Legitimate questions may be asked about Dark Emu, but it can’t be ignored that much of the right’s war against Bruce Pascoe comes from a hatred that they themselves probably don’t fully grasp.
Well, that escalated quickly.
Monday, your correspondent had a story about the success and contestation of Dark Emu. I focused on two things: first, that Professor Peter Sutton and Dr Keryn Walshe, both experts in their fields, had fairly convincingly (certainly with great documented detail) argued that Bruce Pascoe had overextended evidence of various growing practices — from seeding to firestick burning — by pre-1788 Aboriginal people into systemic “incipient agriculture”.
Secondly, that Pascoe had reintroduced notions of cultural progress and worth by way of material production into ideas of Aboriginal society, blunting notions of the radical difference between “kinship-spiritual” societies and ours.
Go deeper on the issues that matter.
Already a subscriber? Log in to keep reading.
Or, register your email address for a FREE 21-day trial.
