Bruce PascoeCritiques

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 point is that we have never discussed it as a nation. The belief that Aboriginal people were 'mere' hunter gatherers has been used as a political tool to justify disposession."

Pascoe outlines the anthropological, geographical, and anecdotal evidence for Aboriginal farming, trapping, house-building, clothing, fire-burning, and other interesting practices. This book is not academic, in that it primarily lists a variety of examples and claims without citing many sources, but, as Pascoe notes, this is an area where there remains great prejudice and ignorance today. The information I was taught as factual when I was a child portrays a fairly simplistic view of the Aboriginal tribes, and it's truly fascinating to gain an insight into the rich culture that existed in the country long before the white man. Pascoe sees the best possible answers, of course, and his ideology can be frustrating when it replaces more even-keeled thought. But perhaps this is better seen as a work of passionate non-fiction rather than academia. Australia has a long way to go before equality is achieved, and recognition of this sort can only help.

Excellent. Well researched and convincing. Every Australian should read this book and understand the observations made by explorers and early settlers. Observations in the public record of Aboriginal housing, engineering, agriculture and storage: putting the lie to the image of them as mere primitive hunter-gatherers.

6.5/10, the writing style and story was a bit flat, though I might not be the right person for this book, maybe a younger audience can enjoy this one.

As I read Dark Emu, I felt that it was an important book, but also in many ways a frustrating one. It's important because it overthrows much of the disinformation about pre-invasion Aboriginal Australian society that is given to Australians all the way from primary school to adulthood. We were told that Indigenous people were hunter-gatherers, but in fact in many places they farmed; we were told that they were nomads, but in fact in many places they were sedentary, or moved only rarely; we were told that they lived in primitive humpies, but in fact they built large, secure shelters that required skill to build and were part of their social fabric. All of this is tremendously important because it changes how we think of the invasion of Australia and Australian Indigenous cultures as they exist today. It's also important because, as Pascoe eloquently points out, if we allow it to, Aboriginal knowledge can help us learn how to live in in Australia today without degrading our environment. But that won't happen if we try to only access the technical knowledge. We need to understand the way Aboriginal societies made decisions, co-existed and thought in order to understand the kind of sustainability they achieved.

The frustration comes from two sources, one of which is no fault of the author's. Although Pascoe has found many interesting accounts of early contact, there is just so much that we don't and can't know. As part of the attempted genocide of Australia's first peoples there was a policy of diminishing and erasing Aboriginal achievements and culture. Much of what was erased can never be recovered, both the technical knowledge and the cultural and spiritual. This loss haunts the book, so that much of Pascoe's commentary is necessarily partial or speculative.

The latter frustration just comes from the fact that this book is not all it could be. Ideally, this should be a tour de force, a magnum opus. Consider the coherence and scope of a book like Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond. Regardless of what you think about it's premises or its conclusions, it hangs together and puts together a forceful argument that is entertaining to read. Dark Emu is instead partial, somewhat repetitive and occasional awkwardly written. Pascoe talks only a little about the fact that the popular image of pre-invasion indigenous societies is in fact an image of post-invasion communities massively diminished by land theft, violence and disease. On that last point, there is nothing, or almost nothing, in the book, whereas it would have been interesting to learn whether it was true that many communities were essentially post-plague before they were even invaded.

Of course this second frustration is a harsh one. Jared Diamond was able to make Guns, Germs and Steel a magnum opus because he had the tenure and detachment to write it at leisure. Pascoe is amid the wreckage of a war that continues to be fought, sifting through evidence that has been destroyed at every opportunity.

So I was certainly able to get over my frustration in order to find the powerful arguments and evidence in this book both moving and challenging to my world view. I'll finish with two quotes which summarise the challenging notions that I'll take away from this book:
"Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were on the same cognitive trajectory as the rest of the human family, albeit in a different stream and a unique channel in that stream."

"It seems improbably 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." [I interepret this as our refusal to say thanks for their custodianship of the land we now live in]

Bruce Pascoe's book is a much-needed exposition of the realities of indigenous society and economy at the outset of British colonisation. He presents incontrovertible evidence that the Aboriginals had sophisticated systems of agriculture, aquaculture and housing. For somebody such as myself, raised on the notion of Aboriginals as nomadic hunter-gatherers, this is a head-snapping and sobering correction to one's assumptions.

Some of Pascoe's most riveting examples involve the Brewarrina fish traps, which are arguably the oldest man-made structures on earth. A detail that left an indelible impression on me was a map showing the extent of Australia that early white explorers described as growing grain when they first encountered them, overlaid with the far smaller extent of grain farming today. The message is unmistakeable; indigenous agriculture was able to produce thriving grain crops in the areas that we now romanticise as the arid and inhospitable Outback, which was only made so by the rapid destruction of the soil caused by the exotic animals that the colonists introduced.

Pascoe makes a solid argument that Australia's economy can benefit greatly if we recognise this achievement instead of perpetuating the hunter-gatherer myth, and try to change our existing agricultural practices to re-introduce crops such as yam daisy, kangaroo grass and native rice, as well as growing a commercial kangaroo meat industry, drastically reducing the damage done by cattle and sheep. This is a both an entrepreneurial opportunity and a means of placing indigenous culture and knowledge at the centre of our economic planning, which should not be missed. This book is a must-read for any Australian.

These kind of books are sort of hard to review. It is a good informative book though. I was already aware of a lot of the issues in here but this would be a good place to start if you really had no idea. It also had a few truths in here that white Australians need to face up to if we're to move forward together as a nation. Not what you'd call a good read but something I think all white Australians should read.

An incredibly important book. Not only does it refute the simplistic view of Australian aboriginies as hunter-gatherers, it reveals their sophisticated agriculture, housing, fisheries etc. But more important is that this 60,000 civilization had a mindset, a philosophy, which preserved the land and its peoples in productive peace over that period.

Bruce seems to be pretty much a man with a mission. And that mission is to redeem the image of the Australian Aboriginals as primitive hunter gatherers and have them recognised as farmers, agriculturalists, architects and creators of elaborate engineering works. Well he half convinces me. The issue is that he seems to go overboard. He cites Bill Gammage (author of "The biggest estate on earth") a lot. And I make the same comment about Bill Gammage...that they both take SOME evidence and generalise it, and, to my mind anyway, both of them over-claim on the basis of the evidence.
Apparently a new book has just been published which is a scholarly review of Pascoe's book and it makes some of these points. For example, when I read Pascoe's book and an account of Sturt seeing a sophisticated village of some seventy huts (p78) on the Darling River....I had assumed that it was an active, occupied village....but apparently, Bruce has been a little selective about what he quotes and leaves out the fact that the village was unoccupied and looked like it had been that way for some time. OK this is a minor criticism but it worries me that Bruce might have done similar things elsewhere and slanted his reporting and maybe cherry picked his data. Because there seem to be innumerable contemporary reports of Aboriginals being hunter gathers but relatively few about them cultivating or planting seed.
I spent a lot of my holidays around Dayleys Point on the central coast of NSW and there were significant middens there accumulated over thousands of years I guess. On the sandstone shelf above those caves with middens there were carvings of fish, sharks and, (I think) people though no plants. But the location would not have been all that great for cultivation or farming and with the abundance of shellfish and actual fish in the waters alongside, I suspect there would be very little incentive to make life difficult and to go out planting kangaroo grass or yams. (Though Kangaroo grass does grow around that area ...so might have been harvested).
I was fascinated by the stories told by many of the explorers about large stocks of grain being found; of yams being cultivated, and of mitchell grass being harvested. (It must have been hard work because the seeds are so small). So I think Bruce is onto something here. Clearly there were places that were on the cusp of agriculture. And there were places, like Brewarrina, where fish traps had been built. But maybe he overstates the engineering skills involved. I have many recollections as a kid camping by rivers with rocky bottoms and lots of water worn stones, and damming up the water ...just to make a deeper swimming hole; and making some races to capture fish. (I would have been about 11 years old with no instruction from adults etc....it was just play to us. But if your life depended on catching fish (maybe as at Brewarrina) then I guess things might have become more sophisticated). So yes, there were fish traps ...and maybe they have been there for a long while but I'm not sure they should be "talked-up" as marvels of modern engineering.
I was also fascinated by the reports of stone houses. (Well, the bases were stone and apparently the upper structure was of bark.). I was unaware of this development around Victoria. Though was it widespread throughout Australia? He quotes Basedow in 1925 writing about stone slabs on beams ..used for roofing in South Australia (though that's 135 years after European settlement so there could be an element of copying) and states (without evidence) that buildings in the Kimberley were built with large slabs of stone. However, from what I know, the practice of building substantial structures with stone was not widespread...and even the explorers (such as Mitchell and Sturt) that he quotes extensively, mainly describe bark dwellings.
So I come away from Bruce's book slightly mystified. Yes, it does seem that there were elements of the start of Agriculture and there were some permanent dwellings, and there were places where mildly complex fish traps had been built; And certainly, there were some fairly sophisticated articles made from fibre (nets, containers, etc). But the evidence appears to be a bit sparse that these innovations were universal.
Of course the whole issue is terribly muddled by the impact of smallpox on the indigenous population. It spread faster than the colonialists and clearly disrupted the social structures and caused a massive decline in the population, and presumably to practices such as farming or building. Pascoe draws attention to this. He rightly draws attention to the fact that aboriginal structures were burned and stones used for fences. (A bit like what happened to the Aztecs with their temple stones being repurposed to build churches). He rightly draws attention to the fact that there was evidence of large buildings used by large numbers of people and the people were no longer present in obvious numbers.
So, as I said above, Bruce has half convinced me. I would be more convinced if he had appeared to be more objective and not "over-claim". That's a pity, because I think he's raised some really important issues here. I guess, he felt that it was better to make a big bold claim and have impact than a more modest, less impactful claim. I am also impressed by the variety of sources he has rescued from archives and libraries. A pity that (as cited above) he seems to have been a bit selective in how he quotes the original reports.
He writes well and it's an interesting and easy read. I give it four stars.

Stunning attempt to revise every white colonial descendant's taken-for-granted assumptions about indigenous Australia. And probably, not before time. Whether you are persuaded or not, this book needs to be read. And considered.

Excellent and accessible discussion of the evidence behind a non-nomadic lifestyle for the Aboriginal people prior to British colonisation.

This is a great endeavor, the kind of book most Australians should try to read; even if you don't want to take all of the polemic to heart, it's good to know the facts that are presented.

On the other hand, holy mother of God is this a terrible book, in the sense that it is rambling, repetitive, and seemingly was never edited at all by anyone. Some paragraphs feel like they were thrown in at random, just because that paragraph had been written. Other paragraphs display exactly the kind of wanton stupidity that a book like this is meant to combat, except that the stupidity is about something else, and so is, I guess, not worth combating?

"The financial crash of 2008 and the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 occurred because the Christian morality of most participants had been excluded from their business dealings. In the case of the oil spill, it highlighted the dominion that Christians believe they hold over the earth."

That's right: the oil spill was caused by the absence of Christian morality among oil barons, as well as the presence of Christian morality among oil barons. Disappointing, because a good version of this would be so good.

I'd been meaning to read this for a long time and thought I knew the general gist of it, but it's 1000% more so. It outlines an overwhelming number of lavishly referenced examples of fields of grain or yam crops, wells and dams, fish weirs and kangaroo battues, hunting alliances with killer whales and dolphins, mosaic fires relying on predictable changes in wind direction, and more. The sheer extent of agriculture, aquaculture, soil management, storage of excess harvests, permanent settlements, and social systems so stable that they could maintain all the above sustainably over tens of thousands of years - and the extent to which European settler simultaneously admired and denied the results of all this, and simultaneously used and destroyed its fruits - leads inexorably to the conclusion embodied in a word never written in the text: genocide.

But while the author's feelings about the destruction of the culture and of even the memory of it are very clear, he ends on the optimistic note that if [we] settlers can move beyond "saying sorry" to "saying thanks" we could then take the next step to equality - perhaps "insufficient to account for the loss of the land, but in our current predicament it is not a bad place to start". By acknowledging and reviving traditional practices of managing the land, Australia could revert from the desert it's unjustly famous for, back to the rich, productive farmland that first met the European colonists.

This book has been depicted as a huge bombshell of a work, upturning everything "we" thought we knew about Aboriginal societies before invasion. With this in mind, I found this book kind of disappointing, because having studied a mere single unit of Aboriginal history at university… this book was not a bombshell in the slightest. "Well duh, Jess," you might say, "this book was supposed to be a bombshell to THE AVERAGE AUSTRALIAN, not to people who are already relatively well-educated on the matter." (Not that a single unit is that much education.) On that, OK OK you might have a point… but then who is this book really for? If you're remotely interested in Australian history, you probably already know the main points of this book… and if you're not interested you'd never read this anyway. Is it for people who are interested but never really got around to starting to learn? I don't know.

At any rate, once I realised the marketing for this book was way overblown, I was able to appreciate it for what it was. Pascoe's main contention is that pre-contact Aboriginal societies were not hunter-gathers, but cultivated the land and waterways in sophisticated ways like agriculturalists, and built permanent villages to live in. In general I think this is pretty well-known, but the book has a ton of specific examples and details that are not all so well-known. For me, that was probably the most illuminating part of the book: learning the different species of grains, yams and suchlike that Aboriginal people used to cultivate, and how could these be cultivated again today as more climate-appropriate alternatives to wheat, rice, barley, etc. (not replacing the Eurasian crops wholesale, just as an alternative, and particularly in more marginal farmland like western NSW that used to grow these native crops perfectly well). Pascoe has something of a side argument about wanting rural Aboriginal people to be able to create collectives to grow these native crops, taking advantage of the popularity of "whole foods" to find an affluent market. This all seems pretty fair and intriguing to me.

He also talks in great detail (the entirety of chapter three) about the design of Aboriginal villages and the architecture of their houses in different parts of the country. Most of these structures have not survived, and while Pascoe doesn't really spell it out in this book, this is because British settlers purposely destroyed those settlements so as to destroy the evidence they weren't simply settling "terra nullius". Basically, international law in the late eighteenth century outlined three circumstances in which you were allowed to annex new land: by agreement (like the Louisiana Purchase), by fair conquest (as affirmed by a peace treaty afterwards), or if it was uninhabited ("terra nullius"). The Brits twisted this latter argument, claiming inhabited land was technically uninhabited if the inhabitants were just wandering over it and not laying roots down (like by cultivating the land or building villages). Once it became apparent to the invaders that Aboriginal people were ABSOLUTELY cultivating the land and living in villages, they decided to burn everything down to hide the evidence. Obviously there still is evidence (including evidence of settlers putting it in writing about all the Aboriginal houses they'd destroyed…), but if you were wondering why there are one-star reviews acting like it's laughable that Aboriginal people ever had houses, that's why.

Another important part of this book, of course, is the discussion of how Aboriginal societies were sustainable in a way that capitalism (built on the false premise of eternal growth) can never be. People cultivated the land collectively, were careful not to make radical changes that could have bad consequences for people elsewhere (like downstream) or in future generations, and even made sure to do things like hunt male animals instead of female ones, to have the most minimal impact on animal species' viability. They practised terraced agriculture, cultivated the sweeping grasslands (full of food crops, actually) that the Europeans thought were there just by the grace of nature, used nets that could be swiftly taken down once full to catch only the amount of fish they truly needed… and of course they conducted planned burns in a vastly more sophisticated way than our modern authorities do. They did not believe in private land ownership the way that capitalism holds sacred; they understood themselves to be custodians of the land, there to ensure it would remain in good condition for the next generation. Considering we live in a world where climate change, deforestation, excessive waste, unsustainable mining, depletion/destruction of lakes and waterways, and so on are all gigantic issues, it's certainly worth reminding ourselves that the world doesn't have to be run this way.

What confused me somewhat, though, is that Pascoe seemed afraid to take this argument right through to its rightful conclusion: that capitalism itself, as imposed on Australia by the British and persisted with ever since, is the problem. He even tries to argue that empowering Aboriginal people to return to these practices would pose "no risk" to the economy… when the thing is that of course forcing major corporations to stop destroying the environment for the sake of short-term profit would "pose a risk to the economy" (in that those corporations would cease to be profitable), but this is A GOOD THING, because these practices are insane! Dumping capitalism and returning to more traditional Aboriginal ways of viewing property and sustainability is absolutely what we need to do, so why chicken out of saying that and try to be like, "Well… maybe some Aboriginal-run farming collectives will fix things?" In and of themselves they will not fix things, man. We need to look bigger.

But look, this is really a pop anthropology book rather than a political argument, so my criticisms of its conclusion shouldn't be taken as a big deal. Overall, if you don't know that much about Aboriginal societies pre-1788 this is a good place to start. If you do know a bit, then you'll probably still get something out of it, but don't expect it to be earth-shattering. By raising expectations excessively I think the marketing did this book a bit of a disservice, but it's still good and easy to read. Worth it if you have the interest.

Well, I can't say this is exactly a good read. It's a very important read. In some ways it's really hard to read as you realise how much we took from them. We took everything from them.Personally I think this should be required reading at school.

I won't get to read this for a month or two. But in the meantime, this is an interesting piece by the author.

https://griffithreview.com/articles/andrew-bolts-disappointment/

Growing up in Australia in the 1970s and 80s, there were a grand total of three mentions of Aboriginal people in the curriculum; when I was five we got to colour in a picture of an Aboriginal man, a book told us that a European explorer on the Murray got some spears chucked at him and another book told us that all the Kaurna people, the traditional owners of Adelaide, had all died out. Imagine my confusion when I later met Kaurna elders.

This all vaguely ties into "Dark Emu" as European Australians have done such a bang up job erasing the achievements of pre-contact Indigenous Australia that we have no idea of many ways Australia leads the world; the oldest human built structure in the world, the first parliament, the first farmers, the first builders (to name a few examples). Pascoe provides very readable evidence that Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders were far more advanced than we have given them credit for. Check it out.

This is an important book and should be required reading for all Australians. It is well researched and has a quiet, gentle tone; It is an interesting, has fascinating facts, and it was good to have illustrations and photos throughout the book. Highly recommended! (I looked at Bruce Pascoe's Ted Talk -A Real history of Aboriginal Australians, the first Agriculturists, dated Jul 2018, before reading this book. It's short and a great introduction to the book. There are other clips and lots of information for further reading online.

The author writes with gentle compassion as witness to the remaining archeology and as a reader of the early journals, accounts, and diaries of the first European explorers and "settlers" of Australia. The myths of a "primitive" and empty continent are annihilated.

Bruce Pascoe, an Australian of Bunurong, Tasmanian and Yuin heritage, quotes from the first person accounts, and then contrasts the representations which followed about the level of aboriginal development. The truth about the advanced Agriculture, Aquaculture, Housing, use of Fire, and the understandings of Language and Law, is re-exposed. Dated stonework and physical evidence demonstrates that Australia is the site of the earliest sailing, seasonal navigation, irrigation, planting, use of battue nets and fishing weirs, so far discovered.

The yam culture supported a relatively large population in which the ugliness of war was almost unknown. Linguistically, it is obvious that weapons and tools are loaded with "moral and spiritual obligation and significance". [193] The idea of conquest as inevitable "progress" is challenged--viewing the European colonials seizure of a continent and reducing it to mono-cultures, war, and overpopulation, in historical context with a careful examination of outcomes. Sustainability requires more than "touchy-feely wise blackfellow versus the destructive imperialist whitefellow" but a value on conservative economic practices and the evolution of the species. [195] The author succeeds in explaining progress using a model of "change generated by the spirit" applied to political action. The interconnected economic system in operation could be considered "jigsaw mutualism", in that individuals had rights and responsibilities for its parts, and were motivated to add to, rather than detract from, each other and the "epic integrity of the land". [199]

This book clears away the myths and reestablishes the facts. Quoting Bill Stanner, "The worst imperialisms are those of preconceptions." [200] The author reports that the contemporary scientists are looking at the Aboriginal food products. Two major crops domesticated by Aboriginal people are native yams and grains. These may be perfect plants for dryland farms where European grains and sheep have been abandoned. After tens of thousands of years of sustainability, the recent introduction of superphosphates, herbicides and drenches required for European grains have leached and salinated vast regions, all just in the last century. It is exciting to read that the early explorers who ate the native food found it to be the best they had ever indulged--Mitchell's light and sweet bread and panicum. [214 ff]. The gist of this work is that the recovery of slaughtered and altered elements in history--the advanced people, and their crops, irrigation, and fisheries--"may hold the keys to future prosperity". [224] One can only share these concrete models which point to the glorious hope : "Human survival on a healthy planet is not a soft liberal pipe dream; it is sound global management, and the deepest of religious impulses". [226] Pascoe has ignited the journey.

On 26 January 1788, a fleet of ships led by Captain Arthur Philip, arrived in Port Jackson, to claim what became known as Australia for the British, and to establish a permanent colony. This commenced the erasure of the fifty thousand year history and evidence of the indigenous inhabitants.
On 3 June 1992, the High Court of Australia decided that terra nullius should not have been applied to Australia. The Mabo decision recognised that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have rights to the land – rights that existed before the British arrived and can still exist today.
On 13 February 2008, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd made a formal apology to Australia’s Indigenous peoples, particularly to the Stolen Generations whose lives had been blighted by past government policies of forced child removal and Indigenous assimilation.
Bruce Pascoe’s book ‘Dark Emu’ is an introduction to the evidence of the indigenous civilisation that existed up to European arrival, and shows the existence of agriculture, not just a hunter gatherer existence. Current Australians, particular in responding to climate change, have much to learn from aboriginal agricultural practices.
He rightly points out that Australian, having said sorry, have failed to say thank-you.
Reading this book is an essential step in progress towards appreciation of the heritage of all Australians, and the process of reconciliation with our indigenous peoples.

The battle site became known as the Convincing Ground, the place where the Gundidjmara were ‘convinced’ of white rights to the land. The Gundidjmara were beaten in that battle but never convinced of its legitimacy.

The title of Bruce Pascoe's survey of Victoria's colonial history is also the name of a place: the Convincing Ground site in Portland Bay is on the Victorian Heritage Register as the probable first recorded site of a massacre in this state. There had been tensions between the local indigenous Gunditjmara people and whalers who had set up a station at Portland in the late 1820s, and the conflict erupted into violence over who had rights to a beached whale some time in 1833-34. Estimates vary but it is thought that between 60 and 200 Gunditjmara people were killed. The exact date is not known (and the authenticity and details of the event are contested) because there were only two young survivors and the massacre wasn't documented until a journal entry in Edward Henty's diary in 1835.

As Bruce Pascoe says: This is not a history, it's an incitement. Pascoe isn't an historian: he's a writer from the Bunurong clan, of the Kulin nation, a teacher, a farmer, and a researcher working on preserving the Wathaurong language. And the point is that while it may not ever be possible to verify the precise circumstances of this or any other massacre in neat and tidy documents, there is no doubt at all that the settlement of Victoria, as elsewhere in Australia, involved frontier violence. James Boyce, (who is an historian) makes this abundantly clear in his award-winning history 1835: The Founding of Melbourne and the Conquest of Australia which I reviewed here. What Pascoe's book offers is an Indigenous point of view about these and other events, based on oral testimony as well as the documentary record:

I love my country and its people. While working on a dictionary for the revival of the Wathaurong language I kept turning up new information on how the Kulin Nation (the clans surrounding Port Phillip and Western Port bays) defended their land. There was plenty of unused material in the archives but more importantly I was told stories and shown diaries, letters and photos by Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians which proved crucial to an understanding of those turbulent days. Few of my sources were scholars and they had had no previous opportunity to paint the picture of their ancestors' lives. From that perspective our national story looked quite different and it seemed unfair that most Australians' knowledge of their homeland was blighted by a cruelly inadequate history.

This book is for the Australians, old and new, black and white. Some might find the style offensive and abrupt but it has been written so that Aboriginal Australians can recognise themselves in the history of their country. Too often Aboriginal Australians have been asked to accept an insulting history and a public record which bears no resemblance to the lives they have experienced. (p. ix)

So yes, Pascoe doesn't beat about the bush, and sometimes his tone is abrasive and his sarcasm is a bit heavy-handed. The stories about the violence are confronting to read, and these feelings are exacerbated by Pascoe's uncompromising assertions about White behaviour.

The Convincing Ground should remind us to bite our tongues every time we utter the sentiment that 'Australia is the only nation founded without a war. It's a myth, a joke, the most ridiculous intellectual folly we could commit, and yet the point at which we could remind ourselves of the true history of the nation we avert our face and allow the battleground of our soul to be obliterated, wash our minds of memory, impoverish our intelligence with deliberate contempt. (p.94)

Reading this made me search my own posts to see if I had made, or quoted the same sentiment.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2019/07/10/convincing-ground-by-bruce-pascoe/

As kids, my brother and I used to go through phases of collecting Aboriginal grindstones on our farm. These artefacts were ironstone. They weighed perhaps a kilogram and fitted into the palm of an adult hand. A smooth area had been scooped out of the top. Our Dad told us to look for the other part of the machine, a smaller smooth stone. It was evident that seeds or berries were placed in the scooped-out area and the second stone used to grind.

There were two inferences we didn’t make as kids. The first was that there is no ironstone near Tambellup. The nearest deposits are in the Mid-West 800 kilometres north. The existence of the grindstones proved there was active system of trade around the State.

The second inference was that the people who used this device must then have gone on to mix the milled seeds with water and cooked them. In Young Dark Emu Bruce Pascoe comments that, if this happened 65,000 years ago, this is the earliest known invention of bread, pre-dating Ancient Egypt by an astonishing 13,000 years. (p. 16)

The basic thesis of Young Dark Emu is twofold: one is that pre-contact Aboriginal culture included sophisticated farming and settled village life, and two that the early ‘explorers’ saw these facts – huge fields under yam cultivation, well-constructed huts that could accommodate 40 people easily – and wrote about them in their journals. By the 1880s the settlers had both deliberately and inadvertently destroyed all this evidence. For example, the hard cloven feet of sheep compacted the soil so that it became too hard to plant yams or seeds.

Young Dark Emu is a version of Bruce Pascoe’s book for older readers, Dark Emu. Young Dark Emu would be suitable for children upwards of 10 years old. Both books are a plea to learn from the land use and fire regimes that Indigenous people developed over 80,000 years (or more) of occupation of this continent. They adapted their crops aquaculture and food storage to the soils and climate of this place.

The book takes its name from the Emu constellation. Traditional Aborigines named constellations not for the patterns made by bright stars, as Europeans did, but by the patterns in the dark spaces between them: a unique way of seeing.

Young Dark Emu invites readers to many levels of diverse ways of seeing. All Australians should read it or Dark Emu.

This is a fascinating book. Pascoe quotes journals of early European travellers and explorers to show how successful was the aboriginal food production system prior to the disruption and devastation of European settlement.
Pascoe is not an academic and the book is not prefect, but the premise posed is well argued, and the sources available for review. I found his points to be compellingly made.
- he cites reports of food stores (plundered by the explorers who reported them!) that were way beyond what modern Australians have come to expect from the era - grain stores left for later use of 50 - 60 kgs, up to tonnes left in some places.
- population densities far higher than one would expect from the received stories of a hard-scrabble existence prior to European settlement
- complex and durable housing - quite different from the gunyahs and hovels usually reported
- technology for managing water and fish trapping are real eye openers.
The conclusion is that it suited the settlers to have a narrative that downplayed the success and complexity of pre-settlement aboriginal life as part justification as their land was taken for European exploitation.
Perhaps the best vignette of the book is the description of a sophisticated fish capturing set-up involving a sluice in a river through which fish passed and were able to be selectively caught in a loop on a sprung piece of wood and thrown onto the river bank by a fisherman lying on top of the contraption. This was described by the reporter as confirming the indolence of the Aboriginal race! If the same device had been a European invention, one would expect a slightly different response.

A read similar to that of Bill Gammage's The Greatest Estate, but with more in relation to fishing and agriculture.

Also the author is of the view that if we were to embrace such techniques (if indeed we could re-discover them) we would be better off economically and socially.

A fascinating read. There is obviously a lot of research still to be done.

A review in the Weekend Australian (july 29-30 July 2017 by Stephen Fitzgerald ) led me to read this and I am happy to have done so.

Big Ship

6 August 2017½

A horse that shares the last name of a previous Australian Prime Minister, well remembered for helping Aboriginal people take back their land. Mrs Whitlam is special. She has also just lost her previous owner to a tragic car crash. Marnie Clark can't believe her luck that she is now in charge of such an amazing horse. Together they are stronger.