Grappler Truth Teller Feller wrote on Jul 19
th, 2021 at 12:16am:
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Another revolutionary theory from Pascoe is that the Aboriginals created an ultra-civilised haven of peace which, almost unique in the world’s history, could be called “the great Australian peace”. His later book, Young Dark Emu, ends with the triumphant question: “Where else on Earth was there a civilisation that lasted more than 80,000 years”? Hardly any expert shares Pascoe’s insistence that Australia has been settled for 80,000 years.
While it is beyond doubt that a small number of Australian settlers killed a considerable number of Aboriginals, it is also certain that – long before 1788 – Aboriginal tribes were often at war among themselves. It is now common to minimise these battles, partly because they were over in a few hours and the deaths seemed few. The rate of death in the frequent wars was, however, high. The distinguished American anthropologist Lloyd Warner concluded that in a sparsely-peopled region of Arnhem Land where he did his fieldwork, about 200 Aboriginal men died from warfare between 1909 and 1929.
Professor Frederick Rose, one of the few scholars to live among Aboriginal peoples in the last phase of the tribal era, concluded that the Aboriginal deaths in battle were on a large scale. Pascoe read Rose’s book but must have skipped the pages where the bloody warfare is quantified. According to the Princeton historian and archaeologist, Ian Morris, the hunters and gatherers, wherever they existed, had a very high ratio of battle deaths (namely deaths in proportion to total population) compared to those living in our so-called “civilised” nations in the 20th century.
Influential educators seem slightly deluded in telling Australian children that the Aboriginals long ago had found the formula for international peace and that the childrens’ duty – when they grow up – is to persuade the UN to adopt that venerable Aboriginal formula.
To his credit, Pascoe is a lively and engaging lecturer especially to rural and Aboriginal groups, and his main book Dark Emu is very readable in many chapters. Some pages are like a friendly fireside chat in which he moves quickly from topic to topic. Some pages denounce the “brutal” European peoples or their Australian descendants at almost every opportunity. On one page they are said to be unlike the “kind” Chinese.
The landmark trophy which Pascoe achieved was for authors “of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander descent”, a prize initiated by premier Mike Baird of NSW and judged mainly on a book’s literary merits. In 2016, Pascoe’s prize was shared with a young Dutch Aboriginal author, Ellen Van Neerven. On the strength of his award, Pascoe was also judged eligible for the prized NSW “Book of the Year Award”, which he won. His career thereby received an enormous boost.
Dark Emu proclaims that his own Aboriginal ancestry embraces Bunurong and Tasmanian and Yuin peoples, but it is now known that his four grandparents were of English descent. Warren Mundine, one of the foremost Aboriginal Australians, and an expert in assessing a person’s claim to be Indigenous, has recently denounced Pascoe as a pretender. Most Australian readers would agree with Mundine that when a valuable prize is created to reward and foster Indigenous writers, an outsider should not be permitted to snatch the prize. If this happened in a major sport there would be a national uproar.
Pascoe not only has tried to revise the history of Australia but also turned upside down the geography. In his mind the vast Australian deserts were no obstacle to Aboriginal farmers, for he describes a prosperous chain of villages extending, millennium after millennium, right across the driest parts of the continent. This huge belt of country allegedly grew plentiful grains, whereas the wetter and cooler regions of Australia grew yams and other plants.
Each of the two books, Dark Emu for adults and Young Dark Emu for children, contains rival maps of Australia. Both omit the Torres Strait Islanders: real gardeners, they are therefore trouble makers upsetting his theories.
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