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Dark Emu: Aboriginal Australia and the Birth of Agriculture Paperback – 1 June 2018
Bruce Pascoe (Author) Find all the books, read about the author, and more. See search results for this author |
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'Dark Emu injects a profound authenticity into the conversation about how we Australians understand our continent...[It is] essential reading for anyone who wants to understand what Australia once was, or what it might yet be if we heed the lessons of long and sophisticated human occupation.' ― Judges for 2016 NSW Premier's Literary Awards
Dark Emu puts forward an argument for a reconsideration of the hunter-gatherer tag for pre-colonial 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 support this premise but Pascoe takes this further and challenges the hunter-gatherer tag as a convenient lie. Almost all the evidence in Dark Emu comes from the records and diaries of the Australian explorers, impeccable sources.
Bruce's comments on his book compared to Gammage's: 'My book is about food production, housing construction and clothing, whereas Gammage was interested in the appearance of the country at contact. [Gammage] doesn't contest hunter gatherer labels either, whereas that is at the centre of my argument.'
- Print length278 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherMagabala Books
- Publication date1 June 2018
- ISBN-101921248017
- ISBN-13978-1921248016
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Product details
- Publisher : Magabala Books; New edition (1 June 2018)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 278 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1921248017
- ISBN-13 : 978-1921248016
- Best Sellers Rank: 1,182 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- 6 in Natural History
- 15 in History of Australia & New Zealand
- 22 in Animal Biology
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There's simply no physical evidence that the utopia Mr Pascoe imagines existed. Colonists didn't find Aboriginal people living in houses and growing crops. You'll find nothing of what he describes in any museum, even people living on traditional lands don't have a clue what he's talking about.
Received well by politicians but rightly ignored by the scientific community this is speculative fiction and should not be taught as fact.
This should have been written so much better with clearer detailed, specific references and excerpts to capture and encourage more interest and real appreciation of what has possibly been lost.
My people had a lot of wonderful memories of these people and held them in high regard, being saddened to see their hunting and fishing territory fenced off from them by white settlers. There is no need to paint them as anything but what these amazing people really were. They lived by nature and the land owned them, not the reverse!

My people had a lot of wonderful memories of these people and held them in high regard, being saddened to see their hunting and fishing territory fenced off from them by white settlers. There is no need to paint them as anything but what these amazing people really were. They lived by nature and the land owned them, not the reverse!

In the early-mid-1980s I undertook graduate studies in education about "Aboriginal" Australia - it opened my eyes to the landscape in which I was living, through which I was travelling. Not quite three years ago I spent time in the rural town where I grew up - rode my bicycle, swam in the local streams and climbed all over its regional hills and ranges. Like the back of my hand I knew it - this I knew. I joined the local regional art gallery cultural tour one week-end to learn about it from local significant Gomeroi elder Len Waters. And quickly realised I knew nothing - mere surface landscape - as he explained the land, places of significance, revealed brilliant rock art and scar trees and pointed out all manner of locational features. Bruce Pascoe's book does this for us all - and for folk beyond our shores who want to know the truth!
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