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Dark Emu: Aboriginal Australia and the Birth of Agriculture Paperback – 1 May 2018

by Bruce Pascoe (Author)

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in Animal Biology

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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.'

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Product details

Paperback: 278 pages
Publisher: Magabala Books; New edition (1 June 2018)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1921248017
ISBN-13: 978-1921248016
Package Dimensions: 20.8 x 13.4 x 2.4 cm
Boxed-product Weight: 322 g
Average Customer Review: 120 customer reviews
Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 9 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1 in Animal Biology

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A different perspective on Aborigines & toxic settlement

4 January 2019

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

I thought this work would promote and illustrate pre-settlement aboriginal achievements in a positive cascade of historical development and recognition of what they had pre-settlement. It refers to explorers and early settlers journals and apparently draws on them heavily. I enjoyed reading it from agriculture to buildings; but found the underlying hate and toxic side comments undermined a positive promotion of aboriginal achievements. The consistent message of hate towards settlement and it's impact detracts from the book in so many ways. In the end I was diss-appointed and put off.

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.

26 people found this helpful

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peter

Wishful thinking

10 January 2019

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

Ignoring the supposed oral history of 65,000 years and omitting any commentary from the 2% of Australians who call themselves Aboriginal the author selectively draws from accounts by early white settlers (whom he treats with derision and scorn).
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.

26 people found this helpful

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Refreshing the Dark Emu

26 July 2018

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

After being quite frankly thrilled by Bill Gammage's book The Biggest Estate on Earth - Bruce Pascoe's Dark Emu of some years back gave chapter and verse particulars of the civilisation of Indigenous or First Nations Australia. This revised/up-dated edition is timely - given the savage dismissal by our current PM Turnbull of the Uluru Statement from the Heart! It will hopefully become compulsory reading by every politician (no salary until finished reading) and every company/institute CEO/Board and academic - and set for study across the curriculum in our schools. I've been a fan since way back - when Bruce Pascoe edited the popular Australian Short Stories books from the early 1980s. But this book proves beyond doubt that a deliberate conqueror/coloniser wilful dismissal of all the best elements of First Nations democratic ways of living with one's part of the jigsaw of connectedness right across the continent took place - and the ugly trivialisation of the truth continues with the ignorance still being displayed by those who need to hold on to their of this land and its resources - looking at you Gina and Twiggy and the threats of Adani! Bravo Bruce! Thank-you.

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!

17 people found this helpful

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GBMMGB

Completely changed my intentions

27 June 2017

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

I had always suspected there was more to aboriginal life before the colonialists but had never taken the time to investigate. This easy-to-read book has, perhaps a little late, changed the way I will do my future teaching and research (I'm an agricultural scientist). We can't change history, but we can explain it, regret it, learn from it, and use it to inform our future. This book demonstrates that principle beautifully.

16 people found this helpful

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Jacqui King

Balanced, eye-opening and mind-changing

9 November 2019

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

Searching for the right word. Stunning? Stupendous? Certainly the most important book I have read in several decades.

I am reminded of when I was doing a course at the National Gallery of Victoria. The then Director of the Gallery, Dr Eric Westbrook, said that many of the early artists who came to Australia struggled with the differences from European scenery. Specifically their minds and hands could not fully see and accept the shape of a eucalypt but painted gum trees as more like European trees. Although only once spelt out by Bruce Pascoe this dissonance seems behind much of the lack of understanding of what the explorers and early settlers recorded.
Pascoe has searched early European records of what was seen and makes a mind-blowing case for a rethink about Australian First People's ethos and culture. Through it all he writes compassionately about the European settlers/explorers and recognises the hiccups that occurred in understanding. A very measured perspective.
I'm glad I have read this book.

5 people found this helpful

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Stephen Kemmis

A reassessment

2 July 2018

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

Bruce Pascoe makes the case that the Aboriginal peoples of Australia were not primitive hunter-gatherers, but practitioners of agriculture and aquaculture. They built permanent dwellings, sustained villages, lived largely in peace with one another, and with the country they inhabited. They made clothes from the great variety of materials the land provided. They lived in harmony with the souls, the flora, the fauna and the laws they had been taught by their ancient ancestors. Contemporary Australians - indeed, people everywhere - have much to learn from their cultural, astronomical, agricultural, economic and social achievements. Past dismissals of these achievements were motivated by colonists’ desires to diminish the original owners of this land, in an attempt to justify the dispossession that accompanied the violence of invasion. Pascoe’s case is woven from evidence available in the public historical record, and much will be new for many Australian readers not familiar with these sources. It is written accessibly and with passion.

8 people found this helpful

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Jim W

Disappointing - could only get through half the book.

7 July 2019

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

A bit over the top and use of overly romanticized adjectives did not help

8 people found this helpful

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