BRUCE PASCOE SPEAKS! BUT STILL WON'T PROVE HE'S ABORIGINAL

The Bruce Pascoe scandal deepens. The ABC promotes Pascoe as an "Aboriginal historian", and peddles his bizarre claim that Aborigines were settled farmers.  But his claims to be Aboriginal are denied by Aboriginal groups. Genealogical records say all  his ancestors are of English descent.  Now he gives a weird interview to the Guardian Australia.

The Bruce Pascoe scandal deepens with an interview this "Aboriginal historian" has given to the sympathetic and unquestioning Guardian Australia.

Bruce Pascoe has been promoted by the ABC to schools  as an "Aboriginal historian", peddling his bizarre and fake claim that Aborigines were actually settled farmers in "towns" of "1000 people", living in "houses" with "pens" for animals.

Pascoe will also star this year in a two-part ABC documentary on him and his theories. His best-seller Dark Emu won a NSW Premier's Award for best book by an indigenous author and Pascoe was made a professor in the Aboriginal studies department of the University of Technology, Sydney. 

But his claims to be an Aborigine, descended from no fewer than five tribes, has been denied by Aboriginal groups. Genealogical records say every one of his ancestors is of English descent. Pascoe first  publicly claimed to be Aboriginal after a book reviewer said his work would be better if he  were Aboriginal, but his story keeps changing. A great grandmother was Aboriginal, and then she was English and then she was Aboriginal again. He was a member of one tribe, then three tribes and then five. But never has he proved a single claim.

It all adds up to this: Pascoe is not an Aborigine.

Pascoe has refused to come on my show or prove his Aboriginality. But he's now given a telling interview to the Guardian Australia.

Listen from around 13:30. The Guardian Australia reporter asks Pascoe about this controversy without ever telling listeners just what the allegations against him are.

In response, Pascoe claims Aborigines in the street have been backing him and giving him evidence about his Aboriginality. Note that he does not say what that evidence is. Note that he would not need such evidence if he already had the proof of his Aboriginality that he last year claimed. And note that the reporter never asks what that proof is. She seems not to want to even know. She really, really wants this white man to be black.

This interview is the soundtrack to our mad times.