualise his historical sources - Pascoe treats them literally and as though they were addressed to an early 21st century audience. Pascoe also fails at times to present his material faithfully: historical events are sometimes compressed as though they were the same event, and in at least one case he presents an order of events in the wrong order. The Tindale map is only 'after Tindale' not an accurate reproduction of the Tindale map. I'm not convinced that he has provided a clear example of domestication (which he says is needed for agriculture) in his discussion of domestication. Even if his weak analysis of a google search in the Acknowledgements doesn't worry you, it doesn't take long for a curious reader to soon lose faith in Pascoe's research skills.

Gerritson's 'Australia and the Origins of Agriculture' is uncritically accepted and Pascoe doesn't address the criticisms of this work. This is important because the binary hunter-gatherer/agriculturalist distinction that he and Pascoe rely upon is one that has pretty much been abandoned by researchers. The reader is left then with the spectacle of Pascoe left not so much arguing against a eurocentric or colonialist model of economic development, but defending it and saying 'we've been put on the wrong side.' (He hasn't as yet stated where the real hunter-gatherers are.) Pascoe has to defend the economics of the colonisers (it seems at times as an a-historical universal) because one of the points of the book is to argue that if Aboriginal agriculture can be proved then claims of intellectual property over native food plants can be made. Pascoe trades the specificity of (Aboriginal) culture for economic development. It's a bargain I don't think everyone would be willing to make. ...more

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

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

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

Shelves: australian, non-fiction

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" - a superior and more objective read, if I'm honest) 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 poi ...more

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Jan 22, 2018 John rated it did not like it · review of another edition

The book is persuasive rather than informative, and at times inaccurate. For example Bruce puts a photo of a Meriam Island House (Torres Strait) in his section on Arnhem Land 'dome houses'. He also quotes from Mitchell, Sturt, and Dawson very selectively, leaving out all the parts that contradict his argument. Read these primary sources and you get a different picture to the one Bruce paints. His mention of stone houses is exaggerated, because the location he discusses (lake Condah) while certai ...more

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

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

An amazing journey, well-written and researched.

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Jan 20, 2020 Chris Oliver rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: Someone who wants to know what bogus history-writing looks like.

A few things of the many things I didn't like about Dark Emu.
1) Pascoe starts from the false premise that hunter-gatherers didn't/don't thresh wild grass seeds or dig for tubers or live in fairly settled communities close to their fish traps, close to their main sources of food. When humans start threshing seed they start influencing the process natural selection - for instance, seeds that cling to the stem and seeds with thick outer shells that are harder to grind or digest tend not to be eaten A few things of the many things I didn't like about Dark Emu.
1) Pascoe starts from the false premise that hunter-gatherers didn't/don't thresh wild grass seeds or dig for tubers or live in fairly settled communities close to their fish traps, close to their main sources of food. When humans start threshing seed they start influencing the process natural selection - for instance, seeds that cling to the stem and seeds with thick outer shells that are harder to grind or digest tend not to be eaten. Similarly, when humans dig for tubers that loosens the soil and the next generation of tubers grow bigger. Since you're online now, check a few obvious online references and you'll find (no surprise here) that hunter-gatherer societies commonly had SOME domesticated crops and SOME domesticated animals. The transition from hunter-gatherer to agricultural societies is a smooth one.
2) One reason Pascoe wants to convince us that pre-invasion Aborigines were "more" than "mere" hunter-gatherers is he thinks it undermines the self-esteem of Aborigines now, in 2020. This, to my mind, mirrors white supremacist bogans' arguments that "we" (and therefore "I") are superior to "them" because "we" invented wheels/ steam engines/ laptop computers.
3) Bruce Pascoe/ Dark Emu, page 30:
"The science of baking developed alongside the seed harvests. Richard Fullagar, at the Australian Museum, and Judith Field, at the University of New South Wales, found grindstones at Cuddie Springs, near Walgett, in western New South Wales, which had been used to grind seeds more than 30,000 years ago. This makes these people the world's oldest bakers by almost 15,000 years, as the Egyptians, the next earliest, didn't bake until 17,000 BC. Other peoples ground tubers to extract starch, but it seems that Aboriginal people were the first to discover the alchemy of baking bread from the flour of grass seeds."
Bruce Pascoe/ Dark Emu, page 31:
"The explorer Hamilton Hume, in frank conversation with Robinson, said that he had been on the exploration parties of Captain Charles Sturt (1795-1869), and that, 'on the Darling the Natives gather grain from the wild oats (a round grain) and grind it between two stones and make a paste and eat it, the same is done by the Natives to the northward'."
You notice the main problem here? In the first passage, Pascoe mentions grindstones (and nothing else, not ashes or other evidence) as indicating that Aborigines were the world's first bakers. In the second passage, he quotes a colonial source indicating Aborigines MAY have been the world's first tahini makers.
And I don't know where that "alchemy of baking bread" stuff comes from. Presumably the first steps towards breadmaking were making something resembling dampers or chappatis, with no leavening agents.
I've checked Richard Fullagar's writings and he doesn't seem to have come to the same conclusion as Pascoe. His employer's website says "starch grains were found on 30,000 year old grinding stones from three Palaeolithic sites across Europe: Bilancino II in Italy, Kostenki 16 in Russia, and Pavlov VI in the Czech Republic". Basing your cultural reputation on a claim that you're the world's oldest bakers by almost 15,000 years" seemed a bit daft even before I read the Australian Museum website. Now it seems dishonest.
4) Pascoe says Beth Gott has "scotched" (his word) the "myth" that Tasmanian Aborigines had lost the ability to make fire. I've read Beth Gott's paper on the subject. It's very good and its subtitle "Absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence", makes it clear that her conclusion is a cautious one that maybe a small number of Tasmanian individuals COULD create fire when conditions weren't too damp. "Scotched"? I don't think so.
5) Pacoe lavishes praise upon Gavin Menzies, a writer the historian Felipe Fernández-Armesto dismissed as "either a charlatan or a cretin". Pascoe says Menzies is an authority on how white people (everyone else in multicultural Australia is off the hook) have refused to acknowledge and/or actively hidden evidence of non-white achievement. It's tempting to say that only a charlatan or a cretin could ignore the abundance of evidence that Europeans from Marco Polo onwards were fascinated and sometimes, in some respects, overawed by the cultural achievements of China and India, of Ancient Egypt and Japan.
6) Last point, though there are many more things I COULD say: on page 222 of my edition Pascoe reproduces a photo taken in the mid-19th century of Big Johnnie Cabonne, Angus McMillan, and Jemmy Gebber. The white man is sitting forward of the two black men, his legs together while they manspread. If you can read anything from the photo it's that neither of the black men care very much about sharing their bench space with McMillan. The faces of all three men are expressionless, which was likely partly due to the slow speed of glass plate cameras and partly due to the aesthetic convention of photographing people with straight faces. What does Pascoe read from the photo? "[Gebber] stares into the camera with a look of absolute fear," [Cabonne] stares with miserable resignation". I've shown this photo to more than 20 people now and not one of them has read it in the same way as Pascoe.
Dark Emu shouldn't have won prizes. It shouldn't be a bestseller. It certainly shouldn't be a set text taught in an uncritical way.
...more

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Mar 02, 2020 Tamsien West (Babbling Books) rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, australia, first-nations

Read this brilliant book! Add it to your wishlist, request it from your library, get it any (legal) way you can.

Bruce Pascoe's Dark Emu is a detailed & fully research look at pre-colonization agriculture, architecture, fishing and more.

I learnt so much, was really impressed by how he has made a lot of very academic research & information easy to read. Even someone like me (who knows virtually nothing about the topics mentioned) can see the significance of what his research highlights. ...more

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Jan 07, 2020 Anna Baillie-Karas rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Richly informative. Pascoe makes the case for a new Australian history. Aboriginal Australians managed land, grew & stored grains, built houses & engineered fishing systems. White settlers (& so history books) portrayed them as mere Hunter-gatherers. Pascoe shows how this was wrong & gives reasons why (& thus our twisted narrative & problems w reconciliation). We can learn much from Aboriginal ways of managing land & eating sustainably. ...more

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Apr 30, 2019 K. rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: audience-adult, own-voices, 2019, difficult-topics, setting-australia, australian, poc-narrator, diverse-author, own-it-hard-copy, non-fiction

Trigger warnings: racism, racial slurs, genocide of Indigenous populations, colonisation.

I've been hearing amazing things about this book for the past couple of years, and it did NOT disappoint. Having read Bill Gammage's The Greatest Estate on Earth last year, I was really intrigued to see how this would differ. To summarise: that focuses on so-called firestick farming and land management. This discusses not only agriculture but aquaculture, housing, population, and numerous other examinations ...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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Dec 29, 2016 Inga rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Fascinating and essential reading for all Australians.

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Apr 09, 2020 Kimbofo rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2020-reviews

There won’t be many Australians who haven’t heard of this legendary non-fiction book which debunks the long-held belief that Australian Aboriginals were nomadic and did not build houses or practise agriculture.

Pascoe painstakingly excavates evidence from the papers and letters of the first white settlers and explorers to show that pre-colonial Aboriginals did, indeed, do those things — and more. He finds written evidence that they built dams, farmed wild plants for food, constructed settlements ...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
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Nov 05, 2019 Ely rated it really liked it · review of another edition

I don’t claim to know a lot about Aboriginal history—I’d say I know the very basics. The extent of my high school education was essentially ‘we screwed up, but we said sorry!’. Now that I’m a good few years out of school, I’ve been working on changing that which is what led me to pick up this book.

And boy, was it an eye-opening read!

I never thought that I’d be interested in a book about agriculture, but this was surprisingly engaging. It should absolutely be required reading. In fact, I believe ...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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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

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The Little Red Yellow Black Book: An Introduction to Indigenous Australia

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“colonial settlers ignored the Aboriginal method, and that contemporary Australians still suffer from the result. The Aboriginal methods of land management were not just practical, but aesthetically pleasing.” — 1 likes

“If we are to attempt to understand Indigenous philosophy it has to begin with the profound obligation to land.” — 0 likes

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