Name: Dark Emu
ISBN: 9781922142436

Bruce Pascoe

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 - behaviors 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 comes from the records and diaries of the Australian explorers, impeccable sources.

Black Seeds : Agriculture Or Accident?

Dark Emu

this book is such an important read, for australians and for everyone else. i’m so glad that books like this are available for the public, it reminded me so much of scientific papers but without the paywall. i was genuinely fascinated by learning about Aboriginal agriculture and how many lies we’ve been fed under colonialism 

'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."

Black Seeds: Agriculture Or Accident?

Jamieson

A very interesting exploration of the narratives around Aboriginal Australian's that cast them as a hunter-gatherer culture. I think this is more persuasive than necessarily informative (though of course, Pascoe cites his evidence) but in some sections, I thought Pascoe could have explored more in-depth. I felt sometimes the content moved on too quickly from each point being made (this is a very short book). That said, I think this was still excellently written and certainly interesting and definitely a book all Australian's should read. I particularly enjoyed how Pascoe linked the colonial effort to delegitimise the Indigenous claim to Australian land ownership with the persistent belief and that Indigenous people did not and could not have ever managed the land driven by a deliberate erasure of evidence of just that

Eva Bailey

A very important read. Agree with the sentiment that every Australian should read this.

Amanda Wells

This book should be compulsory reading for all Australians - I was blown away by the lack of knowledge I had on most of what was presented here. I can't understand why anyone who reads this would walk away NOT feeling like the Australian education system has really let us down - or perhaps it's bigger than that. Whatever the case is, this book really enlightened me as to what had really been happening on this continent before Europeans arrived.

I enjoyed that the author didn't necessarily agree with all the traditional markers of 'progress' or 'civilisation' that have been cited as evidence for Aboriginal people being more primitive on a (very European) scale - but he showed that, even if we take this not very helpful idea of scale, we can see that Aboriginal people actually weren't 'just' hunter gatherers wandering aimlessly and naked across the continent for 40,000+ years. 

Essentially I found out that, on top of all the other ways that European colonists have messed things up for Aboriginal Australians, we also lied and covered up basic things about their existence to serve a narrative that made us feel more entitled to the land. I mean, I had guessed there was a fair amount of lying anyway - no one really wants to admit to genocide. But this is a whole other level... As a European Australian, I have to say I felt really mad about it - so I can't imagine how it must feel to read about this as an Aboriginal Australian. 

If you're an Australian who doesn't know very much about what life was like for Australian Aboriginal people before settlement beyond what little we were taught at school, I recommend this wholeheartedly.

Bruce Pascoe has collected a swathe of literary awards for Dark Emu and now he has brought together the research and compelling first person accounts in a book for younger readers. Using the accounts of early European explorers, colonists and farmers, Bruce Pascoe compellingly argues for a reconsideration of the hunter-gatherer label for pre-colonial Aboriginal Australians. He allows the reader to see Australia as it was before Europeans arrived -- a land of cultivated farming areas, productive fisheries, permanent homes, and an understanding of the environment and its natural resources that supported thriving villages across the continent. Young Dark Emu -- A Truer History asks young readers to consider a different version of Australia's history pre-European colonisation.

A Truer History

Young Dark Emu

Dark Emu is one of my favourite books of the year. Young Dark Emu is a brilliant idea - it gives parents and teachers the opportunity to right the wrongs of oversight in our curriculum.

Tori

I’ve been sitting on this review for a while as I felt it wasn’t exactly my place to give this book a rating - much like rating a biography, who am I to say if the story of such a persons life was good or bad? With Dark Emu I thought, how can I give a rating to the stories and way of life of Indigenous Australians? However, I have decided that I should at least give my thoughts on this brilliant book. This book was so educational and I really enjoyed reading and learning - no matter how disappointed I was that I had not been taught these things in school and the sheer volume of things I just did not know. I think this book should be one that all Australians read and should be in the school curriculum. It is incredibly well researched and the evidence presented makes you question how you didn’t know all of this before (although we already know why). I thoroughly enjoyed reading Dark Emu and would highly recommend it.

Jessica Smith

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.

Andrew Canion

I grew up with a 1980s education of how the British “settled” Australia, and that the Indigenous Australian’s were simple hunter-gatherers.

This book logically and calmly reconstructs the argument that the first Australians were actually engaged in a rational, effective and complex existence in partnership with the land.

I am happy to have been re-educated.

Lysh (She/Her)

This is a must read for every single Australian and tourist. Pascoe draws from the diaries of the first European explorers to piece together the truth behind Australia's white-washed history. 

Do you know the level of culture and civilisation that existed in pre-colonial Australia? I'll give you a hint; it was far more intricate and advanced than we have been taught in school to date. The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander groups across this country had established permanent homes, food crops, water supplies, pottery works, baking techniques, a form of government, land cultivation programs, and so much more. If we are wanting to move towards reconciliation and sustainability in the future then we need to look to the past and learn from our First Nations peoples. 

Really looking forward to discussing this one with the book club gals.

Jane Krauss

As I'm studying Australian Archaeology, I'd heard a lot about this book and have recommended this so often. It didn't disappoint. So many good points are brought up within the first chapter. It was interesting to see in the indigenous perspective of Darwin's words. In truth, Darwin's theory is so damaging to humanity and has been exploded fatality by colonists. 
The book is written very well and builds on points continually throughout.

Bulkan Evcimen

David Whipps

‘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.”

Dark Emu Black Seeds : Agriculture Or Accident?