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Correct version of Australia’s history (Read 27404 times)
Jovial Monk
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Correct version of Australia’s history
Jul 9th, 2018 at 8:21pm
 
Quote:
Indigenous historian Bruce Pascoe says we’ve got our story all wrong

A HISTORIAN has painted a completely different version of Australia’s history - and it is causing huge shockwaves.

A RADICALLY different version of Australia’s history to what we are taught at school has been put forward by a historian — who believes it changes the entire concept of Australia as a country and who we really are.

We are taught Australia’s first people were simplistic hunter-gatherers who foraged for plants and randomly hunted kangaroos.

We are taught when Europeans landed, the indigenous people who first roamed the land were a disparate group of nomadic tribes, who never built permanent homes to shelter themselves.

But many of the early journals of the white settlers who first landed here — seeing a land completely untouched by other cultures for hundreds of thousands of years — saw something very different to what conventional history textbooks tell us.

Indigenous historian Bruce Pascoe has spent years looking through these incredible accounts and found the first white settlers documented how Aboriginal people built homes, villages, parks, dams and wells, selected seeds for harvesting, ploughed fields, irrigated crops and preserved food in vessels.

He says Aboriginal people were the first culture on earth to bake, evidenced by unearthed grindstones from 30,000 years ago, meaning Aussies beat the ancient Egyptians by more than 15,000 years.

In an interview with news.com.au after an groundbreaking speech at Tedx Sydney, the acclaimed author says Australia has deliberately avoided the subject for hundred of years. And, he believes the effect has been catastrophic.

“It has been purposefully left out of our history,” he said. “The misconception that Aboriginals were hunter-gatherers has been institutionalised and we are all suffering from that institutionalisation today — not just Aboriginal people but the whole country.”

WHAT HAPPENED TO IT ALL?

He says much of this complex civilisation had been wiped out by 1860, as the land was torn up by Europeans, buildings burned down and their occupants killed by warfare, murder and disease.

When this ancient infrastructure was destroyed, Mr Pascoe believes it became convenient for settlers to perpetuate the myth that the nation’s first people were incapable of organising a coherent and sophisticated society. He believes this, in their minds, legitimised their reason for being there.

“The country can’t afford to recognise the expertise and economic subtly of Aboriginal people because it talks about ownership of the land and it undermines the whole eligibility of the people to the land,” he said. “That’s why Australians have avoided it, not out of some vagueness or failure, but just total avoidance.”

In his award-winning book, Dark Emu, which has inspired a new contemporary dance production at the Sydney Opera House, Mr Pascoe details fascinating journals of the early European explorers.

They describe densely-populated Aboriginal villages up and down the country, some with sophisticated buildings made of large logs and clay plastering.

They also describe how indigenous people produced grain surplus to requirement, stored it and used complex systems to preserve soil, water, wildlife and fish as well as native seeds, nuts, fruits and vegetables.

HERE’S WHY IT IS SO IMPORTANT

Mr Pascoe says the settlers’ journals show Australia was a far more fertile land when they first landed than it is today and the vast area of the country we now consider an inhospitable desert was, in fact, meticulously and successfully managed by Aboriginal societies for thousands of years.

But when Europeans landed, they brought foreign livestock which broke up the soil with their hoofs leading to soil erosion. Settlers also brought foreign crops and intensive farming techniques, later resorting to chemical fertilisation which Mr Pascoe argues has drained the land of its former fertility.

“Recognising Aboriginal farming is fundamental to our understanding of country,” Mr Pascoe said. “If we are going to survive climate change we need to have a better understanding of the country because we have already run out of water.

“So, we have to learn to conserve water, we have to learn to conserve soil and we can learn from the Aboriginal past about how the people who lived here for hundreds of thousands of years used both and still maintained an agricultural economy.”

He argues the ancient farming techniques were more sympathetic to the land because they used Aussie plants — such as native millet, kangaroo grass and murnong — and animals like kangaroos and emus.

“They knew how to conserve water and soil and the proof of this was when the Europeans arrived and they described how the grass was higher than the saddles on their horses,” he said. “The country was more fertile then than it is now. When you talk to farmers now, they tell you their grandfathers had it better than they do.

“Farmers are ready to admit that what we are doing isn’t working and it isn’t sustainable. So they are keen to try growing native Australian plants.”

Mr Pascoe has even teamed up with a number other indigenous Australians living along the NSW South Coast and in east Gippsland in Victoria to trial native Aussie crops.

“We’re fooling ourselves if we think we can replace the old fertility with chemicals,” he added.


cont’d
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Jovial Monk
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Re: Correct version of Australia’s history
Reply #1 - Jul 9th, 2018 at 8:24pm
 
Quote:
HOW BRUCE DISCOVERED THIS

Mr Pascoe said he had grown up with stories of massacres, separation of families and institutional racism, but he had not heard about the wonders of Aboriginal agriculture until late on in his life.

He said it “fell into its path” as he searched for the story of his own family history when he met elders of his own Aboriginal family.

“When I spoke to them, I was taken to task because of my own misunderstanding of history and the stuff I had learned at school,” he said.

“Once I realised that my reading of history was appalling, I then had to refurbish my own brain and once I did that and started reading a few explorers’ journals, I began to realise that an unbelievably different story to be told about the country and I couldn’t believe how stupid I had been.”

Mr Pascoe said there was a bit of backlash against his ideas from certain historians when he first started writing about his theories in 2013, but since then, he said the majority of people he has spoken to, especially young people, have been enthusiastic about his arguments.

Now he wants Australians to look at the settlers’ journals and decide which version of history they believe.

“Teachers are just teaching what they learnt in school, so we need to expand resources so they and the children can access the journals,” he said. “Then, they can make their own mind up about what our history was really like.”



https://www.news.com.au/technology/environment/indigenous-historian-bruce-pascoe...

I posted this here as requested by mothra. When will the unjustified ban on mothra and JS be lifted?? FD?
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Gordon
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Re: Correct version of Australia’s history
Reply #2 - Jul 9th, 2018 at 8:28pm
 
Why does she need to post here? Doesn't your forum satisfy her needs?
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Mr Hammer
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Re: Correct version of Australia’s history
Reply #3 - Jul 9th, 2018 at 8:34pm
 
The east coast Aborigines survived largely on molluscs and shellfish. Journal keepers like Tench, Hunter etc give no insight into the arguments tabled above. Let's believe a 2018 historian who heard some stories rather than those who documented the events 240 years ago.
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Jovial Monk
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Re: Correct version of Australia’s history
Reply #4 - Jul 9th, 2018 at 8:35pm
 
If the story is true—and it likely is, have heard bits of it before, be some grouse collecting to be done.
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President Elect, The Mechanic
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Re: Correct version of Australia’s history
Reply #5 - Jul 9th, 2018 at 8:37pm
 
yes... and lets not forget the tooth fairy..  Cheesy Cheesy Cheesy
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Agnes
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Re: Correct version of Australia’s history
Reply #6 - Jul 9th, 2018 at 8:40pm
 
this crap has been in academic texts for years OLD NEWS!!!!!!
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x=^..^= x <o((((>< ~~~ x=^..^=x~~~x=^..^=x<o((((><~~~x=^..^=x


farewell to days of wild abandon and freedom in the adriatic
 
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Mr Hammer
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Re: Correct version of Australia’s history
Reply #7 - Jul 9th, 2018 at 8:41pm
 
Having a neo-colonialism bash is one thing. To venerate the idea of the noble savage to this extreme is just beyond the pale.
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Captain Caveman
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Re: Correct version of Australia’s history
Reply #8 - Jul 9th, 2018 at 8:43pm
 
Haha.
Abos with houses and farms and cooking and parks and dams and wells and....BULLCRAP! They were to thick to have a wheel....which would have been required before any of the other claims....  Grin
Haha....
If throwing a roo on a fire complete with fur and guts etc is classed as baking......then yes, they can bake.
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Gordon
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Re: Correct version of Australia’s history
Reply #9 - Jul 9th, 2018 at 9:01pm
 
There's evidence they had a space agency abiut 10000 years before white colonisation and had actually developed faster than light space travel. They found exploring the universe rather boring and gave it all up for sticks and goon.
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Mattyfisk
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Re: Correct version of Australia’s history
Reply #10 - Jul 9th, 2018 at 9:51pm
 
Mr Hammer wrote on Jul 9th, 2018 at 8:34pm:
The east coast Aborigines survived largely on molluscs and shellfish. Journal keepers like Tench, Hunter etc give no insight into the arguments tabled above. Let's believe a 2018 historian who heard some stories rather than those who documented the events 240 years ago.


THEY INVENTED A STICK...
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freediver
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Re: Correct version of Australia’s history
Reply #11 - Jul 9th, 2018 at 9:52pm
 
Reminds me of Falah.
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I identify as Mail because all I do is SendIT!
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Mattyfisk
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Re: Correct version of Australia’s history
Reply #12 - Jul 9th, 2018 at 9:54pm
 
freediver wrote on Jul 9th, 2018 at 9:52pm:
Reminds me of Falah.


He is in thy every breath.
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Grappler Truth Teller Feller
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Re: Correct version of Australia’s history
Reply #13 - Jul 9th, 2018 at 9:54pm
 
Gordon wrote on Jul 9th, 2018 at 9:01pm:
There's evidence they had a space agency abiut 10000 years before white colonisation and had actually developed faster than light space travel. They found exploring the universe rather boring and gave it all up for sticks and goon.


Don't forget the time travel machine... it's in a secret cave under Ayers Rock which is why they want to close it off to Whartey...

Are there any actual documents on show here or is this just a fine piece of editorial?  You can talk about wonderful Aboriginal culture including the telescope, time travel, space travel, and massive infrastructure - but where are the documents that support this?
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“Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”
― John Adams
 
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Mattyfisk
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Re: Correct version of Australia’s history
Reply #14 - Jul 9th, 2018 at 9:58pm
 
Don't forget how they stole Whitey's rock, leftards.

FD was planning on walking on it some day. Maybe.
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