Darker issues at play over Bruce Pascoe’s Dark Emu

Aboriginal human rights adviser Hannah McGlade describes Dark Emu as ideological, subjective and offensive as the author says he welcomes a ‘civil, courteous debate’.

Dr Hannah McGlade at her Perth home. Picture: Tony McDonough

Aboriginal human rights advocate Hannah McGlade says Dark Emu, Bruce Pascoe’s acclaimed book – which argues Indigenous Australians were not “mere hunter gatherers” but also farmers – is “an unnecessary distraction” and is “ ideological and subjective”.

Dr McGlade, a member of the UN’s Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues and a longtime campaigner for the rights of Indigenous women and children, said Professor Pascoe’s bestseller was also “misleading and offensive to Aboriginal people and culture”.

“Aboriginal people support truth-telling in this country because the past still hasn’t been properly acknowledged and responded to, notwithstanding the devastating impact it continues to have today,” Dr McGlade, a Noongar woman from southwestern Western Australia, said.

 

“It’s a nonsense to say that we support truth-telling and at the same time support Dark Emu, which clearly is not very truthful or accurate.”

Dark Emu, published in 2014, argues that the hunter-gatherer understanding of pre-colonial Indigenous Australians must be reconsidered. The book’s thesis that pre-colonial systems of food production and land management had been blatantly understated in modern retellings of early Aboriginal history was significant because, as publisher Magabala Books wrote, “it attempts to rebut the colonial myths that have worked to justify dispossession”.

While Dark Emu was the 2016 Book of the Year in the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards, it attracted criticism from a small number of academics.

This month, a book written by anthropologist Peter Sutton and archaeologist Keryn Walshe became the most prominent critique of Professor Pascoe’s argument, accusing him of privileging agriculture above a hunter-gatherer socio-economic system.

In Farmers or Hunter-Gatherers? The Dark Emu Debate, they accuse Professor Pascoe of authoring a book riddled with exaggerations and “littered with unsourced material”.

Bruce Pascoe reads Young Dark emu to students at Glebe Public School in 2019. Picture: Dylan Robinson

Professor Sutton, a senior research fellow at the University of Adelaide, and Dr Walshe, the former principal archaeology researcher at South Australian Museums, said the book “selectively emphasises evidence to suit (Professor Pascoe’s) opinions, and ignores large bodies of information that do not support the author’s opinions”.

Dr McGlade, one of a small number of Indigenous Australians who have publicly criticised the book, said: “Aboriginal people were not farmers or agronomists. They had intricate knowledge and understanding of lands and relationship to land imbued with deep spiritual connections.

“Our people, including my grandfather, worked for the white farmers and pastoralists, but their labour was undervalued and many people have still been denied ‘stolen wages’.

“We should increase attention to the actual lived issues today, of human rights, and how systemic and structural discrimination is blighting the lives of Aboriginal people, and especially our children … There are important commitments made by government through Closing the Gap and also our UN obligations which need our utmost commitment.”

Professor Pascoe has not responded with hostility in his public comments so far. Instead, he has said Dark Emu encouraged many Australians to recognise the ingenuity and sophistication of Aboriginal societies.

On Tuesday, Professor Pascoe told The Australian he had not read Dr McGlade’s remarks sent to him on Monday but he welcomed a civil and courteous debate. “I think we should continue talking about these things,” he said. “Obviously I have an opinion and other people have a different opinion, and if we can talk about them in a civilised and courteous way I think it would be great for the country.”

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian on Monday said the debate about the veracity of the claims in Dark Emu – which has since been adapted into teaching material for students – was not a bad thing.

“That’s what literature does,” she said. “So I have no issue with that kind of … interrogation or checking out the facts of a book. I think that literary and scholarly debate is not a bad thing.”