“The objects he focuses on are implements which are large and heavy, and would have been used in the usual way of large, heavy objects – to break open wood, to take branches off trees and so on, when people are out collecting possums or honey or other food sources like that.”

She said one piece of misinformation she was particularly concerned about was Pascoe’s claim that Indigenous people used agricultural tools.

“I couldn’t find any archaeological evidence to support the claims that were being made.” “It had been recommended to me by many friends who did enjoy it and found it to be of great benefit, but I struggled with it,” she said. Picture: Liana Bossĭr Walshe admitted that at first she couldn’t make it through the book. While conservative critics have long been sceptical of Dark Emu, anthropologist Peter Sutton and archaeologist Keryn Walshe’s scholarly analysis, Farmers or Hunter-Gatherers? The Dark Emu Debate, has cast fresh doubts on the accuracy of Pascoe’s claims.ĪNU historian Tim Rowse, in his review Prof Sutton and Dr Walshe’s book published in The Canberra Times on Friday, declared that they “chip away at so many parts of Pascoe’s thesis that it is, in my opinion, demolished”.īyron Bay artist Craig Ruddy’s portrait of Bruce Pascoe. It claimed that Indigenous Australians were not just hunter-gatherers but engaged in agriculture, irrigation and construction, and lived in stone houses in cities of up to 1000 inhabitants. Pascoe’s hugely influential 2014 book, which won numerous literary awards and was heavily promoted by the ABC, painted a radically different view of Aboriginal history prior to colonisation. It comes after Sky News Host Andrew Bolt called on Indigenous Affairs Minister Ken Wyatt to apologise for “his part” in “Australia’s greatest literary hoax”, while a historian declared the claims in Dark Emu have been all but “demolished” by the rebuttal published this week. Two highly respected academics behind a devastating debunking of 2014’s smash hit Dark Emu say Bruce Pascoe’s controversial Indigenous history book should be pulled from schools.

The black emu