Dark Emu, Bruce Pascoe and the Hunter/Gatherer Controversy

This is a transcript of a YouTube video of an online discussion hosted by the Australian Institute. Geoffrey Blainey (historian) and Warren Mundine (prominent aboriginal) discusses 'Dark Emu' by Bruce Pascoe and the the controversy over whether aboriginals, at the time of colonisation were practising broad-scale agriculture and lived in villages of up to 1,000 people.

The YouTube link is here.

0:07
Gerard Henderson (executive Director): Welcome to all those in on the call of which there are many, for the discussion on Dark Emu Bruce Pascoe and the hunter gatherer controversy with Jeffrey Blainey and Warren Mundine ...
0:31
... we're going to lead off with Warren Mundine.

Now Warren Mundine has been an advisor in indigenous affairs for many years with various governments. He's also an author most recently of 'Black and White', his memoir, and 'Speaking My Mind'.

Professor Jeffrey Blainey. Jeffrey Blainey is perhaps Australia's most highly regarded historian — a long time historian of Australia (and other and other works), but his most recent book (and he spoke here on this), is 'Before I Forget', which was an early part of his memoir.

Now both Warren and Jeffrey have spoken here before it's great to have them back, so we'll lead off with Warren and then we'll go to Jeffrey and then we'll go to questions and discussion. Warren ...

1:21
Warren Mundine: Thanks um for that introduction, and I'd like to say I'm pleased to be on the stage here with professor Geoffrey Blainey, who is a very esteemed historian and and a great commentator in the in the Australian mix.

I hadn't taken much notice of 'Dark Emu' in the first few years when it first come out — I was looking in doing other things. But in the last couple of years when this controversy started blowing up, especially about his aboriginality and about some of the issues that were in the book.

A friend of mine gave me a book and said you should read this, and I thought, okay I would. So last year while we were very much locked up in in covid I had to find my time so I went and read the book.

One of the things I've I've really got to talk about with aboriginal culture, and that is that through your history, through your background, you have song lines. You have stories that talk about a wide range of things about how your culture and how your community is and also about your dream time stories and your history. And that's and that's all done through stories, it's all done through story lines.

2:52
What I found within the the 'Dark Emu' book was that Bruce Pascoe takes some relevant historical truths and then blows them up in into these massive ideas about agriculture; aboriginals and agriculture; we had townships; we had villages, you know a thousand people and so on. He sort of, to me, takes a Euro-centric approach to things, by downplaying the hunter-gatherer societies.

Now in in my community, which is the Bungeeland community, we have no stories of villages of a thousand people, with no stories of towns. We don't have stories of agriculture — the type of agriculture that he was talking about. And also agriculture in regard to the fencing, and having animals and that. We had a more of a hunter-gatherer society. A typical hunter-gatherer society. We moved around, we did stay in places and we did have some large gatherings, which is a big ceremony on Heaven's Head, up in the north coast of New South Wales. And that was a large gathering, but it wasn't a village. It was just a gathering for that ceremony and over that few days that it was there, and then everyone went back to where they come from.

4:35
I come from the western bunjillang areas which is northwest of Grafton or west of Lismore, and I just found this quite interesting that if what he's saying is true, and I've met many aboriginals all across Australia, then we would have those stories. We'd have these song lines about what our communities were about. And this is the thing that I find quite fascinating about the whole thing, is that we can't find any. There's no conversations; there's no traditional stories about them. And it's just sort of like a blank, about what he talks about.

5:19
And I talk about it in the sense that he's Euro centric because he's trying to lift aboriginal culture and that, and sees it as he has to do that in regard to being equal to the european culture that was happening you know, in Europe, where they had agriculture; they had; towns and villages and cities and all that type of stuff. And he sort of plays down this idea of being a hunter-gatherer.

5:51
One of the things I'm very proud of is that being a hunter-gatherer society, we survived so long in this continent, and this continent was very tough. It was hot and had droughts. We got through ice ages and we got through bush fires. We got through a whole wide range of things as a society and and we had technology and that, that helped us through that. You know like when you look at fire management and how that gave us open spaces and that's how we could hunt, and and hunt kangaroos and many other animals and that.

I just couldn't believe what I was reading. And I find it in a quite bizarre that we have this book that is being taught as fact in schools. And and taught as fact within our universities, when here's no evidence of actually supporting the exaggerated, as I see it, a way that aboriginals are living. And also looking at it that and trying to say we invented all these different things then, and did all these great things. Sort of trying to compare us to European society. And I think we're two worlds apart.

7:28
In regard to that, here you had a civilization in Europe which had advanced itself over many many hundreds of years and that, and you looked at aboriginal society in Australia where we were a constant society, and our history and our stories and that, are based on that, is that we were a very, you know, we were a hunter-gatherer society. And I have not heard within the aboriginal community from my life, going back to the 60s, or I grew up, and from my grandparents and my parents, and and so on.

8:10f
Any of the stuff that he raises and talks about. So I just find it interesting. To be polite, I think, and I've publicly said this, that the book shouldn't be treated as as non-fiction and that it should it shouldn't be taught in such a way to kids and to to university students as a factual way that aboriginal people were living prior to europeans coming to Australia.

8:45
So that sort of so, I you know, I'll be interested to see what Geoff thinks, but Ijust find it really, it downplays the tradition of aboriginal people, our hunter-gatherer society and it also just, you know, exaggerates and just makes up things things in regard to how we lived.

Gerard Henderson: Warren, thanks very much and you're right on time. So well done on two accounts, and as Margaret Kelly said just as we started, it's great to have you and Geoffrey both on the same platform speaking for us so now we go to Geoffrey.

9:22
Geoffrey Blainey: Thanks for the introduction. Very good to be with Warren.
In 1975 I wrote a book and I was so impressed with the hunter-gatherer society that I'd inspected that I called the book 'The Triumph of the Nomads'.

I still hold to that view that it's a most distinctive society with many disadvantages but many advantages and many aspects of it are highly ingenius.

Bruce Pascoe has written two influential books on aboriginal history. As he claims to be aboriginal, many readers think that he has very special knowledge. Certainly he writes engagingly. He chats with his readers and then moves on to another topic. He collects snippets of the latest research, and those scholars whom he quotes, probably feel some empathy with him. He also, I read give,s hope to the young. He gives them a belief that they can change the world. He says they can change the world if they emulate the best features of our original society.

But the society he depicts is not really the society that I think it was. What Bruce Pascoe's audience does not realize is that most of his major viewpoints are imagined. He seems to make up a lot of his history. He displays his way out ideas, mostly in the big themes. He's declared, and you really have to blink at this, that aboriginal Australia was the birthplace of democracy. He wrote: 'of all the systems humans have devised to manage their lives on earth, aboriginal government looks most like the democratic model. To me that seems make-believe.

The typical aboriginal form of government works very well for them but it has very little similarity to what we think of democracy. The typical aboriginal form of government had no parliament, no elections, no formula for removing rulers and no recognized way of dramatically reforming society. Pasco argues that aboriginal democracy has been here for 80,000 years. That's almost 78,000 years before democracy was born in ancient Athens. And the greetings which we now hear aboriginal leaders recite in a wide range of public gatherings are said to be traditional in spirit. I don't think you could call them democratic.

Their hallmark is a simple tribute to the elders past and present. To be older or old, that's what the word elder usually means, to say this is not to disown these early aboriginal people. Their respect for the old and the experienced was probably normal in the whole world for most of human history. It was normal, I assume, for Warren's far off ancestors and mine too.

13:01
Bruce Pascoe is said to have made other astonishing discoveries. Aboriginal Australia he tells us, was a haven of transcontinental peace. Perhaps a world first. The peace apparently reigned in aboriginal Australia long before most of Europe was settled.

This is the final sentence in the school room book which he calls 'Young Dark Emu'. He says: 'Where else on earth was there a civilization that lasted more than 80,000 years and depended on both agriculture and peace.' I myself don't believe it was any more a haven of peace than was the first half of the 20th century in Europe and Asia and our part of the world. Wars between Europeans have been common. Wars between aboriginal groups were also frequent. This, as far as we can learn, was also true of nomadic societies in other parts of the world. I don't believe, myself, those universities which teach that aboriginal peoples lived in a paradise of peace.

Pascal of course is quite right to denounce the frequent killing of aboriginals. He's right to deplore the massacres, one of which occurred at Coniston in the Northern Territory. I think about 250 miles northwest of Alice Springs. One occurred at Coniston, a terrible massacre as late as 1928. Curiously a survivor died recently age 101.

14:49
Pascoe however, could be on very slippery ground in claiming that the massacres and the terrible cruelties were covered up by the early settlers. He says they are rarely mentioned in Australian history books because they were covered up so effectively. No, they are mentioned in a few hundred books. I confess, that I've written some of them, for better or worse.

Admittedly the writing of history is a difficult craft or profession. We all make mistakes but here, the mistakes in his books, not only on a large scale, but embracing events and trends that are really too important to be turned into fantasy. For example, his view of the Torres Strait Islanders cannot be accepted. He treats them as if they were the same people as the aboriginal peoples. Readers are left to assume that the Torres Strait Islanders were here for 80,000 years. In fact their history in Torres Strait goes back fewer than 4,000 years. What a huge difference in time.

16:01
Of course the Torres Strait Islanders were gardeners, and as far as we know, the aboriginal peoples were not.

It's true that many generations of aboriginals were often treated poorly and miserably by the incoming Europeans. They called the 26th of January 1788 the invasion day, but for the Torres Strait Islanders, their invasion day, by the London Missionary Society, was in 1871 and is still celebrated as the coming of the light.

Unless Bruce Pascoe, hostile to Christianity, has wiped the Torres Strait Islands from the map in his two books, if like Bruce Pascoe, you see aboriginal history as a long saga of peace and prosperity, how do you handle the catastrophes that disrupted aboriginal life for thousands of years.

17:05
This is one of the remarkable things about aboriginal history, the ability of the people to live through such incredible events and survive, their spirit ,as far as we know, unbroken. Perhaps Bruce Pascoe leaves these events out of his histories.
For more than 10,000 years these aboriginal people inhabited the changing coastline and saw with obvious alarm the seas rise and rise. It was in aboriginal times, in relatively recent times in the long aboriginal history, that New Guinea was cut off from Australia and Tasmania was cut off from the mainland. Perhaps one quarter of Australia went under the seas and is still drowned.This catastrophe by the way makes the rising of the seas widely predicted for the next hundred years, seem just like a trickle.

In those times, the starvation which must have hit many coastal regions as they lost nearly all their source of food and the tensions, and maybe the occasional warfare when the coast dwellers retreated century after centuries, there's nothing about that in bruce pascoe's books

18:30
Bruce Pascoe disputes that the aboriginals were not skilled nomadic peoples who moved about according to the seasons utilizing their wide knowledge plant life and animal life. He argues instead that they were farmers who planted and harvested crops and lived in permanent villages and towns, and stored large quantities of food for 11 or 12 months until the next harvest. I think even in high rainfall areas where aborigines were said to be farmers, even in those areas, their production of grain was very small.

19:11
In Bruce Pascoe's book, he gives an example of a very big granary, a big hoard of grain, which held one tonne of grain. I happen to meet Rod Gillespie who has the largest chain of bakeries in Australia and I asked him what he thought about that, and he said, if you have to hoard your food until the next harvest a tonne won't go very far. In a town of a thousand people it would only feed them for two day,s and that would only happen if the grass seeds that they were grinding happen to be very nutritional and you can't be sure that they were.

20:02
Pascoe declares that the aboriginal grain belt covered a huge area of the continent. On his map the aboriginal grain belt crossed the continent from west to east like a giant rainbow in the north south direction. Their grain belt he alleges ran from the present Mount Gambier in South Australia almost to Mount Isa, or almost to the Gulf of Carpentaria but there's a catch you can't really believe that this huge grain belt existed in that fashion.

20:40
This allegedly enormous grain belt, of the alleged aboriginal farmers, includes most of the large five deserts in Australia. This grain belt includes the Simpson Desert, the Great Sandy Desert, the Great Victoria Desert, which is not in Victoria, the Tanami Desert in the Gibson Desert.

21:05
Incidentally, not one of those deserts is on the map in the emu books — not one desert. The idea of this great grain belt conducted by these farmers is far-fetched. If it existed it would be very small and confined to the high rainfall areas of Australia

The book 'Dark Emu' or 'Young Dark Emu', is handsome. It's almost a work of art. But to my mind, it's quite unsuited for schools. It has very little information: nearly half of the book is illustrations. The nomadic aboriginal Australians and their distinctive way of life does not receive justice in the book. And why should education departments praise the book which is so wrong on major themes. Why should they prescribe a book which is so hostile to Australian people of many backgrounds and delivers such exaggerated attacks about their culture and their loyalties. The intellectual arrogance of Europeans is one of Pascoe's frequent comments. He goes on to say, European and Asian cultures are suffused with violence and war.

22:40
It gives pleasure, I know, to many readers. All honor to him. But it isn't history. One thing that he can't be expected to know, is that recent research in the last 10 years, shows that Australia was a much more difficult place to live in than we imagined. Holes drilled into the East Antarctic reveal that Australia had droughts which we can't conceive. There was one drought in the 12th century A.D., and that was a very dry century, which lasted in many parts of Australia for 39 years. Just imagine the difficulties of surviving in a drought like that and yet the aboriginals did.

23:38
Much more could be said about the Emu books. It's sufficient to say that Bruce Pascoe has accepted what's called the enterprise chair in indigenous agriculture at Melbourne University, judged, and I think rightl,y to be Australia's greatest research university at present.

23:57
Well Chinese students who study there, and know their own Gobi desert, think when they read about these Australian deserts and the farms they allegedly nourished. Then the Agriculture faculty where Bruce is apparently teaching, explained to the university heads that there were doughts about Pasco's knowledge of agriculture. I think the university has not yet justified the appointment .

24:34
If I may conclude, Warren's early address was forthright and timely. Why should people who pretend to be aboriginal claim privileges rightly designed for others. I've read your comments in other sources, one about Bruce Pascoe's ancestry and his claimed to have a large amount of aboriginal descent and you say that evidence for this does not exist.

25:06
The practice is now on a large scale of pretending to be an aboriginal. In the year 2016, which is our latest census to be fully counted, the scoreboard for the aborigines who filled in their form in that census, and for all the indigenous people, disclosed a remarkable fact, that in the 10 years up to 2016 the indigenous population expanded at three times the rate of the mainstream population of Australia.

25:45
And demographers who've done recent research on their census argue that half of the increase in the indigenous people come from people, who in the sensus for the first time, said that they were aboriginal. The evidence that they were is very doubtful indeed. So it remains a very important topic, and if a referendum is eventually to be held on some special recognition of aboriginals that question just has to be solved. You can't have a section of the parliament, or a section of the policy, the constitution, singling out the special role of the aboriginals and the rights they should have if you have not yet defined who is an aboriginal person.

26:46
Gerard Henderson: Thank you Geoffrey and so we come to questions and discussion. Remember, we're all on the record. There are a lot of people on the call. People have got to be brief and you got to note earlier today about how to get into the discussion. So either put up the hand single or if you desperate, wave to the camera. See a few people have come on on my screen but it's probably best if you ask your questions yourself rather than me trying to read them off. So off we go

Now just talk to both of you briefly. As I understand it, Bruce Pascoe's pretty well avoided any discussion of his book, but on the 11th of september he did publish an article in The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald, which really didn't deal with this. I mean it spent, I think ... the first 20 percent discussed the 1968 olympic games and the Australian sprinter Norman, who was a great sprinter and a fine man, but it didn't really have much to do with the topic. But when he did discuss it, he essentially said, look in the book which we're discussing, which of course is 'Farmers or Hunter-Gatherers, the Dark Emu Debate' by Peter Sutton and Karen Walsh, he did say that in so far as he read the book, they agreed with him. But I'm not sure that the authors of that book would would agree with that assessment. So, how do you two see the the Sutton-Walsh book and do you think there's anything in it much that that supports — well they don't think so — but do you think there's anything in much that supports Bruce Pascoe's position?

28:36
Geoffrey Blainey: Well I don't think it supports his position. At times of course they're sympathetic to some of his arguments, but the overwhelming opinion of those who read the new book, published I think by Melbourne University Press, is that it's a very strong attack on Bruce Pascoe's main position.

29:02
Warren Mundine: Yeah, look, it was a a clear outing of Bruce Pascoe's book. And it was very timely, because you know everyone was taking it as gospel that 'Dark Emu' was this incredible hidden history that we didn't know about. And in actual fact it wasn't true. You know. My first book I read at university Geoff was trying on the nomads, and I thought it was a great book. Pascoe, he talks about, he talks about in in his book, he talks about wars, that there was no wars in Australia. If there was no wars, then why in our song lines, in our ceremonies, we talk about wars. We talk about conflicts that had happened

When you go to our law. It also talks that we haf laws that talk quite clearly about behavior and that, and what you should do and shouldn't do. And so, this idea that we lived in this paradise. I'm a very ... it had no wars or anything like that is just total nonsense because the actual facts are, if we didn't, then why have we got them in our stories? Why do we talk about it? ... I've been to places where battles had happened between aboriginal groups.

Audience member: Hi. I just wanted to ask both speakers — one from inside the indigenous community one from outside. The last point that jeffrey made about identifying as an Australian indigenous person. It's a vexed question, and it is very important and I think Bruce Pascoe has made this even more important. How would I, that both of you suggest, that we could go about working out some way in which you can say this is a legitimate person with an indigenous ethnic background. I mean Jewish people take it from being born to a Jewish mother and other people have national links and whatever.B ut how do we get to a point where we can define rationally who is a genuine indigenous Australian.

31:49
Warren Mundine: Yeah. Well I was the chief executive officer from the Native Title Services Corporation, NTS, and we used to do the fair [indistinct] court cases on a native title. Now within the framework of that we had to bring evidence before the federal court that ... really, showed people's ancestry. Had to show what group of people and geography that they actually come from. Now this is why I find it interesting that he can't talk about ... he says there's no evidence of his ancestory. ...

I was nine years as CEO in that organization and there was not one person that we couldn't track and and do research on. Because we had historians and anthropologists and that, working with us and they went through the whole genealogists and that, and there was not one person who come through to us that we could not that they were definitely of aboriginal or they wasn't of aboriginal descent. And so I just find it funny that he he can't say that he ... he can't point to documents ... he can't point to anything that shows that he is of aboriginal descent. Because we were able to find it anywhere, even people who were taken away in the so-called stolen generation, we were able to find them, to track them down, find out who their grandparents, great grandparents. We was able to go back to the, you know, right back to around 700's.

56:36
Gerard Henderson: Okay. Thank you. Geoffrey?
Geoffrey Blainey: I myself think that indigenous people have to answer this question first. They're the ones that have an accused interest in this question. They're the ones who have to face the hostility if they make the wrong decision. But once you say we must have a special place in the constitutional, as a native parliamentary decisions, you have to suggest who we we are. And the present definition which says that if you claim to be aboriginal to the census, and you're recognized as such way an aboriginal community, the thing is still open to trickery or to ... it's not a satisfactory definition.

34:36
Warren Mundine: ... the first one that we use ... you've got to be of aboriginal descent. And if you don't pass that, then you're not ... you can't be aboriginal. And then the other two ... was you recognize yourself as an aboriginal person and that the community accepts you as an aboriginal person. But you've got to have all three. You just can't claim I feel like an aboriginal. And so if you can't pass the first test, which is you are of aboriginal descent, then you're not aboriginal

Gerard Henderson: Okay. So now we're going to go to Margaret Kelly then we're going to go to Michael Baume. Margaret?

35:20
Margaret Kelly: Oh hello. Look I am so pleased to hear what you've had to say, Warren and Professor Blainey. Look I am completely outraged by this individual! I worked for Charles Perkins, back when he was an FAS in aboriginal affairs, and before we went on to become secretary. I worked for Cedric Wyatt when he was a regional director of aboriginal affairs in New South Wales.
Now I am here to tell you that none of the stuff that I learned through these people, and getting to know their various individual peoples, none of it stacks up with this guy.

Gerard Henderson: Do you want to comment on that warren?

Warren Mundine: Well I see. I have not seen any evidence ever produced that he is of aboriginal descent and I know it's, and I think it's a pretty simple process for that to happen. All the needs it ... to goes down to the to the native title services and they'll go through it and and prove whether he is or isn't. So by him not doing that, or not being able to do that, I just find bizarre. And also I think in the introduction, it was made that, by Geoff, that he lives off that aboriginality. So I'm an aboriginal person, therefore this book must be must be fair dinkum as well.

Natural factors, as I keep on saying, I found nothing in that, you know ... He even ... I did find some parts, but he exaggerated beyond belief and he also ... and he says things that are just fantasy, like, you know, that we weren't, that we didn't have war. And then why did we have war weapons, which is very common within aboriginal groups? And why do we have stories that talk about conflicts and that as well. And why do we have our laws in regard to those things as well: the conduct of people.

I just find that totally ... I just can't believe it. I think it's just ... can't believe that people have actually, you know, got sucked in by this.

37:43
Gerard Henderson: [indistinct: Ida Licter].

37:45
Ida Lichter: Thank you very much to both speakers. My question is: why do you think Australian academics would accept Bruce Pascoe's position without extensive analysis and debate?

37:58
Warren Mundine: It's the 64 dollar question. I just can't believe it either, and especially after the [indistinct] books come out, you know, and really challenged it. And also when you in ... aboriginal people, when you talk to them ... this elite groups. They said what he talks about is not our society. We're a hunter-gatherer society and your aboriginality is very easy to check. He's very easy to find out.

38:40
Gerard Henderson: Geoffrey, do you want to comment on this?

Geoffrey Blainey: Yeah. I think one of the difficulties is that in literature and the arts in the last 40 years, great efforts have been made to encourage indigenous people to contribute. And when somebody who's not an indigenous person claims the prizes it's very hard on the people who were runners up and who miss out on the prizes. And I really think there should be some compensation in prizes given to these people, who were runners up, and deserve to be the prize but for the fact that the definition of the prize has been flaunted.

39:21
Warren Mundine: I think what's happening in the last 10, 15, 20 years, has been this pressure about this collective, about what is aboriginal and what isn't aboriginal, and if you if you don't agree with that then you are a racist. And I think a lot what happens to a lot of people that they become nervous and they become scared about that, and then they get frightened that they could lose their job, whatever. Because they they get called out as being racist and you know, and and this is where the fear comes from.

Gerard Henderson: Glenn Mill.

Glenn Mill: Hi, thank you to both of you for your contributions. I'd just like to put a proposition to you both, to test, and that is the idea that this book and the theory behind it is fundamentally racist, in the sense that it seeks to elevate, in inverted commas, aboriginal culture and society to meet western standards. I'd just like to get your response to that proposition.

Warren Mundine: Within the aboriginal community that is right. That's how we do feel. We feel that you know, he's looking for this lens of Europeanness and he sort of downplays or rubbishes hunter-gatherer societies. And we feel that you know, from you know, my family, my extensive talks to aboriginal people out there, we find that very insulting, the way he treats us. And so, because, you know, there are good things, like how did we survive in this continent for so long and as I said, going for ice ages and droughts and fires and all that type of ... these are very much triumphs of the hunter-gatherer society. And I just, and you know I agree with you like, Glenn, that the way he looks at it is that we are sort of like a subhuman in a sense, to his own narrative.

Ida Lichter: We seem to swing between two things. And Geoffrey you've done an enormous amount of anthropological work on this and your books on it are fantastic. Could you just explain to us how we've developed our notion of what indigenous culture and history is and how we've come huge strides in understanding how intricate and sophisticated it was in its own way. But the average Australian doesn't and there seems to be this notion that we do have to turn the savage into something noble and romantic rather than confront the fact that this was a a very clever society in its own origins.

Geoffrey Blainey: It's as though the mainstream Australians largely of European descent I'm not sure whether to treat other people in their own terms or whether to fit them entirely into their scheme of things and I think that's a really human way of doing things but it makes it very difficult for aboriginal people when they have to walk the tight rope between those two very different demands.

Warren Mundine: Yeah. The things that worries me about when you start romanticizing people, and you start looking you know, is that when people don't live up to that romanticism ... causes then nothing but problems. And I just find it you know, there's there's good and bad within the aboriginal community just like there are in other communities, but you know, this idea of trying to romanticize it like, and using the words that were no wars, or we didn't have any wars, so we must have been these wonderful people from the garden of Eden. And it's it's dangerous because it's not you know, it's, it's, it's fake history, it',s it's, fake stories about what your real human beings we're doing here. And, and look it's fascinating, you know, the history of aboriginal people here in their art and everything like that, it just stands alone. It i, it is what it is. I just find it bizarre that Bruce Pascoe thought that he could write this book, and make things up, and romanticize it. It's just and looking through a very, almost in a racist way, about the hunter-gatherer societies. I just find this totally bizarre.

44:23
Gerard Henderson: Michael Bowman and then John Fraser. Michael?

Michael Bowman: Mine's not a philosophic question just a pragmatic one. Agricultural communities generally depend on implements to develop their agricultural skills. I don't remember actually demonstrating,uh,that there were adequate equipment to sustain an agricultural community. I mean there were implements that were useful in the warfare that Wrren pointed out,but has there been any pressure for a proper archaeological examination of the proposition that there were implements — cultural implements — available to the aboriginal societies before settlement.

45:34
Geoffrey Blainey: A good question for an archaeologist that's been in the field for the last 20 years, about how that question should be answered. There's a lot of archaeologists in Australia but it's not very easy to get sites where they're welcome. Is it? The great hay day of archaeological discovery really was probably when John Mulvaney was the best known, the leading archaeologist in Australia, between about 1950 and 1985 and 1990. An enormous amount was known to archaeology and I don't think the number of archaeologists in the field was kept up in the subject.

Warren Mundine: Now, yes there were some tools that you could use in regard to some agriculture and there were some things that did. But not on the scale that he talks about you know. He's sort of like comparing my uh tomato patch at home here to a massive farm, that's just turning out tons and tons of wheat you know. It's just, it's just it's, it's not feasible. Where does he find his ... there's no evidence of a lot of the stuff he's talking about.

Gerard Henderson: Okay so we're running to the end. We're going to finish in 10 minutes. So we've got to be brief. So I'm just going to go John Fraser, Janiece Dawson and Ross Fitzgerald. But we've got to be brief. So John?

John Fraser: Right. It's related to the previous question. I have a bit of land around Camperdown in the western district, and it's remarkable there that there that there has only been one finding of very minor archaeological evidence of aboriginal habitation. If there were villages you would think there would be far more than this. So it's really an observation than anything else, but I just thought I'd make it, because in buying a farm now, you've got to give undertakings that if you find aboriginal relics — whatever you want to call it — you have to rightly protect them and register them. And that's just not the case.

Gerard Henderson: Thanks for the observation. So Camperdown is in what Western Victoria right?

John Fraser: That's right. In a very fertile part of Western Victoria.

Warren Mundine: You do hit on a very good point, you know, like I sit there sometimes watching the History Channel, again, and I see where archaeologists go out and do find with that and you see Viking, evidence of Vikings in in certain parts of the world. You see evidence of people around the world who did these things and you can see those relics. If he's talking ... I just find he's mind-boggling when he's talking about these villages, people and that, because there's just no evidence of it. Anywhere.
48:46
Gerard Henderson: Janiece Dawson and then Ross. Janiece?

Janiece Dawson: Thank you. What I find disturbing about Bruce Pascoe is that he claims in his book — and he's also claimed in various talks and speeches that he's given — that the history was deliberately hidden from Australians over the years. This so-called history of agriculture; that it was deliberately kept from us. Now in Suttons and Walsh's book they set out clearly how many historians, how many archaeologists, have written. They give proof. And I find it just hard to accept how many people have swallowed his story that this history was hidden ,so-called hidden from us. I'd be interested to hear comments from our speakers.
49:37
Gerard Henderson: Let's start with Geoffrey the historian.

49:44
Geoffrey Blainey: Bruce Pascoe does go to town in saying that historians have not written about it, but if you look up the bibliography in his own book, there are many examples of historians and anthropologists who've done the very things he says which have not been done.

Warren Mundine: Look it's, it's entire nonsense what he says, because if an early, early colonial period, even pre-colonial periods in Australia, there's you know, there's a whole lot of you know, history from the Dutch and other people ... and talking about their encounters with aboriginal people, uh, you see enormous literature about indigenous people across this continent and you, and you, and here's just a whole, you know, as, as Geoff said, a bibliography of it in in his own book. So, so this, this, this nonsense about it was hidden, uh, they're hidden, ah, uh deliberately, not only, uh, you know, cut out and and hid, and destroyed in a sense, but it doesn't get, uh, test the reality of what happened, you know. Like if you've got a village and it's built — and all the other — then you, you would find remnants of that somewhere. And if you have a, uh, you know, this idea of herding. I don't know where that come from, because you know, I've been out hunting kangaroos, and I tell you what, it's very hard to herd them around, I compare, and fence them up. How, how big was the fence, you know, they keep the animals in.

I just, I just can't believe that people with any common sense — you don't have to be historian, you don't have to be archaeologists — now, you just have to look at it and read it. Just say well, that's impossible.

51:37
Gerard Henderson: Final comment from Ross. He's never hunted kangaroos but Ross?

Ross Fitzgerald: Can you hear me bro? [yes] Geoffrey and Warren: why do you think it was until relatively recently that so few contemporary academics, including academic historians, uh, would critic ... they didn't criticize Pasco until the last couple of years

52:05
Warren Mundine: I go back to my earlier point where, it was... because there were some aboriginal academics who come out and supported him. And I think the whole push then become, okay, we don't want to be, you know, I don't rock the boat here, we don't, we don't be called racist, we don't want to be, you know, hounded out of our profession, which does happen, as, yeah, so that's why there was a reluctance and that's why that the sun book was so important so that we could open, hopefully open it up a lot wider, where where we can challenge.

One of the things I find really weird about modern academia is that you know, that's what, that's what history is about, that's, that's what science is, that's what everything's about, that you actually challenge things. And and then, then if it stands the test of that challenge, and then it's true, but if it doesn't stand the test of the challenge then it's not.

53:06
Geoffrey Blainey: It's remarkable that, uh, so few criticisms have been made of him by historians. I think there's some fear in the universities now, speaking out on controversial subjects, and they become like great corporations, and there's plenty of evidence of people having strong views and interesting views but wondering whether it will affect their career if there seems to be argumentative. Means this is completely alien to the idea of a university.

Gerard Henderson: Okay. Now we've got room to fit Margaret Somerville, but you've got to be quick, Margaret?

Margaret Somerville: Yeah, sure. I'd just like to read you a warning, that we have so much to learn in terms of uh, virtues and ethics, and so on, from the aboriginal population and from their culture. And I'm worried that this might um, sort of take away the credibility and the importance of that. So I think the criticisms have to be done in a way that they're very carefully confined to what Pasco was dealing with. Because I think we're on the ... Australians, and particularly the young ones, are very interested in what they can learn from going into a 60 to 80,000 year history and looking at how those societies survived. And to damage that would be really sad.

Gerard Henderson: and Warren, a comment on Margaret Somerville's complaint?

54:40
Warren Mundine: I think you've got a very solid point there, because uh, you know, it, there is a danger of this, and this is why it, you know, it makes me angry and a lot of other people angry in the aboriginal community, that this could be very damaging. And at a time in Australian history when people really are interested in learning about aboriginal culture, learning about aboriginal people, that this could be very damaging to all that.

Geoffrey Blainey: Could; I just finish on a general point. When the incoming British met the aboriginals in 1788 and in various other places later, this was an unusual meeting in world history. Here were two societies that were so different, so different. A society just entering the industrial revolution and the largest land mass in the world that was still possessed by hunters and gatherers, that we're still landed with the task of trying to understand each other. The societies were so far apart. Each with their own various virtues and their own distinctive history and we still live with that legacy.

Gerard Henderson: Thank you very much Geoffrey and Warren, that's a great way to end. And it should remind everyone we're discussing 'Farmers or Hunter-Gatherers, the Dark Emu Debate' by Peter Sutton, the social anthropologist, and Dr Karen Walsh, the archaeologist.

He's done a lot of work with the Australian aboriginal heritage heritage sites and and so forth but for tonight it's great to have people with such hands-on experience as: Warren who's worked in indigenous affairs, and Geoffrey has worked as a historian. Here today to talk about this important topic. Thanks to our speakers have been a terrific event and thanks to all who contributed. And we'll see you again next time thanks a lot.

 

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