THIS ‘TELLING’ EVIDENCE AGAINST ME DOESN’T HELP PASCOE AT ALL

The Saturday Paper's Rick Morton is ignorant and deceptive in defending Bruce Pascoe: "Tellingly, after mocking an account he questions about animal yards in an Indigenous settlement I went to Bolt with an actual account of one quoted verbatim that IS IN DARK EMU and he responds: 'Maybe they were animal pens, who knows?'" Here's the truth.

The Saturday Paper's Rick Morton is ignorant and deceptive in defending Bruce Pascoe:  

 Tellingly, after mocking an account he questions about animal yards in an Indigenous settlement I went to Bolt with an actual account of one quoted verbatim that IS IN DARK EMU and he responds: 'Maybe they were animal pens, who knows?' 

Really? Is that really your most "telling" rebuttal of my evidence that Bruce Pascoe has no Aboriginal ancestors, and misquoted and invented evidence for his bizarre theory that Aborigines weren't hunter gatherers but sophisticated farmers, in  "towns" of "1000" people, with "animal pens" and deep wells?

Is that the best you can come up with, while turning a blind eye to Pascoe's astonishing misrepresentations?

But the worst of it - for you, Rick, and Pascoe - is that your most "telling" evidence is an absolute crock.

If this is all you have, then save yourself the embarrassment and admit Pascoe does not have the evidence for what he claims about either himself or Australia, and that respect for the truth should be common ground between those on both sides of the political chasm. 

Because let's get clear what Morton is saying or implying in this one sentence.

1. this is telling. As in, one of the most telling flaws in my criticism of Pascoe.
2. that he's found an "actual account" of an "animal yard".
3. that this is an "animal yard" in an "Indigenous settlement" that I had questioned.
4. that in response to his evidence, I conceded that "maybe they were animal pens".
5. that this is proof that Pascoe was right in saying Aborigines were farmers.

In order:

1. if this is his "telling" evidence against me, Morton's defence of Pascoe falls to bits.
2. he hasn't.
3. it isn't.
4. this is just a third of the relevant quote, which suggests something  different.
5. it isn't.

Thus one false boast, three false claims and a deceptive misquote in just once sentence. Wow.

(A DIGRESSION.

In his piece in the Saturday Paper, Morton starts off with what seems to be his other telling point - his false assumption that I have not read Dark Emu.

In fact, I've actually quoted from this book to disprove  claims, for instance, of Charles Sturt hearing "hundreds of mills grinding grain" in one Aboriginal "town" which he falsely claimed had "animal holding pens" with people who were "thriving". 

I may yet quote more. For instance, I may one day show how  Pascoe in Dark Emu said  Sturt "had a low opinion of the beauty of Aboriginal women", without adding that the explorer  had said he "pitied" the women  - including those in that "thriving" town - for being "half-starved", "unhappy looking", often  harshly treated and with teeth missing.

At some stage, if I get permission from  another party involved in a dispute with Pascoe, I will also highlight some extraordinary misrepresentations on page 83.

I may also yet demonstrate that Pascoe in Chapter One completely redrew the 1974 map of Norman Tindale, while still claiming Tindale as the source,  to claim there was an "Aboriginal grain belt" in Victoria and Western Australia - something Tindale himself never did. 

I may also show how Pascoe in Dark Emu verballed Sturt to claimed he'd seen a town of 1000 on the Murray, when the highest count Sturt gives of any settlement is less than half that, and usually much fewer still. Pascoe does claim in Dark Emu that Sturt once saw a town with 70 huts, each with room for up to 15 people - but, typically, does not go on to add what Sturt then wrote in in 1833 account: "Their tribe did not bear any proportion to the size or number of their habitation." This selective quotation, so deceptive, is typical of Dark Emu.

In fact, it is Morton who seems not to have read Dark Emu. In his Saturday Paper article he  claims Pascoe didn't refer in his book to Aboriginal "towns".  He also suggests it wasn't Sturt who Pascoe said had seen a town of 1000 people on the Darling. Wrong on both counts: Pascoe claims in Dark Emu that Sturt saw "a prosperous town of 1,000 on the Darling".)

So it seems that Morton is not just a fan of Bruce Pascoe, but a  follower of the Bruce Pascoe school of writing. Assume more than you should. Invent stuff. Quote out of context.

But to explain the above five points about Morton's "telling" evidence against me.

1. Morton's misconceived attempt to defend Pascoe was based from the start on false assumptions, errors and ignorance, as I wrote here in response to his questions. If this is the best of the rest, Pascoe's credibility as an "Aboriginal" and "historian"  is in deep trouble.
2. Morton did not find an "actual account" of an "animal yard" in a traditional Aboriginal settlement. What he found was an account by a David Lindsay as relatively late as 1883 in Arnhem Land    where he says he "came on the sight of a large native encampment" which had "small enclosures as if some small game had been yarded and kept alive".  Lindsay did not see animals in it. He surmises that it was "as if" used to keep "some small game" alive. 
3. Morton implies in his tweet that this was an "animal yard" in an "Indigenous settlement" described by Pascoe and which I had "mockingly" questioned. It isn't.  I had questioned Pascoe's claim that the explorer Charles Sturt had seen "animal holding pens" some four decades earlier in a "town" in the much more barren land around Cooper Creek, on the other side of the continent. Sturt described no such thing. Pascoe invented that, and no one - not Pascoe, not Morton - has even attempted to say what animals would have been kept in those "holding pens".
4.  When Morton told me he'd found the David Lindsay account, referring to something that looked "as if" used for keeping "small game" alive, I didn't flippantly concede that maybe they were animal pens, after all, as if accepting what he'd asserted. Morton is selectively quoting, Pascoe style, from this response:  

   This, you apparently assume, justifies Pascoe in inventing his claim that Sturt saw “animal holding pens” in a “town” near Cooper Creek.

   On the face of it, of course, your defence is absurd. But your implicit error lies in accepting that what Lindsay saw was unmistakably an “animal holding pen”. In fact, Lindsay saw no animal in them, which is why he merely speculated that they were “small enclosures as if some small game had been yarded and kept alive”.

   Maybe they were animal pens, who knows? Arnhem Land has, after all, more game than Cooper Creek that might at a stretch be kept in a pen, although it is difficult to imagine what animals might have been kept. Wallabies?

5. Let's not forget the significance of these "animal holding pens" for Pascoe and Morton. They are meant to help prove Pascoe's claim that Aborigines were indeed sophisticated farmers and not hunter-gatherers, which Morton in the most extraordinary parts of his essay has his (anonymous) Aboriginal source describe as "backward" and "primitive rock apes". Leave aside that disparagement of what traditional Aboriginal society really was. What these pens are meant to suggest is that Aborigines were in fact farmers, who we take to breed and tend  animals. But  Morton's own source suggests that at best the structure he found was for keeping alive "small game". Game is what hunters catch. In this case, perhaps they used something to keep that game alive a little longer. That has nothing to do with farming animals - breeding, tending and, say, milking them or taking their eggs. Morton cannot even read the words of his own source for his "telling" example.

For my earlier reply to Morton, which his largely ignores in his piece, go here.

Note that Morton and his race-baiting Aboriginal source do not address the fact that Aboriginal groups - not just awful white writers - dispute Pascoe's Aboriginality and his theories.

And note also that Morton never gave me a response to this challenge in particular:

In this specific settlement near Cooper Creek that Sturt described, and which I discuss, Pascoe has at various times said there was a well 70 feet deep, hundreds of mills, the planting of seeds, the most delicious bread Sturt ever tasted, up to 1000 people, thatched houses, a town, an estate, people who went to bed at 10, animal holding pens, storage rooms and a tribe that was soon murdered. He also said Sturt reached this “model” community with one remaining horse, the others having been eaten.

Can you provide me with evidence for any of the above claims made by Pascoe, pertaining to this great “town” on the fringe of desert near Cooper Creek?

Can you also tell me the name of Bruce’s Aboriginal ancestor – the one he’s often said was his mother’s great-grandmother – given that all the records suggest his ancestors were entirely of British descent?

Members of at least two of his professed tribes wish to know, as they are about to announce.

If you cannot answer the above, can you tell me why you are criticising me and not Bruce Pascoe, the “Aboriginal historian”?