Cannibalism, George Orwell, Bruce Pascoe and the English Language
In 1946, George Orwell wrote a short essay, Politics and the English Language (Ref. 1) In this, he makes the point that, if we allow foolish political writers to abuse our language, it will decline and become ‘ugly and inaccurate’ because their ‘thoughts are foolish’.
The ‘slovenliness’ of their language then ‘makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts,’ which in turn results in a further decline in the accuracy of our language, producing even more foolish thoughts.
This is where we are today with Bruce Pascoe’s writings on our Colonial and Aboriginal history.
To illustrate this point, we need to look no further than Bruce Pascoe’s writings concerning Aboriginal cannibalism. How does Pascoe reconcile the ‘savagery’ of cannibalism with his claims in Dark Emu that, “Aboriginal people…did construct a system of pan-continental government that generated peace and prosperity…” ?(Ref 2).
To paraphrase Orwell, the writings of Bruce Pascoe, when they become political,
‘are largely the defence of the indefensible. Things like,’ the traditional Aboriginal practices of inter-tribal massacres, frequent deadly fights and wars, cannibalism, infanticide, oppression and exploitation of Aboriginal girls and women, revenge and pay-back by violence as punishment for any perceived blasphemy and sacrilege, ‘can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of’ modern historians and writers, such as Bruce Pascoe, who wish to portray Aboriginal society as a sophisticated civilization.
Orwell continues, ‘thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness’.
Bruce Pascoe provides a number of examples of the use of Orwellian euphemism in his writings.
For example, he describes reports of Aboriginal cannibalism as a lie devised by some settlers as a pretence for stealing Aboriginal land. When the eye-witness evidence is too strong to ignore, as in the infamous case of the killing of an innocent teenage Aboriginal girl, whose dead body is then consumed in an act of frenzied cannibalism as described below, he calls it a ‘ritualistic practice’ of ‘higher significance.’ (Convincing Ground, p52-53).
The killing by inter-tribal raiding parties of many thousands of completely innocent Aboriginal men, women and children over the millennia he calls, ‘punishment enshrined in the execution of law, the tried true systems of cultural, social and religious maintenance’ (Dark Emu, p186).
His most perverse claim is that Aboriginal society was a ‘democracy’, when in fact it was controlled by small numbers of secretly initiated, polygamous, elder men, who gave no one else a free vote (Dark Emu, p186).
Orwell tells us that, ‘such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them’. This type of euphemism Pascoe does masterfully, ‘blurring the outlines and covering up all the details. The great enemy of clear language is insincerity….But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.’
This leads us to the greatest danger of Bruce Pascoe’s writings. It is that the thoughts of our young citizens are being corrupted into believing a Colonial and Aboriginal history that just isn’t true.
Orwell’s writings were correct on the three big questions of his times, European Imperialism, Fascism and Communism. Today, Australia faces big questions such as Identity Politics, Wokeism and Decolonisation. These may not sound all that threatening, but they have the potential to divide and fracture our society, leaving us vulnerable to future threats such as Chinese Imperialism or a home-grown Totalitarianism or Authoritarianism.
In this blog-post we will provide an example of Bruce Pascoe’s, ‘euphemistic defence of the indefensible’ when we consider the murders of two teenage Aboriginal girls in 1841, one of whom is eaten by her family and the tribe at a frenzied, cannibalistic ‘funeral party’.
Aboriginal Cannibalism - An Official Account
Volume 8 - British Parliamentary Papers 1844 contains Gipps’ despatch.
Full report by Sievwright on Cannibalism incident here (starts bottom of page 239)
On the 28th of December 1842, the Governor of New South Wales, Sir George Gipps sent a despatch to the Colonial Secretary in London, Lord Stanley, which included an enclosure from an Assistant Protector of Aborigines in Port Phillip, Charles Sievwright.
This enclosure contained, as Governor Gipps informs Lord Stanley, ‘perhaps, one of the most ferocious acts of cannibalism on record.’
We have been able to locate a copy of this despatch and its enclosure, which was published in the British Parliamentary Papers Series in 1844.
Charles Sievwright’s report of cannibalism reads as follows.
Enclosure 2, in No. 61. - Lake Tarong, 25 April 1841
About two o'clock in the morning of the 24th instant, I was awoke by a shout and general alarm in the huts of the Bolagher tribe, who were encamped about 20 yards in front of my tent.
On looking out I saw them armed and rushing in the direction of the Targurt [Jarcoort] tribe, who were encamped about 50 yards to the right; a severe conflict immediately took place, and some of the Targurt [Jarcoort] tribe came and burst violently into my tent, begging for assistance and protection.
On going out I found the whole of the men of the different tribes (amounting to upwards of 100) engaged hand to hand in one general melee.
On being directed by some of the women, who had likewise sought shelter near my tent, to the huts of the Bolaghers, I there found a young woman [Worangaer, a 13yr old girl], supported in the arms of some of her tribe, quite insensible, and bleeding from two severe wounds upon the right side of the face; she continued in the same state of insensibility till about 11 o'clock, when she expired.
After fighting for nearly an hour, the men of the Bolagher tribe returned to their huts, when finding that every means I had used to restore the young woman was in vain, they gave vent to the most frantic expressions of grief and rage, and were employed till daylight in preparing themselves and weapons to renew the combat.
Shortly before sunrise they again rushed towards the Targurt [Jarcoort] and Elengermite tribes, who, with about a dozen of Wamambool natives, were encamped together, when a most severe struggle took place between them, and very few escaped on either side without serious fractures or dangerous spear wounds. Although the Targurt [Jarcoort] tribe were supported by the Elengermite and Wamambool natives, and were consequently much superior in number, they were, after two hours hard fighting, driven off the ground and pursued for about four miles to where their women and children had retired; when one of the former, named Mootinewhannong [Mootenewharnong, a 17yr old Tragurt/Jarcoort girl], was selected, and fell, pierced by about 20 spears of the pursuers [the Bolaghers].
The body of this female was shortly afterwards burned to ashes by her own people, and the Bolagher natives returned to their encampment, apparently satisfied with the revenge they had taken, and remained silently and sullenly watching the almost inanimate body of the wounded female [Worangaer].
When death took place, they again expressed the most violent and extravagant grief; they threw themselves upon the ground, weeping and screaming at the height of their voices, lacerating their bodies and inflicting upon themselves wounds upon the head, from blows which they gave themselves with the leangville [club]. About an hour after the death of the young woman, the body was removed a few hundred yards into the bush by the father and brother of the deceased; the remainder of the tribe following by one at a time, until they had all joined what I imagined to be the usual funeral party. Having accompanied the body when it was removed, I was then requested to return to my tent, which request I took no notice of.
In a few minutes I was again desired, rather sternly, and by impatient signs, to go. I endeavoured to make them understand that I wished to remain, and I sat down upon a tree close to where the body lay. The father of the deceased then came close up to me, and pointed with his finger to his mouth, and then to the dead body. I was at this moment closely and intensely scrutinized by the whole party. I at once guessed their meaning, and signified my intention to remain, and, with as much indifference as I could assume, stretched myself upon the tree, and narrowly watched their proceedings.
With a flint they made a small incision upon the breast, when a simultaneous shriek was given by the party, and the same violent signs of grief were again evinced. After a short time the operation was again commenced, and in a few minutes the body disembowelled. The scene which now took place was of the most revolting description; horror-stricken and utterly disgusted, while obliged to preserve that equanimity of demeanour upon which I imagined the development of this tragedy to depend, I witnessed the most fearful scene of ferocious cannabilism [sic].
The bowels and entire viscera having been disengaged from the body, were at first portioned out; but from the impatience of some of the women to get at the liver, a general scramble took place for it, and it was snatched in pieces, and, without the slightest process of cooking, was devoured with an eagerness and avidity, a keen, fiendish expression of impatience for more, from which scene, a memory too tenacious upon this subject will not allow me to escape; the kidneys and heart were in like manner immediately consumed, and as a climax to these revolting orgies, when the whole viscera were removed, a quantity of blood and serum which had collected in the cavity of the chest was eagerly collected in handsful [sic], and drunk by the old man who had dissected the body; the flesh was entirely cut off the ribs and back, the arms and legs were wrenched and twisted from the shoulder and hip joints, and their teeth employed to dissever the reeking tendons, when they would not immediately yield to their impatience.
The limbs were now doubled up and put aside in their baskets; and on putting a portion of the flesh upon a fire which had previously been lit, they seemed to remember that l was of the party; something was said to one of the women, who cut off a foot from the leg she had in her possession, and offered it to me; I thought it prudent to accept of it, and wrapping it in my handkerchief, and pointing to my tent they nodded assent, and I joyfully availed myself of their permission to retire.
They shortly afterwards returned to their huts with the debris of the feast, and during the day, to the horror and annoyance of my two boys and those belonging to the establishment they brought another part, and some half-picked bones, and offered them to us. The head was struck off with a tomahawk and placed between hot stones in the hollow of a tree, where it has undergone a process of baking, and it is still left there otherwise untouched.
From the general testimony, given by about 100 aborigines, it appears that the native “Warawél'' [a Jarcoort man] crept to the hut of the deceased Worangrew [Worangaer, the 13yr old girl], and inflicted with a spear the two wounds from which she died. From a post mortem examination of the skull I found that the spear had penetrated the brain through a wound in the right temple.
Aboriginal Cannibalism - Bruce Pascoe’s Euphemistic Account
Convincing Ground is a wide ranging, personal and powerful work which resonates with historical and contemporary Australian debates about identity, dispossession, memory and community.
To Bruce Pascoe, this honest, official account of Aboriginal cannibalism is ‘problematic’ because it confirms that some aspects of Aboriginal society could indeed be described as ‘savage.’
When faced with accounts of fighting, revenge and cannibalism such as this, it is difficult to defend the indefensible and make a claim that pre-colonial Aboriginal society was one of ‘peace and posterity’.
So, writers such as Bruce Pascoe are forced to adopt the use of the ‘Orwellian euphemism’ to hide, or make vague, this truth about Aboriginal society.
In his 2007 book, Convincing Ground, Pascoe uses ‘euphemism and sheer cloudy vagueness’ to present his version of Charles Sievwright’s cannibalism account in such a way that he thinks he can defend the indefensible. Firstly, he claims that the Europeans are the cause of the deaths due to the bringing of two hostile tribes into close proximity to each other. Secondly, he says that Sievwright suffers from ‘cross-cultural’ ignorance and so doesn’t really understand what is going on. He should not have seen this as an act of savagery and ‘ferocious cannibalism’, but rather as a solemn funeral rite we Europeans are too ignorant to comprehend and appreciate.
Bruce Pascoe’s version, in Convincing Ground is as follows [with our emphasis],
‘In one of the most complete reports, Charles Sievwright, Assistant Protector of Aborigines, refuses to leave a ceremony where Jarcoort people prepare the body of one of their daughters. The girl was killed during an argument brought about when two opposing clans are forced to take residence together on George Augustus Robinson's ill-informed insistence. Sievwright knew that both groups would be insulted to live in the same camp and wasn't surprised when violence occurred.
Sievwright got on well with the Jarcoort [sic] and understood them better than most but it didn’t stop him from insisting on witnessing the mourning ceremony while lounging on a log from which vantage point he could watch in comfort.
The girl's body was opened at the chest and the initial incision was accompanied by prolonged singing [sic] and wailing. Methodically the organs, blood and serum were removed from the chest cavity, and portions of skin meticulously sliced away. Sievwright admitted the grief displayed was extraordinary but refused to go when requested and continued to watch as portions of the body were consumed. He interprets the enthusiasm for the consumption as avidity and ferocity but can't explain why this particular ceremony is conducted in this way while all other burials he has observed proceed normally. The girl's head is smoked for preservation and memorial and in all other ways the respect and grief attest to the people's love for the girl.
Sievwright is repulsed when offered part of the body but the people seem confused by the Assistant Protector's refusal to leave the scene. Perhaps they think he wishes to be included in the ritual, but whatever they think or Sievwright thinks, it is compromised by cross-cultural misunderstanding. Sievwright had been told by the people that they abhorred cannibalism but, naturally, he is shaken by the scene he witnessed and unable to see it in any light but savagery. He believes they have no 'religion’.
Something else is going on in this ceremony and it might be repugnant to most other civilisations but to call it cannibalism in the absence of true understanding is extremely prejudicial and to report only that part of the ceremony obnoxious to Christians without explaining the attendant grief and ritual is mischievous.
Modern political figures might be excused by their historical ignorance for using such examples in a prejudicial way, but anyone with anthropological awareness must read that report and know that the ceremonial use of the body and the obvious grief mean the incident is not an example of cannibalism. What the ceremony means has been lost with the destruction of the Jarcoort elders who might have been able to explain the higher significance.
- Convincing Ground by Bruce Pascoe, p52- 53 here (and see Reference 3 below also). [sic : Pascoe mixes up the two tribes names, it was the Bolaghers who were the cannibals. The Jarcoort burnt the body of their girl victim; Sievwright says there was ‘shrieking’ and ‘screaming’, not the Orwellian ‘singing’ substituted by Pascoe to describe the tribe’s lamentations.]
In our opinion, Bruce Pascoe just does not have the intellectual honesty to express clearly what is going on here : An Aboriginal Jarcoort man, “Warawél'' creeps into the hut of a 13 year old child, Worangrew [Worangaer], and spears her twice in the head, resulting in her slow painful death. Why did he spear her? Had she rebuffed his advances?; was he trying to abduct her? Her family are distraught and seek revenge. They select a seventeen year old innocent victim, Mootinewhannong from Warawel’s tribe, and spear her to death like a pin-cushion. Twenty spears into the small body of the girl, a child really. They then retire, satisfied that an ‘eye has been taken for an eye’ and proceed to gut and then eat Worangaer’s body in a frenzied, grief stricken, cannibalistic ritual feast.
Now, anthropologists and ethnographers no doubt could offer a defence of these acts, ‘but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face.’ These practices, from the ‘world’s oldest living culture’, are one aspect of Aboriginal culture that mainstream Australia will find it impossible to accept and respect.
Further Reading
Reference 1 : George Orwell, Politics and the English Language (1946).
Reference 2 : Pascoe, B., Dark Emu, 2018 Reprint dust-jacket blurb
Reference 3 .:Pascoe bases account on the secondary source, The Hated Protector by Lindsey Arkley, Orbit Press, Chapter 13 here. This is where we also obtain some information such as the ages of the girl victims. Pascoe could also have read a copy of the original Charles Seivwright account re-published in 1890 here.
Reference 4 : This topic of how the general public’s understanding of news and events and history is being manipulated and re-written was covered in a recent article by Mark Powell, an associate pastor of the Cornerstone Presbyterian Church in Strathfield, NSW, where he writes,
‘The fourth toxic influence is an eager willingness to believe useful lies. Alarmingly, we are seeing this kind of pattern starting to re-emerge. As Dreher writes:
In 2019, Zach Goldberg, a political science PhD student at Georgia Tech, did a deep dive on LexisNexis, the world’s largest database of publicly available documents, including media reports. He found that over a nine-year period, the rate of news stories using progressive jargon associated with left-wing critical theory and social justice concepts shot into the stratosphere.
What does this mean? Basically, that the mainstream media is framing the general public’s understanding of news and events according to what was, until very recently, a radical ideology confined to left-wing intellectual elites. A classic modern-day example from Australia is Bruce Pascoe’s absurd Dark Emu which contends Aboriginal culture is responsible for everything from the development of aquaculture to the invention of democracy, bread and government!
The problem with this type of approach, as Dreher rightly explains:
You can surrender your moral responsibility to be honest out of misplaced idealism. You can also surrender it by hating others more than you love truth. In pre-totalitarian states, Arendt writes, hating “respectable society” was so narcotic that elites were willing to accept “monstrous forgeries in historiography” for the sake of striking back at those who, in their view, had “excluded the under privileged and oppressed from the memory of mankind.” For example, many who didn’t really accept Marx’s revisionist take on history—that it is a manifestation of class struggle—were willing to affirm it because it was a useful tool to punish those they despised.
In fifth place come the mania for ideology. Dreher writes:
Why are people so willing to believe demonstrable lies? The desperation alienated people have for a story that helps them make sense of their lives and tells them what to do explains it. For a man desperate to believe, totalitarian ideology is more precious than life itself.
This explains why the Left cannot tolerate dissent and derides any and all who disagree as peddlers of racism, sexism, bigotry and exclusion — take your pick — which viewed together amount to the ‘violence’ of ‘hate-speech’. Because for them, sexuality is worship. Their personal identity is founded upon their sensual desires. And thus, for someone to disagree with their point of view is to reject who they are as a person. But this is not just a lie but a form of political totalitarianism. Again, Dreher nails it:
One of contemporary progressivism’s commonly used phrases—the personal is political—captures the totalitarian spirit, which seeks to infuse all aspects of life with political consciousness. Indeed, the Left pushes its ideology ever deeper into the personal realm, leaving fewer and fewer areas of daily life uncontested. This, warned Arendt, is a sign that a society is ripening for totalitarianism, because that is what totalitarianism essentially is: the politicisation of everything.
