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Bruce Pascoe

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

by Bruce Pascoe (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 length

278 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Magabala Books
Publication date

1 June 2018
ISBN-10

1921248017
ISBN-13

978-1921248016
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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: 1,071 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

5 in Natural History

18 in Animal Biology

22 in History of Australia & New Zealand

Customer Reviews:
776 ratings

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dark emu bruce pascoe must read indigenous australians every australian taught at school aboriginal people compulsory reading well researched essential reading eye opener thousands of years reading for every european settlement opened my eyes australian history eye opening biggest estate estate on earth required reading

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peter
Wishful thinking
Reviewed in Australia on 10 January 2019
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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.
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86 people found this helpful

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Reg Appleby
A different perspective on Aborigines & toxic settlement
Reviewed in Australia on 4 January 2019
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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.
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56 people found this helpful

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Peter Neaum
Misleading
Reviewed in Australia on 6 December 2019
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I found this book absolutely fascinating! However, I now understand it is a complete fantasy. Very disappointing because I would have loved it to be a true history.
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29 people found this helpful

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Jim KABLE

TOP 100 REVIEWER

Refreshing the Dark Emu
Reviewed in Australia on 26 July 2018
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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!
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27 people found this helpful

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Ivy T.
A misleading book
Reviewed in Australia on 23 October 2020
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I loved the books presentation, well written and interesting. I must admit being sceptic about most of the information, since my own pioneering ancestors crossed vast areas of undisturbed Aboriginal territory to reach Wentworth, then the Murray river land, from Adelaide. Their first-hand records handed down through the generations were very factual. As hunters and gatherers, there was no evidence of productive agriculture, and the first people were nomadic within their own territories, in their pursuit of fresh pasture, allowing the land to regenerate. They did gather cereal grains, taking only what they needed, and leaving the rest to reseed and feed the local wildlife, which broadcast the seed elsewhere to expand their resources, in open savannah country, and yes, they did control burn-offs in suitable weather conditions, something SA famers did learn from Aborigines in various regions of South Australia. The Aborigines crushed the grain using a grindstone, no milling. They lived in small communities and slept in gender-separated wurlies made from timber, bark, mud, skins and reeds, in small communities, aware of disease-spread due to cluster populations. thus there were no large building constructions.
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!
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A misleading book
By Ivy T. on 23 October 2020
I loved the books presentation, well written and interesting. I must admit being sceptic about most of the information, since my own pioneering ancestors crossed vast areas of undisturbed Aboriginal territory to reach Wentworth, then the Murray river land, from Adelaide. Their first-hand records handed down through the generations were very factual. As hunters and gatherers, there was no evidence of productive agriculture, and the first people were nomadic within their own territories, in their pursuit of fresh pasture, allowing the land to regenerate. They did gather cereal grains, taking only what they needed, and leaving the rest to reseed and feed the local wildlife, which broadcast the seed elsewhere to expand their resources, in open savannah country, and yes, they did control burn-offs in suitable weather conditions, something SA famers did learn from Aborigines in various regions of South Australia. The Aborigines crushed the grain using a grindstone, no milling. They lived in small communities and slept in gender-separated wurlies made from timber, bark, mud, skins and reeds, in small communities, aware of disease-spread due to cluster populations. thus there were no large building constructions.
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!
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Doug Scott
Historical re-evaluation of the Australian aborigines.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 21 June 2019
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Historians have now started to collate the earliest experiences of European settlers and are re-examining their own conclusions, with a new appreciation of the way aborigines survived and farmed the land. The original settlers were so convinced that they were dealing with primitive savages that they ignored the obvious fact that the aborigines were in fact knowledgeable farmers and fishermen, preserving water and irrigating the in a collective fashion. Like the American Indians, they had no concept of land ownership, which had fatal consequences for the aborigines - and for the settlers, who did not know how to farm the land using native flora and fauna. Instead, they imported their own ill-matched hooved livestock (better for wet soils in the Northern hemisphere but which trampled the soft clay flats). Similarly they imported their own seeds for crops, ill-suited to the Australian climate when the aborigines already had different varieties of plant which they used for bread, medicine, and so forth. So the white man is now learning, after over two hundred years, what they should have been doing to preserve "The greatest Estate on Earth"
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6 people found this helpful
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SUN FREIGHT INTERNATIONAL LTD
good quality
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 14 October 2021
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good quality
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6 people found this helpful
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Andrés Noé
Great Book
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 12 February 2020
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As a non-Indigenous Australian, I was fed and believed much of 'conventional' teaching regarding pre-colonial Australia. This book makes me feel sad, angry and proud all at the same time. Sad at the poverty of my expectations of Indigenous Australia and that we didn't end up with a country that's more influenced by our Aboriginal Australians forerunners. Angry that Australia's colonisers have (and continue to...) come close to destroying such a rich culture from which we could all learn so much. Proud that we have the opportunity to change all of this and become a better country.
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5 people found this helpful
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ian
Disturbing read
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 4 July 2019
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A fascinating book that lays bare the long promoted myth that aboriginals were merely hunter-gatherers leading a simple existence. In fact they were extremely sophisticated farmers and resource managers living in a very sympathetic relationship with Australia’s unique environment who were swept away by resource grabbing colonialists. With the current intense debate on modern man’s sudden and devastating impact of the planet, it really makes you think.
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2 people found this helpful
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miss christina maclean
Learn from the true guardians of Australia
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 30 January 2021
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Amazing eye opening book on how this fascinating early Australian people were so much further enlightened than their European invaders. The spiritual and environmental sensitivity and care of aboriginal Australians made me feel ashamed of what occurred after Europe discovered this amazing continent.
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