Bruce Pascoe - Cherry Picker Extraordinare - Part 1
In a previous post, we noted how Professor Pascoe seems to have overlooked the publication of anthropologist Dr Ian Keen’s extensive survey of seven Aboriginal societies with regard to their economies, ‘at the threshold of colonisation’. Dr Keen’s book, Aboriginal Economy and Society - Australia at the Threshold of Colonisation, (Oxford University Press, 2004), which was published some ten years prior to Professor Pascoe’s Dark Emu, was hailed as,
‘the first systematic, broad-based comparative study of pre-colonial Aboriginal societies to appear since the evolutionist studies of the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century.’ - (Oxford University Press)
Dr Ian Keen, Honorary Associate Professor, School of Archaeology and Anthropology, College Arts & Social Sciences, ANU : Source : ANU
Dr Ian Keen’s very detailed study of seven Aboriginal societies from around Australia concludes basically that,
- the Aboriginal subsistence practices are characterised as fundamentally ‘hunter-gatherer’;
- it may be more appropriate in some circumstances to extend the classification to hunter-gatherer-fisher or hunter-gatherer-cultivator to characterise those cases where, for example, extensive fish traps or eel races, or yam-top replacement, was observed (ibid., p.96);
- there is a debate on the relationship of ‘hunting and gathering to farming, and the use of fire by Aboriginal people’ [fire-stick farming] (ibid., p.101).
Dr Keen provides references, as further reading, for the debate on how far Aboriginal societies may have entered the ‘fuzzy’ zone between hunter-gathering and farming, but he himself comes down firmly on the side of hunter-gathering as being the Aboriginal mode of subsistence at the threshold of colonisation. Dr Keen’s book has five separate entries for ‘hunter-gatherer’ in the Index, none for ‘agriculture’, ‘farmer’, ‘farming or ‘aquaculture’, and only two for ‘fire-stick farmers.’
So, it seems that Dr Keen is well aware of the arguments put forward by the proponents of the, ‘Aboriginal people as farmers’ theory, and does acknowledge these views, which are contrary to his own, as a professional academic should (see ibid., p94-96, 100-101).
The evidence he has collected only supports the claim that,
‘…while the boundary between foraging and farming is a fuzzy one, Aboriginal people were indeed hunters, gatherers and fishers at the time of the British colonisation of Australia.’ - Dr Ian Keen at ANU Webinar
Published in 2004
Maybe Professor Pascoe Did NOT Read Dr Keen’s Book?
Now it is a pity that Professor Pascoe did not read Dr Keen’s 2004 book, Aboriginal Economy and Society - Australia at the Threshold of Colonisation, which was published some ten years before Professor Pascoe’s own, Dark Emu. One would have thought that Dr Keen’s detailed research of Aboriginal societies, ‘at the threshold of colonisation’, might have have informed Professor Pascoe that he should carefully check all the available evidence before he made the following claims :
Dark Emu author and Enterprise Professor in Indigenous Agriculture at the University of Melbourne, Professor Bruce Pascoe. Image source off the internet
‘…Aboriginal people did build houses, did build dams, did sow, irrigate and till the land, did alter the course of rivers, did sew their clothes, and did construct a system of pan-continental government…The evidence insists that Aboriginal people right across the continent were using domesticated plants, sowing, harvesting, irrigating and storing - behaviours inconsistent with the hunter-gatherer tag’ - (Dark Emu, 2018 dust jacket), and
‘In 2014, I wrote a book, Dark Emu, which exploded the myth that Aboriginal people were mere hunters and gatherers and did nothing with the land. I wrote the book because I found it hard to convince Australians that Aboriginal people were farming. Using colonial journals the sources Australians hold to be true I was able to form a radically different view of Australian history. Aboriginal people were farming there's no other conclusion to draw.’ - Tedx Talk 2018- [our emphasis]
Published in 2014
But Now We Find Professor Pascoe HAS Read Dr Keen’s Book!
Very surprisingly, we now find out that Professor Pascoe has indeed read Dr Keen’s work!
The author ‘Ian Keen’, actually has two entries in the Index of Dark Emu, and three of his works are cited, including even incredibly, Dr Keen’s 2004 book, Aboriginal Economy and Society - Australia at the Threshold of Colonisation!
How could it be that Professor Pascoe has cited Ian Keen, but failed to acknowledge that Ian Keen’s research shows that Aboriginal societies were hunter-gatherer economies and not agricultural farming societies?
It appears to us that Professor Pascoe could be classed as a ‘cherry-picker extraordinaire’ by very selectively quoting only those bits of Dr Keen’s work that fit the Dark Emu, history re-writing, narrative that Aboriginal people were actually ‘farmers’ using ‘agriculture’ and that their achievements have been deliberately ignored, destroyed or hidden by the colonials and academics.
For example, Professor Pascoe simply ignores the 400 pages of Aboriginal Economy and Society - Australia at the Threshold of Colonisation with regard to Dr Keen’s detailed studies and myriad examples of Aboriginal societies as hunter-gatherers.
Instead, Professor Pascoe just ‘cherry-picks’ Ian Keen’s work so as to include the following paragraphs in Dark Emu.
On page 195 of Dark Emu (2018 Reprint) Professor Pascoe writes,
"That the sustainability of Aboriginal economies could be linked to more sustainable theories of government is an electrifying idea, because it has the potential to infuence decisions on agriculture, population targets, water allocation, and environmental protection. Its not touchy-feely wise blackfellow versus the destructive imperialist whitefellow; it strikes instead at the heart of conservative economic practice and the evolution of species. Some say the idea that the world's trajectory is driven by conquest followed by innovation and intensification is satisfying to the Western mind because of our psychological dependence on our imperialist history. But if we give consideration to the idea that change can be generated by the spirit, and through that by political action, the stability of Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures might be more readily explained. As all the theories are very tentative and untested, we should be wary of locking ourselves into the assumption that everything is driven by superior Western minds and tools on an inexorable march of conquest, as if that is the only way the human species might evolve. Ian Keen's study of how economies were embedded in the prevailing kinship and cosmological systems of particular groups has the potential to provide insights into how Aboriginal societies worked”. - [our emphasis]
So Professor Pascoe cites, ‘Ian Keen’s study of [Aboriginal] economies’ but doesn’t tell us readers that Dr Keen’s conclusions show that Aboriginal people were hunter-gatherer societies! Some might think that this looks like an unbelievably brazen manipulation of a fellow academic’s work by Professor Pascoe.
The second citation of Dr Keen’s work occurs on page 185 of Dark Emu, where Professor Pascoe claims,
“Australian anthropologist Ian Keen says:
The genius of Ancestral law was that people of a wide region could agree to a body of legitimate law without there being legislation [sic*], and in spite of the autonomy of individuals and kin groups … Ancestral Law had a large discretionary component … (and) certain ritual practices tended to induce in young people a disposition to conform to shared values and norms, and to defer to people in authority.”
- Dark Emu, 2018 Reprint, p.185 citing Ian Keen, Aboriginal Economy and Society, OUP, Melbourne, 2004 p. 244). [*sic = Pascoe mis-transcribes - it should be ‘legislators’]
Now, if one looks at the actual reference of Dr Keen’s that Professor Pascoe says he is citing, one finds that he has selectively chosen sentences from over two pages of Dr Keen’s book (p.244-245) to give a a favourably slanted image of the ‘genius’ of Aboriginal law. Dr Keen’s writings actually paint a much more complex picture of Aboriginal Ancestral law. (See further reading section below).
So, once again it appears that the scholarship of Professor Pascoe is perhaps a little ‘wanting’ and what we read in Dark Emu needs to be checked, rechecked and checked again before being believed.
Further Reading
The Realities of Aboriginal Ancestral Law
In the ‘Ancestral law’ section of Dr Keen’s book we have highlighted the sentences ‘cherry-picked’ by Professor Pascoe for inclusion into Dark Emu.
Dr Keen writes,
“Ancestral law
Shared [Aboriginal tribal] norms do not require specialised law-making bodies. We shall see that people of several of the regions, perhaps all of them, shared a concept that can be translated as 'ancestral law' or the 'proper way', having its origin in the intentions and actions of totemic creator ancestors. People of broad regions agreed about the fundamentals and the legitimacy of 'law', though specific doctrines varied from group to group. A body of law consisted of both explicit rules and implicit principles about obligations related to kinship and about connections to and rights in land, waters, and their resources. It also included the proper way to do things not so easily thought of as following rules, such as performing ceremonies, making designs, and manufacturing equipment. As Myers points out, the concept of ancestral law places the making of rules and norms outside the realm of human action, representing them as non-arbitrary and transcending immediate relations.
The genius of ancestral law was that people of a wide region could agree to a body of legitimate law without there being legislators, and in spite of the autonomy of individuals and kin groups. However, because they were contained and transmitted in oral tradition and in the absence of centralised legislative and judicial institutions, the rules and principles of ancestral law had a large discretionary component. People even of adjacent areas adhered to somewhat different doctrines and principles , and the principles were multivalent enough to allow a good deal of latitude in their interpretation. The extent to which a person could gain acceptance of their interpretation of law in order to justify their actions depended on the social resources he or she could bring to bear on the matter.
Networks of regional cooperation underpinned the sharing of ancestral law. People of a wide region, often including people of several regional or language identities, cooperated in the performance of ceremonies that reenacted ancestral events and made ancestral beings visible and tangible. These networks of cooperation also provided the framework for structures of authority that were moulded around relations of age and gender, imbued with authority, and that transcended local relationships. Male initiation ceremonies combined socialisation practices with these features.
Socialisation through initiation
Socialisation techniques inculcate values, beliefs, attitudes, knowledge, and skills, changing people's dispositions and hence the ways in which they behave generally. Anthropologists and educationists have described the particular quality of Aboriginal socialisation techniques, with their stress on imitation and trial and error rather than pedagogy. Male initiation combined socialisation techniques with dramatisations of ancestral action. And it was these dramatisations that reinforced the ancestral basis of law, by making ancestral events seem, in Clifford Geertz's words, 'uniquely realistic’. Importanly, people across a wide region, usually speakers of a variety of languages, cooperated in the performance of these ceremonies.
As several anthropologists have remarked, certain ritual practices tended to induce in young people a disposition to conform to shared values and norms, and to defer to people in authority. These dramatic interventions in people's lives imposed varying degrees of privation, pain, mutilation, and other harsh treatment. We shall see that the most physically rigorous modes of male initiation occurred in the Western Desert, while the Jerra-eil ceremony performed by Kunai people and the Bora ceremony of the Yuwaaliyaay did not centraly involve the infliction of pain and mutilation.
The initiation and revelatory ceremonies also served as 'gateways' to formalised social statuses and social powers related to the life-cycle. Several of the ethnographies document these statuses, as well as the prerogatives and constraints attached to each.
Direct action
Direct and immediate forms of control include such actions as influence, persuasion, manipulation, command, and coercion. I cannot consider here all the ways in which people controlled one another, in all kinds of context, but I will describe the general character of control, some of the ways in which people applied 'law’ to settle disputes and to pursue their interests, and the structures involved in these.
The Berndt’s remark that informal meetings of older people were often used to discuss problems and help settle disputes, and Nancy Williams has described the role of elders in the resolution of Yolngu disputes. In a more unusual practice, described by George Taplin, among Ngarinyerri people of South Australia the leaders of neighbouring groups would come together to hear evidence from defenders, accusers, and other witnesses, and to mete out punishment. In a similar vein, Ken Maddock finds a resemblance between the procedures used to discover the identity of a sorcerer after a death and the inquests of Western law.
In the absence of overarching governmental bodies with the power to make and enforce laws and to adjudicate disputes, it was up to individuals and their kin to take measures to enforce their interpretations of law, both to guide behaviour (such as contracting a marriage) and to deal with perceived breaches. R. M. Berndt called this kind of practice 'self-help'. People of a wide region agreed about the general principles of proper behaviour, such as the right relationships for marriage and the binding nature of bestowal contracts. When a law was breached, or allegedly breached, it was up to the aggrieved party to gain the support of kin and take redressive action; no specialised political or legal bodies existed to which they could appeal.
In the conduct of aftairs, what Basil Sansom calls jurisdictions' and 'orders of business' tended to be discrete. Once children joined a peer group, their activities were their own affair, and adults seldom intervened unless the children were putting themselves in some danger. Marrying was the business of the kin groups involved, although a wider community became involved if incest prohibitions were broken. The regulation of fertility and childbirth was strictly women's business, while the enforcement of religious secrecy fell to senior men in charge of the secret ceremonies, objects, and knowledge.
One disadvantage of this kind of governmental structure was that things could, and did, get out of hand. Application of the principle of reciprocity to redress for wrongs in the form of talion, or ‘payback', resulted in endless feuds, such as those described by W. Lloyd Warner. (People conceptualised payback as equivalent to reciprocity in exchange it achieved balance). Furthermore, those with the greatest resources were able to enforce their interpretations of law, and hence further their interests. But there were checks and balances.The intricate web of kinship meant that some individuals who had conficting loyalties played the role of mediator. Ancestral law provided means for settling disputes, such as the Yolngu Makarrata ceremony; alternatively, a dispute might be settled through some kind of reparation...
These forms of redressive action bring out Aboriginal concepts of agency, responsibility, and blame. David Martin writes of the way in which Wik people displace responsibility from the individual onto other agents, and are taught to do so from an early age. A person who injures or kills another may claim that sorcery caused them to act in that way. Conversely, retribution may legitimately fall on the kinsman or kinswoman of an offender, or a person of the same shared identity, rather than the offender”.
To our mind, Professor Pascoe has left out many aspects of the Ancestral law described by Dr Keen, because they are ‘problematic’ with the regard to the narrative that Professor Pascoe wants to spin. To a modern reader, Dr Keen’s statements that,
the use of “dramatic interventions in people's lives imposed varying degrees of privation, pain, mutilation, and other harsh treatment…[including]…the most physically rigorous modes of male initiation..”;
“One disadvantage of this kind of governmental structure was that things could, and did, get out of hand. Application of the principle of reciprocity to redress for wrongs in the form of talion, or ‘payback', resulted in endless feuds,…”, and
“When a law was breached, or allegedly breached, it was up to the aggrieved party to gain the support of kin and take redressive action; no specialised political or legal bodies existed to which they could appeal.”;
would make the modern reader perhaps think more carefully before accepting Professor Pascoe’s implied suggestion that modern Australia has much to learn from traditional Aboriginal governance.
