Another Look at Australian History

 

Dark Emu is a very dark book. Author Bruce Pascoe clearly lays out the case that pre-contact Australian peoples were highly organized and accomplished in many ways. In order to explain what the many tribes that lived in Australia were capable of, Pascoe must show the reader how utterly and irresponsibly the English colonizers destroyed their cultivated fields, their stone and wood houses, their fields of native grain, the baking ovens that they used to make bread from the grain, the carefully-built and elaborate structures that trapped fish as they swam in waterways, and many other artifacts that the native Australians had been using for thousands of years. The author then shows how the European heirs of colonial Australia were carefully taught that these great achievements never existed at all, but that the Aboriginals lived in a sort of primitive vacuum. The brutality of the destruction is outdone by the brutality of the denial of what was destroyed. Pascoe writes:

"It is clear from the journals of the explorers that few were in Australia to marvel at a new civilisation; they were there to replace it. Most were simply describing a landscape from which settlers could profit. Few bothered with the evidence of the existing economy, because they knew it was about to be subsumed." (p. 9).

Pascoe examines the diaries and published accounts by many of these early explorers and colonizers of the land, and shows how their testimony bears witness to the existence of agriculture, carefully and beautifully arranged landscapes, and many other accomplishments. Reading the book, I was completely impressed by the descriptions of what the native people produced and how they lived -- and completely depressed at the way it was ruined in the name of English civilization. Pascoe writes;

"If we look at the evidence presented to us by the explorers, and explain to our children that Aboriginal people did build houses, did build dams, did sow, irrigate, and till the land, did alter the course of rivers, did sew their clothes, and did construct a system of pan-continental government that generated peace and prosperity, it is likely we will admire and love our land all the more. Admiration and love are not sufficient in themselves, but they are the foundation of a more productive interaction with the continent. 

"Behaving as if the First Peoples were mere wanderers across the soil and knew nothing about how to grow and care for food resources is a piece of managerial pig-headedness. Smart business people rule nothing out, especially if the seeds of success are obvious. The songlines of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people connected clans from one side of the country to another. The cultural, economic, genetic, and artistic conduits of the songlines brought goods, art, news, ideas, technology, and marriage partners to centres of exchange." (p. 140). 

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post about the book The Future Eaters by Tim Flannery. Several of my Australian blogger friends suggested that I read Dark Emu to obtain a balanced view of the history of pre-contact Australian peoples. I'm grateful to them for this, and I feel that many things I thought I knew have been questioned and corrected.

An illustration of early Australian agriculture: Yam diggers at Indented Head, Victoria, 1835

Yams were a staple of the First People’s diet. (p. 18). 

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