The Continual Rise of Pseudo-profound Bullshit in Australian Academia
The Continual Rise of Pseudo-profound Bullshit* in Australian Academia
At Dark Emu Exposed we receive a regular stream of interesting items from our informants.
The latest in our mailbox are said to be two clips from a lecture by Professor Aunty Kerrie Doyle, where she reveals that a recording of a song by Pemulwuy, the Aboriginal warrior in Sydney’s early colonial history, is in her possession.
Now on the face of it, how can this be true?
Pemulwuy died in Sydney in 1802 and our understanding is that the recording of sound was first achieved only in 1857 by the French inventor, Edouard-Léon Scott de Martinville. Thomas Edison, the American inventor, further developed and commercialised sound recording in the 1870s.
If it is true that Aunty Kerrie has a recording of Pemulwuy singing his Welcome to Country to the British, then this is a stunning example of the recovery of Indigenous Knowledges - not only did the Aboriginal Eora nation seem to have invented the recording of sound more than 50 years prior to the European invention, they also seem to have had the foresight to record the singing voice of a man, who would become 200 years later, one of their most famous tribesmen.
Let’s drop in on one of Aunty Kerrie’s lectures and learn as she teaches her students at Western Sydney University what ‘Truth-Telling’ is all about.
Firstly, let’s see the opening slide of her lecture (which was given in 2022) where she introduces her class to Pemulwuy and the origins of ‘her mother’s mob.’
In our second mobile phone video clip, we hear Aunty Kerrie’s rendition of the recording she says ‘we’ have of Pemulwuy. As she tells us,
‘This song is an ancient song, that Pemulwuy sung to the British people … Pemulwuy was one of the culture heroes and warriors from Sydney at the time of colonisation. Now, we have actually a recording of Pemulwuy singing it, and he's really good and I'm really stink [?], but you just have to feel welcomed anyway. And what it's saying, it's really a man's song and I'm allowed to sing it because, um, [inaudible assistant prompting by whispers ? - Note 1] and um, it's song that says ‘welcome brothers.’ Yeah’.
Note 1: An informant alleges that in the lecture the whispering was actually by Professor Doyle herself, who is alleged to have whispered after the phrase, “I'm allowed to sing it because, um”, I've got menopause”.
The informant alleges one can hear it once you know. It is also alleged that this is fabricating cultural rules - women aren't allowed to sing men's songs simply because they have menopause.
So there you have it - a real revelation about the Indigenous knowledges of Pemulwuy and his First Nations people - not only were they the inventors of sound recording, but their technology was sophisticated enough to produce the recording on a medium (wax roll, wooden stick, vinyl disc, magnetic tape or maybe even a CD?) that stood the test of time to last 200 years under a custodianship that enabled it to be handed down to Professor Aunty Kerrie Doyle and her scholars at WSU. Truly amazing.
And furthermore, how lucky are her students to be able to hear Aunty Kerrie’s rendition of ‘Wellama’ - a man’s song but, as she claims, she has special permission to sing it.
Now, I know that some of our readers who have had the benefit of a ‘proper’ education might be looking at Aunty Kerrie’s claims with cynicism, but we all just need to remember that Aunty Kerrie was,
‘… the first Indigenous Australian woman to graduate from Oxford University. Aunty Kerrie, a proud Winninninni woman who grew up on Darkinjung country, completed a Master of Science in Evidence-Based Social Intervention and Policy at Wolfson College as part of the Roberta Sykes Scholarship programme (Source);
- promoted by Western Sydney University as an Winninninni woman to be the inaugural Associate Dean Indigenous Health within the School of Medicine (Source);
- honoured with having the ‘Aunty Kerrie Doyle Scholarship in Medicine, Nursing & Midwifery’, to the Value of $10,000 per annum for three years, named in her honour, and
- and still is employed by Western Sydney University, which was named 1st in the World in 2022 for its social, ecological, and economic impact – topping the list of more than 1,400 institutions.
Figure 1 - Western Sydney University wins Number #1 Award in 2022 - Source
With a list of academic achievements like the above, plus the continued support of the scholars and administration at WSU, Professor Aunty Kerrie Doyle’s claims about Pemulwuy must be true, mustn’t they?
We have not been able to find any evidence that WSU is at least questioning, if not challenging, Aunty Kerrie’s course content.
Indeed, Professor Aunty Kerrie Doyle and her rendition of Pemulwuy’s Welcome to Country has now escaped academia and is being accepted in public by some of the nation’s most senior medical scientists and practitioners, and parliamentarians. Below is a Zoom recording of Aunty Kerrie’s bona fides being wholly accepted by the former federal Minister, The Hon Dr Katie Allen (Lib) and the conference co-ordinator, Professor Helene Teede AO.
Figure 2 - Former Liberal Minister, the Hon Dr Katie Perry acknowledges Aunty Kerrie’s rendition of Pemulwuy’s Welcome.
Figure 3 - Professor Teede acknowledges Aunty Kerrie’s rendition of Pemulwuy’s Welcome. Source
One thing we have increasingly noticed about many academics who claim to be Aboriginal is how they stress at every opportunity their Aboriginality - they never fail to give us a little spiel about where they and their ancestors come from [it always seems to be the grandmother that is they key source of Aboriginality].
At this Zoom conference opening, Aunty Kerrie was just required to give a Welcome to Country. So why does she launch into a little lecture on the origins of her own Aboriginality?
Why does she provide a Pascoesque and New Age sermon on Mother Earth? As she tells us,
‘…one of the things that's common across all indigenous communities is the idea that the Earth is our Mother and I am the first born daughter, of the first born daughter, of the first born daughter, since time began. So my family come from Sydney and my Aboriginal mother, and my Aboriginal father comes from Winninninni [Budgeri?] borders up there but you can see when you look at this map that all of Australia had somebody that called it home and all of Australia had somebody that walked the country and knew its Mother Earth. So I'm speaking to you today from Dharug country which just borders on my mother's country… but I want to welcome you by singing a song that Pemelwuy wrote so that you can sing this song of welcome wherever you go…this song is a song of welcome and it means welcome, welcome and thrice welcome as we walk on Mother Earth she knows all our footsteps and loves us all equally. Thank you.’ [Ed. Amen]
Some readers might suspect that Aunty Kerrie sees this high-powered Zoom meeting as just another opportunity to publicly reinforce her claim of Aboriginality - where she now makes a claim to a ‘Deep-Time’ link to this continent, back to ‘since time began.’
Whereas in fact, we know that the genealogical records show that her family’s ‘deep-time’ link to this continent only goes back some 200 years, given that her ancestors came here as convicts and settlers in the early 1800s [Kerrie Doyle’s alleged Family Tree is here].
Why does all this matter?
It matters because if this ‘pseudo-profound bullshit’ is being believed in, and openly endorsed, by universities such as, Western Sydney University, and senior heath professionals, such as Professor Helene Teede and Dr Katie Allen, then how much credence should the public put in the other endorsements made by these institutions and professionals?
If these leaders are gullible enough to believe that Aunty Kerrie is singing a song recorded by Pemulwuy and that she is the ‘first born daughter, of the first born daughter, of the first born daughter since time began’, all under the auspices of Mother Earth, then so be it. But the rest of us, in particular young Aboriginal people [see Further Reading below], are waking up to this failure by our institutions and professional classes to bring this ‘fake’ industry to account.
Accordingly, steps are being implemented that we believe will ultimately expose very many fakes and their legacy of ‘Pseudo-profound Bullshit’.
So stay tuned!
Notes:
* We apologise for the crudeness of the phrase, ‘Pseudo-profound Bullshit’, but it is a newly termed phrase by the Canadian academic, Gordon Pennycook, in his co-authored paper, On the reception and detection of pseudo-profound bullshit (Judgment and Decision Making, Vol. 10, No. 6, November 2015, pp. 549–563).
A good detailed discussion of the rise of, and threats posed by, ‘psuedo-profound bullshit’ in Australian Universities is here [Quillette, Terry Moore and Carol Pybus 26 Jun 2022].
Further Reading
We have selected some edited comments from our informants, who we understand are in Professor Aunty Kerrie Doyle’s classes. Taken at face-value, they certainly raise some issues as to the veracity of some of the alleged claims being made by the Professor in class. Our investigations and correspondence with the administration at Western Sydney University will continue and we will report on any results as they come to hand.
The following comments are alleged to be claims that Professor Aunty Kerrie Doyle has made during her lectures. They have been provided to Dark Emu Exposed on condition of anonymity. We are not claiming that they are true, but only that they have been provided to us.
‘I am an Aboriginal working at Western Sydney University. I have suspected for a long time that some of the stuff she [Professor Auntie Kerrie Doyle] said just sounded like she was making it up … I'm very unhappy she is working in the position she is in. She's teaching all these young doctors and nurses about Aboriginal Health, which is an important issue. Then when they find out she's making up a lot of the Aboriginal cultural stories they might think of disregarding everything she's said as well in the lectures’. - [name provided]
‘I am a past Indigenous student of Aunty Kerrie Doyle at WSU and I am now aware that she recently added ‘Cadigal' to her list of mobs. Popped up out of nowhere a few years ago. I was talking to my Aunty about her, and she said one of her friends knew her years ago and she used to call herself the 'little white mouse' and claimed she was made white by the radiation at Maralinga. Unbelievable. [name supplied]
‘Thanks for your reply. Let me tell you about this story she [Aunty Kerrie Doyle] told us during a lecture about trauma. A lot of these lectures are over Zoom these days and they are often recorded. It was all about her dad, Robert Doyle.
She started off with some, 'No, I am Spartacus' type scenario where as a boy, Robert stepped in to take a flogging at the orphanage to protect some young boys who had stolen some pies or something.
She then ended the story with her [Aunty Kerrie Doyle] looking after her dying father in some hospital ward and seeing the floggings on his back for the first time ever and being shocked. It was all very Hollywood.
She also said she had to translate certain words the nurses wanted to say for him because he didn't understand the English word for them. But he went to the prestigious Slade School for Boys - how could educated Robert Doyle not understand the English word? She implied that she had to tranlate for him, presumably into Winninninni. LOL. We all say how clever it was of her to pick a tribe of which no other members exist to be able to say 'we don't know who you are'.
I am an Aboriginal man from xxxx. When Aboriginal people meet each other the first thing we ask is who's your mob? Then we spend the next five or ten minutes asking who do you know, are you related to such and such.
I haven't met a (genuine) Aboriginal person from Queensland to Tasmania to Broken Hill I couldn't figure out some kind of X degrees of separation link to. Ask any Aboriginal person and they'll tell you the same thing. But with her [Aunty Kerrie Doyle] there is no-one who ‘knows’ her or her mob and I’ve asked lots of people - no-one has heard of her or her aboriginal family or the Winninninni mob - it doesn’t exist.
All these ‘fakes’ with no Aborginal family connections are taking positions and scholarships, the idea of which is to help Aboriginal people help ourselves. She's done well for herself, it's a shame she doesn't have a community to give back to. She spends a lot of time talking about her Maori husband and showing photos of him, like that gives her credibility, but I've never once seen a photo or heard her talk about her own people other than this one lecture about Robert, who as your family tree shows wasn’t Aboriginal.
The problem is, these fakes set up these Aboriginal Corporations and award themselves certificates of Aboriginality.
Family members of my friend know a lot about cultural heritage …. they have never heard of the Winninninni.
I would love to see this become case law. Like you say, the universities need to improve. At the moment they're just ticking boxes and fulfilling quotas which will lead to no improvement in outcomes for my people. Without some level of accountability in these types of matters, all their 'closing the gap' rhetoric is crocodile tears.
While I suspect we have quite different agendas, I'll start looking what I can to help bolster any potential case against this rising tide of Dolezality. [Ed. see here Rachel Dolezal] [name supplied]
‘For example, during one lecture she sung a 'welcome song' and said that Pemulwuy first sung it to the Brits, and that we have a recording of Pemulwuy singing it. He was assassinated about 60 years before the invention of audio recording. On another lecture she says she is Cadigal on her mother's side, which is a recent addition to her story. I have these on tape. There's multiple examples of her making things up.’ [name supplied]
