Andrew Bolt: Aboriginal history usurped

Penny Wong claimed Bruce Pascoe freed us from the “underlying supremacism” of thinking Aborigines were once hunter-gatherers. Yet no historians agree with Pascoe’s claims, writes Andrew Bolt.

Penny Wong quoting Bruce Pascoe is like the start of a racist joke. An Asian meets a white man and says: “You’re an Aborigine!”

Then they see a real Aborigine, hunting for tucker, and say: “You’re not.”

Wong is Labor’s leader in the Senate, and last week gave a speech to honour Aboriginal culture, and urge us to learn our “true, rich history”.

But then she quoted “Aboriginal” writer Bruce Pascoe, author of the notorious bestseller Dark Emu.

Wong claimed Pascoe freed us from the “ignorance”, “prejudice” and “underlying supremacism” of thinking Aborigines were once hunter-gatherers.

But what’s wrong with hunter-gatherers? Besides, every respected historian of Aboriginal Australia documented how Aborigines lived largely by hunting and gathering.

But Wong prefers the stories of Bruce Pascoe, telling of “First Nations people” before whites came “engaging in complex water management and agriculture and living in sophisticated housing among villages — none of which fits the definition of a hunter-gatherer”.

Senator Penny Wong last week gave a speech to honour Aboriginal culture, and urge us to learn our “true, rich history”.

Not to believe these “facts”, says Wong, would “diminish the value of the lives and culture that were upended with European colonisation”.

Pardon? It would “diminish” Aborigines not to be farmers? Who’s the supremacist now?

What an insult to the many Aborigines who know how their own ancestors lived, and who — like the family of former politician Bess Price — pass on their stories of hunting and foraging to their children.

What an insult to history, too, for Pascoe to write that Aborigines were actually farmers who lived in “houses” in settled “towns” of “no less than a thousand people” with “pens” for animals and wells up to “70 feet” deep.

Dark Emu author Bruce Pascoe

Geoffrey Blainey, Australia’s greatest historian, says there is actually “no evidence that there was ever a permanent town in pre-1788 Australia with a 1000 inhabitants who gained most of their food by farming”.

No explorer noted one. Nor is there any such archaeological ruin.

But Wong and Pascoe seemed troubled by the fact that Aborigines were not farmers.

And so the history of Aborigines is taken from them. Even their identity is usurped by a Pascoe who claims to be a real Aborigine, even though genealogical records show every one of his ancestors is of English descent.

(Those records may be wrong, but Pascoe won’t show where.)

Wong claims we must tell the truth about Aboriginal history. I wish she would.

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