Innocent transcription errors or wilful attempts to slant the narrative? Read our review and critique and you decide!
Thanks to Mr Pascoe, we are all historians now, even Stan Grant and Peter FitzSimons
The sad, sad world of Stan Grant’s Politics
Aboriginal Grain Farmers? - Well Maybe Not
No truly agricultural society can be based on native grain species that grow abundantly in wet years, but will not grow in dry years. Settled, Aboriginal ‘farmer’ societies would not have survived Australia’s ruthless swings from droughts to floods.
Parents, Is Young Dark Emu Appropriate for your Child?
Distinguished academic Professor Marcia Langton has warned against “scaring the living daylights” out of children when teaching the history of violence against indigenous people.
How Low Can a Writer Go in Re-writing our Colonial History?
Fact checking of Bruce Pascoe’s Dark Emu, leaves the author open to a serious accusation of deliberately hiding evidence.
Did the Dutch Teach Aborigines How to Cultivate Yams?
Were Dutch survivors of the Batavia wreck responsible for introducing yam agriculture to the Aborigines?
Mr Pascoe is Full-Steam Ahead - No Stooking Here!
Innocent transcription errors or wilful attempts to slant the narrative? Read our review and critique and you decide!
Is this Intellectual Checkmate for Bruce Pascoe?
For an uninitiated Aboriginal man, to have read a copy of the book Yiwara, would be sacrilege, punishable by spearing or death - for a non-Aboriginal historian, to ignore the evidence in Yiwara that the Aborigines were solely hunter-gatherers, and not ‘settled farmers’, would amount to a deliberate hiding of evidence. Mr Pascoe says he has read this book.
Fact Checking of Mr Pascoe's Grain Stores
Is Mr Pascoe describing a real Aboriginal grain store or constructing a hypothetical, idealised one?
Bogan Picks and the Case of the Missing Hoe
Another case of Cultural Appropriation? Torres Strait Islanders had agriculture, but Australian Aborigines did not.
Mr Pascoe’s ‘Hoes’, 'Megafauna Butchering Tools' or a Simple Pounding Tool? - It’s your Bogan Pick
A 1 metre Bogan pick so large you can’t lift it above your waist.
Really?
Mr Pascoe’s ‘Stone Hoes’ - But Wait There Are More
If the Aborigines really had ‘stone ploughs’ to till and cultivate their crops, why weren’t hundreds found, complete with their wooden handles?
Mr Pascoe's Cultural Appropriation
Mr Pascoe claims this photograph is of an Aboriginal ‘Dome’ house that his great, great grandfather may have used while living at Lockhart River in Queensland. Actually, we find that it is a ‘Dome’ house constructed by the Meriam people from the Torres Strait Islands and shows Melanesian and Polynesian influences. It is not Australian Aboriginal at all, and is not from the Australian mainland.
Mr Pascoe's Imaginary Aboriginal Irrigation Schemes
The few, recorded Aboriginal dams were constructed to conserve flood waters for drinking water, not to irrigate crops.
Professor W.E.H. Stanner and The Selectivity of Mr Pascoe’s Scholarship
Mr Pascoe’s Selectivity Bias – Just ignore the Facts that don’t fit the Narrative
Real Examples of Non-farming Aboriginals
There is abundant, authenticated evidence of the Aboriginal Hunter-Gatherer society. But you may need to put on your ‘Rose-Coloured-Glasses’ to find the “evidence” of Mr Pascoe’s Aboriginal Agriculture!
Other Historians and Anthropologists Agree - Aboriginal Society was a Hunter Gatherer Society
No other academic seems to agree with Mr Pascoe’s Theory
Where are the Coconuts?
Why weren’t there any coconut plantations in Aboriginal Australia?
We Respond to a Reader's Comments on our Critique of Mr Pascoe's Dark Emu.
The Six Main Centres of Pre-historic Agricultural Society - And the Australian Continent Wasn’t One of Them
Tommy McRae - The Aboriginal Source
Don’t trust the Imperial British Version of our history? Let’s see what a contemporary Aboriginal had to say.