Crikey is this week publishing a series of stories on Dark Emu and its much-lauded author Bruce Pascoe, in light of the recent critical examination of Pascoe’s thesis by anthropologist Peter Sutton and archaeologist Dr Keryn Walshe.
Through the publication of Farmers or Hunter-Gatherers? The Dark Emu Debate, Sutton and Walshe have effectively blown the whistle on Pascoe’s work. Given how influential Dark Emu has become in recasting Australia’s history, this forensic unmasking represents an important moment.
In tackling this topic, Crikey is aware of how caught up Dark Emu has been in the tiresome culture wars that dominate the public discourse. That makes it a fraught exercise.
There is a good argument that the culture wars are really between white people playing their own game of identity politics: the conservatives versus the progressives is getting as old as the Hatfields and the McCoys — and about as useful to the rest of us.
In the middle are the people who are, rightly, fed up that they can’t raise a question about a prevailing ideology without getting their heads blown off.
Journalist and author Stan Grant, one of Australia’s sharpest observers of Indigenous affairs, puts it this way: “It is really interesting what this whole story reveals about us. It is a real culture war issue. And I just can’t stand either side of the culture wars.”
Human rights lawyer Dr Hannah McGlade told Crikey: “We are not left or right in this debate. We are Indigenous people. This is about our culture, identity and human rights.”
The veteran Tasmanian Indigenous leader Michael Mansell has pointed the finger at the failure of journalists to ask questions that might not accord with their “progressive” view of the world.
The Sutton and Walshe critique was released with a careful media strategy aimed at avoiding the work being framed as a shot in the culture wars. The book was unveiled in the Nine mastheads rather than News Corp (which might have brought the book larger readership). The journalist who wrote the Nine feature, Stuart Rintoul, is an experienced hand with no barrow to push.
The real concern — especially for the Indigenous people Crikey has spoken to — is ultimately about cultural appropriation: that a “white” take on history, such as that Pascoe is accused of propagating in Dark Emu, insults Indigenous Australia and passes the wrong information to Indigenous kids about their people’s achievements.
This appraisal needs to be set against white Australia’s need for a myth as a salve for its guilt about the colonial invasion of Indigenous Australia. That is what Dark Emu offers: a description of a people’s achievements that white people can relate to and a way to atone for it.
There is an ancillary debate, which the Sutton/Walshe book has inadvertently reignited — that about Bruce Pascoe’s claimed Indigenous identity. The topic is usually avoided in polite company. It is seen as off-limits to question someone’s bona fides when they say they are trying to piece together their past.
At the same time, though, the identity question matters more and more to the integrity of Indigenous Australia. As Crikey has become aware, there is a heated debate about Pascoe’s identity among Indigenous people because false claims are, in the words of one person Crikey has spoken to, contributing to the breakdown of Indigenous identity.
Bruce Pascoe has accused his opponents of using questions over his identity to discredit Dark Emu. Yet the author himself insists that he be known as an Indigenous man, repeatedly claiming links to three separate groups — the Bunerong, Tasmanian and the Yuin — despite two of these groups outright denying his claim, and the third claim now being subject to serious dispute, as we reveal in our series.
At its most serious, the Pascoe story is — potentially — an indictment of Australia’s cultural and arts organisations. The University of Melbourne has its own questions to answer over the appointment of Pascoe to a professorship. It also raises genuine questions for the so-called progressive media, which has largely vacated the space when it comes to any scepticism of the Pascoe enterprise. Sutton and Walshe have themselves pointed to the failure of journalists to go to the primary Indigenous and academic sources of knowledge.
In so doing, it has been left to the left’s bogeyman, News Corp columnist Andrew Bolt, to make the most telling points on Pascoe and Dark Emu.
There are two vital voices missing from the debate. One is the author, who has not responded to our requests for comment. The other is influential academic Professor Marcia Langton, who has been one of Pascoe’s strongest supporters. Langton has described Dark Emu as “the most important book on Australia which should be read by every Australian”.
Langton is also the natural foil to the anthropologist Sutton. She graduated with honours in anthropology from the ANU in the 1980s and gained a PhD for her work on Aboriginal society in the Cape York Peninsula. Like Sutton, she is a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia. Langton, however, has declined our requests for comment.
If Bruce’s primary alleged ‘crime’ is “cultural appropriation: that a “white” take on history, such as that [he] is accused of propagating in Dark Emu, insults Indigenous Australia”, then I’d argue the accuser hasn’t read Dark Emu.
In short, Bruce appropriates nothing and no one, and is open about his sources. He simply goes looking in early European reports about Australia, and returns with what he’s found. It’s not an academic work and never claimed to be. He reported what he found, where he found it and acknowledged the vast gaps in our information. He also makes personal points and arguments about our conjoined indigenous and colonialist histories, which is entirely appropriate because those are his sources.
I’m baffled by how intelligent people get caught up in ‘culture wars’ nonsense.
More than that, Pascoe explains in his TED talk that the reason he used white explorers’ original notebooks as the evidence basis for Dark Emu is that so many people derided his thesis by saying there was no evidence for it except from non-whites who had no credibility.
https://www.ted.com/talks/bruce_pascoe_a_real_history_of_aboriginal_australians_the_first_agriculturalists
Exactly so Frank, he went for evidence that We would find acceptable, what first contact found and recorded. Those making those records would have had no idea as to the spiritual, ritual, cultural life they were barging into. They simply made note of what they recognised in what they saw.
I’m wondering whether Sutton & Walshe’s harsh opposition to Pascoe is as much about territory as it is about substance. In the past significant research on Aboriginal people was seen as a part of both Anthropology and Archeology, Pascoe’s previous publishing history was as a storyteller, not a science based academic. Most of his sources are those of historians – journals, diaries, old publications (& of course the ground-breaking work of Bill Gammage).
There is also a certain ambiguity of language.eg Pascoe stretches the meaning of the word “farmer” to include the scattering of seeds after collecting grain, while Sutton & Walshe shrink it to someone who ploughs predetermined fields.
From my (inadequate) reading it is clear that before 1788 there were probably just as many distinct Aboriginal cultures, care of land & care of animals as there were languages. It’s probably a good idea for anyone exploring the past to avoid making blanket claims.
I had a quick read of Sutton and Walshe’s critique as reported in the media. I didn’t get the impression of harsh opposition, just concern that someone could selectively quote from European sources to prove that aboriginals lived lives a bit like Europeans. From what I read, they believe that aboriginal cultures and ways of living in the landscape should be looked at on their own merits and shouldn’t need to be straight-jacketed into a western system of values in order to have any merit.
I was walking through isolated sand ridge desert one time and came across a big quern stone. It was at the foot of a scraggly little gum tree that provided a dappled shade. There was a low range of hills far on the southern horizon, but otherwise there was only a maze of sand ridges, and few plants of any kind, at least at that time, just then. But that hollowed out slab of stone, carried in from far away, and 15 km from a small spring of water, told the story of desert farming and gathering.
It’s all there, you just have to look. And remember that, pre cats and dogs, there were lots of meal-sized boodies and woylies and bilbies hopping around. Don’t forget rule number one: if you’re lucky and find something, leave it where it is. The context is the magic.
Field evidence is there for those who care to look then think about how it was used and why it was there. Jim Bowler had it tough, 40k BP, rubbish, he’s a geomorphologist how would he know, we’d not long left Africa, simply not possible.
really? Farmers OR Hunter gatherers? the very title describes how myopic is the hypothesis of the latest research opinion that takes a shot at a tall poppy. Transcend and include. Slow clap to all you lot – journos, academics, and others with their own axe to grind.
‘Farming’ in South East Asia began with planting not sowing seed as in the Middle East. Haven’t seen any reference to that from those for whom farming consists of a field and John Deere tractor. I might ask is ‘Slash and urn’ agriculture, farming, or stuck as Hunter gatherer ?
“Sutton and Walshe aimed at avoiding being framed as a shot in the culture wars.” That is just nonsense, David. Spectator and Quadrant immediately did victory laps, while The Australian gleefully published a racist cartoon.
Sure, Pascoe (and Gammage) overplayed their scientific hands, but clever Sutton must have known that his aggressive and divisive rebuttal would not help. Is there a Third Way? There sure is, but it takes a woman. Lyndall Ryan responded to the racist Windschuttle hit-job by writing better Tasmanian history, and now she has produced her massacre map.
Dark Emu first published in 2014 and still the culture wars persist. It never ceases to amaze me just how much time and energy has been and continues to be put into taking Pascoe and his writings down. Boy has he touched a Central Nervous system. Dark Emu isn’t Holy Writ and so far as I can tell has never claimed to be. What it set out to do was Challenge then explore further. Instead of which the text has been scoured and interpreted in every which way to find fault, to wish it away, to cease to be. Yet it still stands and long may it continue in its Challenge.
You mean people took up the “Challenge”?
I’ve seen a lot of ad hominem.