Dark Emu
Ratings12
Average rating4.3
History has portrayed Australia's First Peoples, the Aboriginals, as hunter-gatherers who lived on an empty, uncultivated land. History is wrong. In this seminal book, Bruce Pascoe uncovers evidence that long before the arrival of white men, Aboriginal people across the continent were building dams and wells; planting, irrigating, and harvesting seeds, and then preserving the surplus and storing it in houses, sheds, or secure vessels; and creating elaborate cemeteries and manipulating the landscape. All of these behaviors were inconsistent with the hunter-gatherer tag, which turns out have been a convenient lie that worked to justify dispossession. Using compelling evidence from the records and diaries of early Australian explorers and colonists, he reveals that Aboriginal systems of food production and land management have been blatantly understated in modern retellings of early Aboriginal history, and that a new look at Australia's past is required -- for the benefit of all Australians. Dark Emu, a bestseller in Australia, won both the Book of the Year Award and the Indigenous Writer's Prize in the 2016 New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards.
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I've been sitting on this review for a while as I felt it wasn't exactly my place to give this book a rating - much like rating a biography, who am I to say if the story of such a persons life was good or bad? With Dark Emu I thought, how can I give a rating to the stories and way of life of Indigenous Australians? However, I have decided that I should at least give my thoughts on this brilliant book. This book was so educational and I really enjoyed reading and learning - no matter how disappointed I was that I had not been taught these things in school and the sheer volume of things I just did not know. I think this book should be one that all Australians read and should be in the school curriculum. It is incredibly well researched and the evidence presented makes you question how you didn't know all of this before (although we already know why). I thoroughly enjoyed reading Dark Emu and would highly recommend it.
Kind of mind blowing. Feel a bit sick that I needed convincing of all of this info (because it's so far from what I was taught growing up)
Really incredible. A must read for our generation, I think. Truly deepened my understanding of Australia
A great read that tears apart simplistic definitions of “hunter-gatherers” vs “agriculturalist”.
There's some contention about accuracy - it does feel a little like Bruce might be overstretching himself trying to build a farming narrative - but separate to that it at leasts helps readers appreciate how Aboriginals treated the whole of Australia as their farm, cultivating it in simple-yet-complex ways on a scale larger and looser than we might imagine.
A fascinating reevaluation of our history, and one that provides a basis for further developing our own uniquely Australian identity.
