Andrew Bolt: Who in our universities dares question the race industry?

Calling himself Aboriginal has been a great career move for author Bruce Pascoe, and now it has paid off for his son to the tune of an $860,000 taxpayer funded grant.

Calling himself Aboriginal has paid off for Jack Pascoe. Bingo: he’s won an $860,000 taxpayer-funded grant meant for Aboriginal researchers.

Excuse me? Jack Pascoe?

Do our education bureaucrats ever check whether academics identifying as Aboriginals really are?

Seems not. Melbourne University, which has hired not just Jack but his supposedly Aboriginal father Bruce, the author, proudly announced Jack’s good news.

Already a winner of the university’s Excellence in Diversity Fellowship for Aboriginal scholars, he’d now also won this Australian Research Council grant to “integrate Traditional Ecological Knowledge into the management of Maar Country”.

As the ARC notes, this is a Discovery Indigenous grant to back research “led by Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander researchers”, and Jack was the recipient and a chief investigator.

I was astonished. How is Jack Pascoe Aboriginal?

You see, Jack’s mother does not identify as Aboriginal, which leaves only his dodgy dad, Bruce, who first publicly claimed to be Aboriginal after a Canberra Times reviewer of his novel Fox complained it would have been better written by an Aboriginal.

Becoming Aboriginal turned out to be a great career move for Bruce.

His fake history Dark Emu won a NSW Premier’s Literary Award meant for Aboriginal writers, and his career exploded.

Becoming Aboriginal turned out to be a great career move for Dark Emu author Bruce Pascoe. Picture: Luke Bowden

Bruce was invited to writers’ festivals and promoted by the ABC as an Aboriginal guru, given grants by Aboriginal organisations for his farm to grow supposedly Aboriginal crops, and appointed by Melbourne University as an Enterprise Professor of Indigenous agriculture.

But there was a problem. There’s no evidence Bruce Pascoe, Jack’s dad, is Aboriginal, and plenty that he’s not.

Bruce Pascoe’s search for an Aboriginal ancestor has been almost comic.

In 1993, he advertised in the Koori Mail for help to prove he had an Aboriginal great-grandmother on his mother’s side, writing “Sarah Matthews was born at Dudley, South Gippsland”, in Bunurong country, but “may have come to South Gippsland on a sealing vessel”, apparently brought over as a Tasmanian Aboriginal.

Alas! Sarah Matthews turned out to have actually been born in Dudley, England.

In 2012, Pascoe admitted, yes, “the woman we thought was our Aboriginal ancestor was, in fact, born in England”, but he’d switched to believing his father might have Aboriginal ancestry through some “Tasmanian connection”.

It just got worse. Both the Boonwurrung Land and Sea Council and Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre said Pascoe’s claims to belong to their tribes were false.

Trained genealogists connected to the darkemuexposed.org website found every one of Pascoe’s ancestors were actually of British descent.

Maybe they’ve made a mistake, but Bruce Pascoe has refused all requests to identify his Aboriginal ancestor.

Bruce Pascoe’s search for an Aboriginal ancestor has been almost comic.

Nevertheless, he now calls himself a Yuin man, as well as Bunurong and Tasmanian.

But confronted on SBS in 2022 by presenter Karla Grant, who asked if his own family members accepted he was Aboriginal, Pascoe admitted: “Many don’t.”

Still, son Jack must. He, too, identifies as Yuin, on the websites of Melbourne University and the Biodiversity Council of 11 universities, where he’s one of 11 lead councillors.

So I wrote to him, asking him to name his apical Aboriginal ancestor or give any genealogical evidence of his Aboriginality, given that this $860,000 was public money meant for researchers of Aboriginal heritage.

Jack did not reply, but Melbourne University’s dean of science, Professor Moira O’Bryan, did.

Her reply is so extraordinarily evasive, that I quote it in full: “Dr Jack Pascoe is a valued and respected member of the academic community and his extensive knowledge and experience makes a significant contribution to public knowledge and land management. Dr Pascoe fulfilled the requirements for his Australian Research Council Grant.”

I wrote back: “You realise, of course, that you have not answered a single question I put. Is there a reason for that? A concession that Jack Pascoe is not Aboriginal or cannot prove it?”

No response, which is now common from our universities.

For instance, I asked the University of Western Sydney why its associate dean of Indigenous health, Kerrie Doyle, claimed to be of the “Winninninni tribe”, even getting an Aboriginal scholarship to Oxford, when there was no evidence such a tribe ever existed, and when genealogical records indicated she was of entirely European descent.

Again, no response to the evidence I gave. Just stonewalling.

Undaunted, Doyle has since been recorded by students singing a welcome to country song she claimed was recorded by the warrior Pemulwuy – who actually died in 1802.

Who in our universities dares question the race industry?

Truth and courage have died.

Originally published as Andrew Bolt: Who in our universities dares question the race industry?