Andrew Bolt: Aborigines’ land taken, now it’s their identity
The truth behind white “historian” Bruce Pascoe’s identity doesn’t seem to count, and Aborigines watching the ABC adopting him as their own must feel insulted, writes Andrew Bolt.
Andrew Bolt
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Truth is dead at the ABC, but satire not. On Saturday, the ABC twice interviewed a white man to explain his pain as an Aboriginal.
Yes, the ABC marked the Black Lives Matter protests by getting a white — “historian” Bruce Pascoe — to play a black.
And not once did an ABC journalist ask the obvious question of Pascoe, author of the best-selling Dark Emu: what is the evidence that you really are Aboriginal?
For years the ABC has promoted Pascoe in schools and on national TV as “Aboriginal historian”, peddling his bizarre claim that Aborigines were settled farmers in “towns” of “1000 people”, living in “houses” with “pens” for animals.
His rewriting of Aboriginal history is insulting enough. It seems to me driven by a shame that Aborigines were hunter-gatherers, and not “sophisticated” farmers.
Pascoe’s book, which won a NSW Premier’s Award, actually misquotes evidence or gives false sources. For instance, despite what his footnotes say, no explorer reported seeing a town of 1000 Aborigines.
This shoddy scholarship has been documented in my columns and on my blog, and even more so on the website darkemuexposed.org.
Likewise with Pascoe’s claims to be descended from at least three Aboriginal tribes, including Victoria’s Boonwurrung and Tasmanian tribes. In fact, Pascoe’s genealogical records — on darkemuexposed.org — show that every one of his ancestors is of English descent, and the Boonwurrung and Aboriginal Land Council of Tasmania both strongly deny he is Aboriginal.
Nor will Pascoe show why I’m wrong or be interviewed by me.
ABC host Jonathan Green seems aware of all this. But this is the closest he got to asking Pascoe to prove anything about himself or his theories in a 49-minute interview on Radio National on Saturday: “In the midst of all (the bushfires last summer) there is a terrible culture war kerfuffle going on about your identity.”
Not once did Green say what the claims against Pascoe were, and the evidence for them.
Later on Saturday, Pascoe was interviewed yet again, on the ABC’s Awaye.
This time there was not even a hint at the evidence against him. The truth doesn’t count, and Aborigines watching the ABC adopting Pascoe as their Aborigine must feel insulted.
First whites took their land. Now the ABC gets a white to take their identity, too.