''Dark Emu: Black Seeds: Agriculture or Accident?'' is a 2014
non-fiction
Nonfiction, or non-fiction, is any document or media content that attempts, in good faith, to provide information (and sometimes opinions) grounded only in facts and real life, rather than in imagination. Nonfiction is often associated with be ...
book by
Bruce Pascoe
Bruce Pascoe (born 1947) is an Aboriginal Australian writer of literary fiction, non-fiction, poetry, essays and children's literature. As well as his own name, Pascoe has written under the pen names Murray Gray and Leopold Glass. Since August 2 ...
. It reexamines colonial accounts of
Aboriginal people in Australia, and cites evidence of pre-colonial
agriculture
Agriculture or farming is the practice of cultivating plants and livestock. Agriculture was the key development in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that enabled people to ...
,
engineering
Engineering is the use of scientific method, scientific principles to design and build machines, structures, and other items, including bridges, tunnels, roads, vehicles, and buildings. The discipline of engineering encompasses a broad rang ...
and
building construction
Construction is a general term meaning the art and science to form objects, systems, or organizations,"Construction" def. 1.a. 1.b. and 1.c. ''Oxford English Dictionary'' Second Edition on CD-ROM (v. 4.0) Oxford University Press 2009 and com ...
by Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander
Torres Strait Islanders () are the Indigenous Melanesian people of the Torres Strait Islands, which are part of the state of Queensland, Australia. Ethnically distinct from the Aboriginal people of the rest of Australia, they are often grouped ...
peoples. A second edition, published under the title ''Dark Emu: Aboriginal Australia and the Birth of Agriculture'' was published in mid-2018, and a version of the book for younger readers, entitled ''Young Dark Emu: A Truer History'', was published in 2019.
Both the first and the children's editions were shortlisted for major awards, and the former won two awards in the
New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards
The New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards, also known as the NSW Premier's Literary Awards, were first awarded in 1979. They are among the richest literary awards in Australia. Notable prizes include the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction, th ...
. The book has also proved very popular with the Australian public, selling 250,000 copies by mid-2021. Its strengths have been said to lie in the
storytelling
Storytelling is the social and cultural activity of sharing stories, sometimes with improvisation, theatrics or embellishment. Every culture has its own stories or narratives, which are shared as a means of entertainment, education, cultural pre ...
style, making it more accessible to the general reader than the more scholarly examinations of Aboriginal history in the past.
The accuracy of ''Dark Emu'' has been debated in the Australian media and political spheres, and some academics have criticised Pascoe's thesis that
Indigenous Australian
Indigenous Australians or Australian First Nations are people with familial heritage from, and membership in, the ethnic groups that lived in Australia before British colonisation. They consist of two distinct groups: the Aboriginal peoples ...
society was based to such a large extent on
sedentary agriculture rather than
hunting and gathering
A traditional hunter-gatherer or forager is a human living an ancestrally derived lifestyle in which most or all food is obtained by foraging, that is, by gathering food from local sources, especially edible wild plants but also insects, fungi, ...
. It has, however, been welcomed as a contribution to further investigations into Indigenous history.
Editions
The first edition, entitled ''Dark Emu: Black Seeds: Agriculture or Accident?'', was published by
Magabala Books
Magabala Books is an Indigenous publishing house based in Broome, Western Australia.
It started in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
The name ''Magabala'' is a Yawuru, Karrajari and Nyulnyul word for the bush banana. In 1990, Magabala Books be ...
in 2014. The title refers to what is known as the
Emu in the sky constellation in
Aboriginal astronomy
Australian Aboriginal astronomy is a name given to Aboriginal Australian culture relating to astronomical subjects – such as the Sun and Moon, the stars, planets, and the Milky Way, and their motions on the sky.
Traditional Aboriginal cu ...
, known as Gugurmin, or "dark emu" to the
Wiradjuri
The Wiradjuri people (; ) are a group of Aboriginal Australian people from central New South Wales
)
, nickname =
, image_map = New South Wales in Australia.svg
, map_caption = Location of New South Wales in AustraliaCoordinates:
, ...
people.
A second edition, entitled ''Dark Emu: Aboriginal Australia and the Birth of Agriculture'' was published in June 2018, and a version of the book for younger readers, entitled ''Young Dark Emu: A Truer History'', was published in 2019.
The 2019 version was shortlisted for the 2020
Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature
The Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature comprise a group of biennially-granted literary awards established in 1986 by the Government of South Australia, announced during Adelaide Writers' Week, as part of the Adelaide Festival. The awards i ...
in the Children's Literature Award section.
Contents
In ''Dark Emu'' Pascoe draws on the writings of early British settlers and recent decades of scholarship to argue that traditional Aboriginal society was characterised by agriculture, aquaculture, elaborate engineering, villages of permanent structures, and other features which are incompatible with the view that Aboriginal Australians were only hunter-gatherers.
He states, "The belief that Aboriginal people were ‘mere’ hunter-gatherers has been used as a political tool to justify dispossession."
Pascoe quotes
Charles Sturt
Charles Napier Sturt (28 April 1795 – 16 June 1869) was a British officer and explorer of Australia, and part of the European exploration of Australia. He led several expeditions into the interior of the continent, starting from Sydney and la ...
,
Thomas Mitchell and other explorers and settlers who describe Aboriginal hayricks, stooks, crops and villages, and Aboriginal people practicing seed selection, soil preparation, crop harvesting, and storing surplus crops.
He also describes Sturt's 1845 encounter with hundreds of Aboriginal people who were living in a village near
Cooper Creek
The Cooper Creek (formerly Cooper's Creek) is a river in the Australian states of Queensland and South Australia. It was the site of the death of the explorers Burke and Wills in 1861. It is sometimes known as the Barcoo River from one of its t ...
and offered him water, roast duck, cake and a hut to sleep in.
Pascoe concludes that, "most Aboriginal Australians were...in the early stages of an agricultural society, and, it could be argued, ahead of many other parts of the world."
Pascoe provides evidence of Aboriginal dams, weirs, sluices and fish traps, and argues that pre-colonial Aboriginal people practiced aquaculture.
He cites the work of archaeologist Heather Builth and
palynologist
Palynology is the "study of dust" (from grc-gre, παλύνω, palynō, "strew, sprinkle" and ''-logy'') or of "particles that are strewn". A classic palynologist analyses particulate samples collected from the air, from water, or from deposits ...
Peter Kershaw and concludes that sites at Lake Condah in
western Victoria
Western Victoria is a wine grape growing zone in the southwestern part of the state of Victoria in Australia. It extends approximately from the South Australia border to Ballarat and from Horsham to the coast. It includes the defined wine regio ...
are elaborately engineered eel and fish traps associated with permanent stone buildings built by the
Gunditjmara
The Gunditjmara or Gunditjamara, also known as Dhauwurd Wurrung, are an Aboriginal Australian people of southwestern Victoria. They are the traditional owners of the areas now encompassing Warrnambool, Port Fairy, Woolsthorpe and Portland. Their ...
people around 8,000 years ago.
Pascoe quotes nineteenth century accounts of Aboriginal people living in villages and towns with sturdy huts, the largest of which could accommodate 30-40 people. Sturt reported a town of 1,000 people on the Darling River. Pascoe states that towns such as the collection of stone structures at Lake Condah are evidence of sedentary or semi-sedentary Aboriginal culture. He concludes, "Permanent housing was a feature of the pre-contact Aboriginal economy, and marked the movement towards agricultural reliance."
Pascoe acknowledges his debt to the work of
Rupert Gerritsen
Rupert Gerritsen (1953 – 3 November 2013) was an Australian historian and a noted authority on Indigenous Australian prehistory. Coupled with his work on early Australian cartography, he played an influential part in re-charting Australian h ...
, who in 2008 published ''Australia and the Origins of Agriculture'', which argued that some Aboriginal people were farmers as much as hunter-gatherers. Pascoe also draws on the work of historian
Bill Gammage
William Leonard Gammage (born 1942) is an Australian academic historian, adjunct professor and senior research fellow at the Humanities Research Centre of the Australian National University (ANU).
Gammage was born in Orange, New South Wales, w ...
, author of ''The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia'' (2012), which looks at how Aboriginal people used
fire
Fire is the rapid oxidation of a material (the fuel) in the exothermic chemical process of combustion, releasing heat, light, and various reaction Product (chemistry), products.
At a certain point in the combustion reaction, called the ignition ...
,
dams
A dam is a barrier that stops or restricts the flow of surface water or underground streams. Reservoirs created by dams not only suppress floods but also provide water for activities such as irrigation, human consumption, industrial use, ...
and
cropping to support themselves sustainably in their environment.
[Pascoe (2018) pp. 231-33]
In the last two chapters of ''Dark Emu'', titled "Australian Agricultural Revolution" and "Accepting History and Creating the Future", Pascoe advocates for changes in current Australian methods of agriculture and lifestyle.
Pascoe says that Australia could learn from Indigenous culture and landcare, replacing wheat with native grasses and eating
kangaroo
Kangaroos are four marsupials from the family Macropodidae (macropods, meaning "large foot"). In common use the term is used to describe the largest species from this family, the red kangaroo, as well as the antilopine kangaroo, eastern gre ...
rather than
cattle
Cattle (''Bos taurus'') are large, domesticated, cloven-hooved, herbivores. They are a prominent modern member of the subfamily Bovinae and the most widespread species of the genus ''Bos''. Adult females are referred to as cows and adult mal ...
.
Reception
Sales and reviews
The book received critical acclaim, winning two
NSW Premier's Literary Awards
The New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards, also known as the NSW Premier's Literary Awards, were first awarded in 1979. They are among the richest literary awards in Australia. Notable prizes include the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction, th ...
(Book of the Year and the Indigenous Writers' Prize)
and being shortlisted for two other prizes (the History Book Award in the
Queensland Literary Awards
The Queensland Literary Awards is an awards program established in 2012 by the Queensland literary community, funded by sponsors and administered by the State Library of Queensland. Like the former Queensland Premier's Literary Awards, the QLAs ...
and
Victorian Premier's Award for Indigenous Writing),
[ as well as mainstream recognition.] It was reviewed by three Australian teachers' associations, earned positive reviews in other media, and, with the highest number of nominations by members of the public, was chosen to be the first book discussed in the inaugural meeting of the Parliamentary Book Club. A new edition was published in 2018. By mid 2021 the book had sold 250,000 copies.[ There is an ]audiobook
An audiobook (or a talking book) is a recording of a book or other work being read out loud. A reading of the complete text is described as "unabridged", while readings of shorter versions are abridgements.
Spoken audio has been available in sc ...
and ebook
An ebook (short for electronic book), also known as an e-book or eBook, is a book publication made available in digital form, consisting of text, images, or both, readable on the flat-panel display of computers or other electronic devices. Alt ...
version.
Praise
Historian Bill Gammage
William Leonard Gammage (born 1942) is an Australian academic historian, adjunct professor and senior research fellow at the Humanities Research Centre of the Australian National University (ANU).
Gammage was born in Orange, New South Wales, w ...
, whose 2012 work ''The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia'' influenced ''Dark Emu'', praised Pascoe's gift for weaving a narrative that challenges many readers' preconceptions. He admired the book for its impact, but added that Pascoe sometimes romanticises pre-contact Indigenous society, and his claims that Stone Age
The Stone Age was a broad prehistoric period during which stone was widely used to make tools with an edge, a point, or a percussion surface. The period lasted for roughly 3.4 million years, and ended between 4,000 BC and 2,000 BC, with t ...
Indigenous people invented democracy
Democracy (From grc, δημοκρατία, dēmokratía, ''dēmos'' 'people' and ''kratos'' 'rule') is a form of government in which the people have the authority to deliberate and decide legislation (" direct democracy"), or to choose gov ...
and baking may be "push ngthese things too far".
Lynette Russell
Lynette Wendy Russell, (born 27 April 1960) is an Australian historian, known for her work on the history of Indigenous Australians; in particular, anthropological history (especially during the History of Australia#Colonisation, early colonial ...
, at Monash University
Monash University () is a public research university based in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Named for prominent World War I general Sir John Monash, it was founded in 1958 and is the second oldest university in the state. The university has a ...
's Indigenous Studies Centre and co-author of ''Australia's First Naturalists: Indigenous Peoples' Contribution to Early Zoology'', admired ''Dark Emus achievement in popularising ideas that challenged European Australians' cultural preconceptions. She said that it had managed to promulgate more widely "information about indigenous land management practices that archaeologists have known for a long time".
Tony Hughes-D'Aeth, a researcher in cultural history at the University of Western Australia
The University of Western Australia (UWA) is a public research university in the Australian state of Western Australia. The university's main campus is in Perth, the state capital, with a secondary campus in Albany, Western Australia, Albany an ...
, said that ''Dark Emu'' "provides the most concerted attempt etto answer the question about the quality of the country...in the pre-colonial epoch", and that the book's strengths lie in "its ability to bridge archaeology, anthropology, archival history, Indigenous oral tradition and other more esoteric but highly revealing disciplines such as ethnobotany and paleoecology".[
Writer and historian James Boyce, after some discussion of the book's strengths and weaknesses, says that, although a "flawed attempt", the book's appeal is to "a community of folk who... are eager to learn from and engage with First Nations peoples and their heritage"; Pascoe is a skilled storyteller, and ''Dark Emu'' is a significant cultural achievement because it has engaged these readers, where many other examples of scholarly information have not done so. While there is no single narrative that tells the whole story, ''Dark Emu'' might be the first step for many readers who have not previously engaged with the history of dispossession of the Indigenous peoples of Australia.]
Pascoe's friend, writer Gregory Day
Gregory Day is an Australian novelist, poet, and musician.
Life
Gregory Day is a novelist, poet, essayist and musician based in Victoria (Australia), Victoria, Australia. He is well known for his Mangowak novels, which document generationa ...
, thinks that Pascoe's book connects with general readers because "he knows what it feels like to be a whitefella – in a sense, Bruce is translating it for this whitefellas".
Debate and criticism
Pascoe's book has been extensively debated in Australian media and political spheres.
Several academics have criticised Pascoe's claim that since 1880 scholars have suppressed accounts of sophisticated housing and food and environmental management practices in traditional Aboriginal societies. Peter Hiscock, chair of archaeology at Sydney University
The University of Sydney (USYD), also known as Sydney University, or informally Sydney Uni, is a public research university located in Sydney, Australia. Founded in 1850, it is the oldest university in Australia and is one of the country's six ...
, archaeologist Harry Lourandos
Harry Lourandos (born 1945) is an Australian archaeologist, adjunct professor in the Department of Anthropology, Archaeology and Sociology, School of Arts and Social Sciences at James Cook University, Cairns. He is a leading proponent of the theo ...
, who documented the construction of eel
Eels are ray-finned fish belonging to the order Anguilliformes (), which consists of eight suborders, 19 families, 111 genera, and about 800 species. Eels undergo considerable development from the early larval stage to the eventual adult stage ...
traps in Victoria
Victoria most commonly refers to:
* Victoria (Australia), a state of the Commonwealth of Australia
* Victoria, British Columbia, provincial capital of British Columbia, Canada
* Victoria (mythology), Roman goddess of Victory
* Victoria, Seychelle ...
in the 1970s, and Ian McNiven of Monash University
Monash University () is a public research university based in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Named for prominent World War I general Sir John Monash, it was founded in 1958 and is the second oldest university in the state. The university has a ...
's Indigenous Studies Centre all agree that there is a large body of published work on the topic. However, Lourandos and McNiven are delighted at the book's success in reaching the broader public.[
Some academics have specifically addressed the debate surrounding ''Dark Emu''s thesis that Indigenous Australian society was largely built on sedentary agriculture rather than hunting and gathering. Anthropologist ]Ian Keen
Ian Keen (born 21 November 1938) is an Australian anthropologist, whose research interests cover Yolngu kinship structures and religion, Aboriginal land rights and economies, and language.
Life
Keen was born in the northern London borough of F ...
argues against Pascoe's thesis that Indigenous Australians practised agriculture. He concluded that "Aboriginal people were indeed hunters, gatherers and fishers at the time of the British colonisation of Australia
The history of Australia is the story of the land and peoples of the continent of Australia.
People first arrived on the Australian mainland by sea from Maritime Southeast Asia between 50,000 and 65,000 years ago, and penetrated to all part ...
", although acknowledging "the boundary between foraging and farming is a fuzzy one".
Historians Lynette Russell and Billy Griffiths wrote that Pascoe had drawn together an enormous amount of ethnographic
Ethnography (from Greek ''ethnos'' "folk, people, nation" and ''grapho'' "I write") is a branch of anthropology and the systematic study of individual cultures. Ethnography explores cultural phenomena from the point of view of the subject o ...
evidence showing that Aboriginal peoples "were not hapless wanderers across the soil, mere hunter-gatherers"; however, they challenge the implicit Eurocentric
Eurocentrism (also Eurocentricity or Western-centrism)
is a worldview that is centered on Western civilization or a biased view that favors it over non-Western civilizations. The exact scope of Eurocentrism varies from the entire Western world ...
idea that agriculture is the result of "progress" on a continuum from hunter-gathering, or that such an evolutionary hierarchy exists. They argue Western terminology lacks nuance, and "Communities have shifted between these categories and moved back and forth as suited their needs". James Boyce echoes this view: "The 'progress' inherent to a move from foraging to farming has been questioned by historians, anthropologists and archaeologists for more than 50 years... there was rarely a sharp line between farming and hunter-gatherer ways of life".[
In '' Farmers or Hunter-Gatherers? The Dark Emu Debate'' (2021), anthropologist Peter Sutton and archaeologist Keryn Walshe suggest that ''Dark Emu'' devalues pre-colonial Aboriginal society, privileging agriculture above a hunter-gatherer ]socio-economic
Socioeconomics (also known as social economics) is the social science that studies how economic activity affects and is shaped by social processes. In general it analyzes how modern societies progress, stagnate, or regress because of their local ...
system. They also criticise the work on grounds of being poorly researched, not fully sourced, and selective in its choice and emphasis of the facts. In James Boyce's opinion, their most salient criticisms include that Pascoe uses white explorers’ journals, ignoring the knowledge of Aboriginal sources, and also that he generalises from local examples and claims incorrectly that such technologies were used across the continent. However, he is also critical of some aspects of Sutton and Walshe's work.[
Aboriginal human rights advocate ]Hannah McGlade
Hannah McGlade CF (born 6 June 1969) is an Australian academic, human rights advocate and lawyer. She is a Kurin Minang Noongar woman of the Bibulman nation and is an associate professor at Curtin University's law school. She was appointed Sen ...
, a Noongar
The Noongar (, also spelt Noongah, Nyungar , Nyoongar, Nyoongah, Nyungah, Nyugah, and Yunga ) are Aboriginal Australian peoples who live in the south-west corner of Western Australia, from Geraldton on the west coast to Esperance on the so ...
woman and member of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues
The United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII or PFII) is the UN's central coordinating body for matters relating to the concerns and rights of the world's indigenous peoples. There are more than 370 million indigenous peop ...
, writes in ''The Australian
''The Australian'', with its Saturday edition, ''The Weekend Australian'', is a broadsheet newspaper published by News Corp Australia since 14 July 1964.Bruns, Axel. "3.1. The active audience: Transforming journalism from gatekeeping to gatew ...
'' that ''Dark Emu'' is "misleading and offensive to Aboriginal people and culture" and that it "is not very truthful or accurate". Warrimay historian Victoria Grieve-Williams, also in ''The Australian'', calls ''Dark Emu'' a scandal and a hoax
A hoax is a widely publicized falsehood so fashioned as to invite reflexive, unthinking acceptance by the greatest number of people of the most varied social identities and of the highest possible social pretensions to gull its victims into pu ...
, and expresses deep concerns in the Aboriginal community about the story Pascoe is telling, saying that her family were not farmers, but proud of being hunter–gatherers.
After Pauline Hanson's One Nation
Pauline Hanson's One Nation (PHON or ONP), also known as One Nation or One Nation Party, is a Right-wing populism, right-wing populist List of political parties in Australia, political party in Australia. It is led by Pauline Hanson.
One Nat ...
MP Mark Latham
Mark William Latham (born 28 February 1961) is an Australian politician and media commentator, currently serving as a member in the New South Wales Legislative Council. He previously served as the leader of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) and ...
proposed in the New South Wales Parliament
The Parliament of New South Wales is a bicameral legislature in the Australian state of New South Wales (NSW), consisting of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly (lower house) and the New South Wales Legislative Council (upper house). Each ...
in June 2021 that the book should be banned from use by teachers in NSW schools (where it is not part of the curriculum, but available as an historical source for critical discussion), his motion had little support. The Minister for Indigenous Australians
The Minister for Indigenous Australians in the Government of Australia is a position which holds responsibility for affairs affecting Indigenous Australians. Previous ministers have held various other titles since the position was created in 196 ...
, Ken Wyatt
Kenneth George Wyatt (born 4 August 1952) is a former Australian politician who was a member of the House of Representatives from 2010 to 2022, representing the Division of Hasluck for the Liberal Party. He is the first Indigenous Australian el ...
, later commented that he welcomed "more people taking the time to read ''Dark Emu'' and consulting Mr Pascoe’s references to verify or disprove his assertions as we do with various academic studies or research... What’s important here is that we are open to hearing other people’s perspectives, contemplating and genuinely engaging in working constructively together to reconcile our understandings".
On 11 September 2021, Pascoe published in the ''Sydney Morning Herald
''The Sydney Morning Herald'' (''SMH'') is a daily compact newspaper published in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, and owned by Nine. Founded in 1831 as the ''Sydney Herald'', the ''Herald'' is the oldest continuously published newspaper i ...
'' a reflection in which he wrote:
:There has been some criticism of my book, ''Dark Emu'', but when I read the book, 'Farmers or Hunter-Gathers? The Dark Emu Debate'' by Peter Sutton and Keryn Walshe which claims to repudiate it, I was amazed at how frequently the writers agreed with me. The big sticking point seems to be what we call the precolonial Aboriginal economy and culture. I don’t really care what it is called as long as Australians are allowed to know that Aboriginal people sometimes lived in houses and villages, often employed technology to harvest food and sometimes wore cloaks and sewn apparel.
:I want all Australians to know that their country had an automatic fishing machine, that Aboriginal people often built houses that could accommodate 50 people, that miles of aqueducts and channels had been built to harvest fish. I can’t believe anyone would ''not'' want their fellow countrywomen and men to have this knowledge about their country and ''not'' to consider what this says about our history. Whether the history is 65,000 or 120,000 years or more, we know that it is the oldest human civilisation on earth.
:It’s not about a culture being better or worse than any other, it’s about the true history of the land and how the First Nations culture managed their economy and society. And how that sovereignty was taken away. It still surprises me that airwaves melt down when someone suggests that the invasion of Australia was just that, an invasion.
Stimulation of further studies
Archaeologist Michael Westaway and Joshua Gorringe consider ''Dark Emu'' in relation to the archaeological research in the Channel Country
The Channel Country is a region of outback Australia mostly in the state of Queensland but also in parts of South Australia, Northern Territory and New South Wales. The name comes from the numerous intertwined rivulets that cross the region ...
in central Australia, which has identified more than 140 sandstone quarry
A quarry is a type of open-pit mine in which dimension stone, rock, construction aggregate, riprap, sand, gravel, or slate is excavated from the ground. The operation of quarries is regulated in some jurisdictions to reduce their envi ...
sites, including the largest seed grinding quarry site in Australia, the remains of pit dwelling huts known as gunyahs and evidence of trade with other communities as far away as Mount Isa
Mount Isa ( ) is a city in the Gulf Country region of Queensland, Australia. It came into existence because of the vast mineral deposits found in the area. Mount Isa Mines (MIM) is one of the most productive single mines in world history, bas ...
, and asks "Could this trade system have played a role in the development of more intensified quarrying activity and more sedentary settlement systems?". Contemporary archaeological research suggests there is not a simple dichotomy
A dichotomy is a partition of a whole (or a set) into two parts (subsets). In other words, this couple of parts must be
* jointly exhaustive: everything must belong to one part or the other, and
* mutually exclusive: nothing can belong simulta ...
between farming and hunter-gathering by the First Australians. They say that "Gerritsen’s research and Pascoe’s popularised account have inspired and stimulated a different way of thinking about Aboriginal food production systems, and how we might investigate an archaeological record for Aboriginal village settlements... ''Dark Emu'' provides a different account of the Aboriginal past, written by an Aboriginal person outside of the academy, which challenges us to think differently about how we might define Aboriginal people... it is up to archaeologists now to test Pascoe’s hypothesis". The area is on trade routes used by First Nations people. The Mithaka Aboriginal Corporation, representing the native title
Aboriginal title is a common law doctrine that the land rights of indigenous peoples to customary tenure persist after the assumption of sovereignty under settler colonialism. The requirements of proof for the recognition of aboriginal title, ...
owners, has published a framework to support culturally sensitive and ethical research in the area.
Awards and accolades
*2014: Shortlisted – History Book Award in the Queensland Literary Awards
The Queensland Literary Awards is an awards program established in 2012 by the Queensland literary community, funded by sponsors and administered by the State Library of Queensland. Like the former Queensland Premier's Literary Awards, the QLAs ...
[
*2014: Shortlisted – ]Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Indigenous Writing
The Victorian Premier's Prize for Indigenous Writing is a prize category in the annual Victorian Premier's Literary Award
The Victorian Premier's Literary Awards were created by the Victorian Government with the aim of raising the profile of cont ...
* 2016: Winner – two NSW Premier's Literary Awards
The New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards, also known as the NSW Premier's Literary Awards, were first awarded in 1979. They are among the richest literary awards in Australia. Notable prizes include the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction, th ...
: Book of the Year and the Indigenous Writers' Prize
* 2019: Chosen by the public for the first Parliamentary Book Club[
* 2020: ''Young Dark Emu: A Truer History'' shortlisted for the 2020 ]Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature
The Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature comprise a group of biennially-granted literary awards established in 1986 by the Government of South Australia, announced during Adelaide Writers' Week, as part of the Adelaide Festival. The awards i ...
in the Children's Literature Award section.
Adaptations
*The Bangarra Dance Theatre
Bangarra Dance Theatre is an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander dance company focused on contemporary dance. It was founded by African American dancer and choreographer Carole Y. Johnson, Gumbaynggirr man Rob Bryant, and South African-born ...
''Dark Emu'' production was first performed in 2018 at the Sydney Opera House
The Sydney Opera House is a multi-venue performing arts centre in Sydney. Located on the foreshore of Sydney Harbour, it is widely regarded as one of the world's most famous and distinctive buildings and a masterpiece of 20th-century architec ...
.
*''Young Dark Emu: A Truer History'', was published in 2019, intended for school use.
*Blackfella Films
Blackfella Films is a Sydney-based documentary and narrative production company, founded in 1992 by Rachel Perkins. The company produces distinctive Australian short and feature-length content for film and television with a particular focus on A ...
have announced plans to adapt ''Dark Emu'' as a television documentary.
See also
* '' 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus''
* Billy Griffiths
* ''Braiding Sweetgrass
''Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants'' is a 2013 nonfiction book by Citizen Potawatomi Nation, Potawatomi professor Robin Wall Kimmerer, about the role of Indigenous knowledge as an alternat ...
''
* History wars
The history wars is a term used in Australia to describe the public debate about the interpretation of the history of the European colonisation of Australia and the development of contemporary Australian society, particularly with regard to th ...
References
Further reading
*
*
*
*
*
*
*{{cite web, url=https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/archived/bushtelegraph/rethinking-indigenous-australias-agricultural-past/5452454, publisher=Australian Broadcasting Corporation, series=Bush Telegraph, website=Radio National, title=Rethinking Indigenous Australia's agricultural past, date=15 May 2014, first=Cameron, last=Wilson, ref=none
Australian non-fiction books
2014 non-fiction books
Books about Indigenous Australians
History books about agriculture
Books about Australian history