Farmers or Hunter-Gatherers?: The Dark Emu Debate

by Peter Sutton, Keryn Walshe

An authoritative study of pre-colonial Australia that dismantles and reframes popular narratives of First Nations land management and food production

Australians' understanding of Aboriginal society prior to the British invasion from 1788 has been transformed since the publication of Bruce Pascoe's Dark Emu in 2014. It argued that classical Aboriginal society was more sophisticated than Australians had been led to believe because it resembled more closely the farming communities of Europe.

In Farmers or Hunter-gatherers? Peter Sutton and Keryn Walshe ask why Australians have been so receptive to the notion that farming represents an advance from hunting and gathering. Drawing on the knowledge of Aboriginal elders, previously not included within this discussion, and decades of anthropological scholarship, Sutton and Walshe provide extensive evidence to support their argument that classical Aboriginal society was a hunter-gatherer society and as sophisticated as the traditional European farming methods.

Farmers or Hunter-gatherers? asks Australians to develop a deeper understanding and appreciation of Aboriginal society and culture.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Australia, Anthropology, Science, Sociology, Indigenous

288 pages, Paperback

First published June 13, 2021

About the author

Peter Sutton is an anthropologist and linguist who has worked with Aboriginal people since 1969. He speaks three Cape York languages and as an expert on Aboriginal land ownership he has assisted with fifty land rights cases. He has authored or edited twelve books, including Native Title in Australia: an Ethnographic Perspective, regarded as the most authoritative work in its field. He is a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia, a Fellow of the Australian Anthropological Society, and Honorary Research Fellow, Institute of Archaeology, University College London.

Reviews

[Trevor · Rating 5 out of 5]

The last couple of years have taught me how little I know about early human history, not least that of Australia. It has taught me something else too – that it is better to rely on works written by people with qualifications in the field, than by people who write popular books, no matter how well. This book is a case in point, or rather, it explains why Dark Emu is a case in point. I had found Dark Emu breathtakingly good. Not least since it contradicted what I’d read in Germs, Guns and Steel – yet another book written by someone who is not an expert in the field that I thought was also stunningly good – can you recognise the pattern that is forming? The less I know about a subject, the more I need to rely on the author who is telling me stuff to have ‘done their research’ – but when the topic is controversial, even when I don’t know all of the controversies involved, I can end up falling into someone else’s ideological trap out of ignorance, rather than necessarily because I ultimately agree with their position. Before reading this book I would have defended Bruce Pascoe’s book very vigorously – not least since those criticising it were the usual crowd in Australia – Andrew Bolt as loudest among them.

This book makes it clear that I really ought to have known more about Aboriginal Australia before reading either Dark Emu or The World’s Largest Estate – and that is probably also a fair call, but the fact remains that I didn’t. I hadn’t seen any of the documentaries discussed in this book, my excuse is that I don’t watch a lot of TV. My school education never touched on anything to do with Aboriginal life in Australia prior to 1788. So, my ignorance was only partly due to my lack of curiosity.

Dark Emu felt like a revelation because it stresses two things. One is that the Aboriginal people of Australia would be better classified as ‘farmers’ than ‘mere hunter-gatherers’ and that they were not properly nomadic, but rather lived in large ‘villages’.

As the authors here make clear, not only are these things not particularly true, but also the underlying assumption behind these statements is that farmers and people who live in villages are ‘more advance and so human’ than hunter-gatherers. As such, a large part of this book is spent explaining why Aboriginal peoples would be better classified as hunter-gatherer plus, rather than farmers, or proto-farmers, or quasi-farmers and so on.

There is a discussion in this book about how long Aboriginal Australians have been in Australia, but it has been a very long time – maybe 50,000 years. Bruce Pascoe is shown to have a particular fondness for large numbers (it is a boy thing, I think) and so just about every ‘range’ in the Dark Emu is represented as the maximum possible in that range. The real point of interest here, though, is that for however long Aboriginal peoples have lived here, they left a rather light footprint on the land. Which isn’t something you could reasonably say about the last 200 years. Australia now has one of the highest extinction rates of species of any country. We certainly have ‘made up for lost time’.

What is made clear in this book is that it isn’t a fair characterisation to say farming wasn’t something that Indigenous Australians quite got around to. They often interacted with farmers, and almost invariably rejected farming as an option. In large part this was due to their spiritual beliefs. That is, core to their beliefs and customs was the idea that ‘the land provides’ and also the relationship between humans and the land was much more intimately connected within this spiritual interrelationship. That is, farming could easily be seen as a kind of violence enacted by humans upon the land – something that would be unthinkable to Aboriginal Australians.

Pascoe often presents highly local Aboriginal practices as if they were universal. So, many of the fishing technologies of Western Victoria, for example – of which there are no other example in the rest of Australia – are presented as standard practice.

But the strangest thing about Pascoe’s book is that it relies almost exclusively upon white settler, explorer discussions of life in Aboriginal Australia – and virtually never quotes either the work of anthropologists who had lived amongst Indigenous tribes (like the author of this book), nor run-away convicts such as William Buckley who lived with local Aboriginal people for over 30 years, or, indeed, Aboriginal people themselves. This seems remarkable to me now that it has been pointed out to me and something I’m surprised I didn’t notice while reading his book myself.

Earlier in the year I read a series of books comparing Western and Indigenous science. The point made in some of these books was that Western science seeks to be universal – for example, this fertiliser in this soil type will have this impact on crops. Indigenous science is deeply aware of the particular locations it finds itself in and therefore of the plants and animals in those locations. Western science often appropriates this deeply local knowledge as if the 30,000 years that went into creating this knowledge amounted to nothing at all until it gained the tick of approval from Western science.

Pascoe is clearly trying to reappraise Aboriginal Australia – but by reframing this history so that it fits within current understandings of what farmers do – and in then presenting this way of life as more highly evolved than that of ‘mere hunter-gatherers’ – he replicates precisely what so much anthropology has spent 100 years or so trying to undo.

[Tim O'Neill · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I finished Bruce Pascoe's Dark Emu in 2017 I was initially impressed. Having read Bill Gammage's The Biggest Estate on Earth four years earlier, I was already aware that the traditional view of Australia's First Nations peoples as simple nomadic hunter-gatherers was inaccurate and that they had their own very sophisticated and highly effective ways of tending the landscape and making hunting and food gathering relatively easy. Pascoe's book reinforced these ideas. There were, however, some claims in Pascoe's work which seemed strange and largely at odds with other evidence. He seemed to heavily emphasise any evidence that Aboriginal people were sedentary and not semi-nomadic, with a lot of attention on substantial permanent dwellings. He also emphasises any evidence of seed and native grain gathering as evidence of a form of cultivation, based largely on some quotes from white explorers and colonists. His extensive use of these sources and, strangely, little use of any information from aboriginal people themselves also seemed odd.

As the book got more critical attention, it appeared my misgivings were somewhat warranted. Examples of Pascoe quoting selectively from his sources, misrepresenting what they said and shaping his quotes by a creative use of paraphrasing in between them emerged. Critics also noted that he has a tendency to use exceptions as though they are representative and uses turns of phrase that suit his thesis. I was wary of several of these critiques, given that by this stage Pascoe's bestseller had become the centre of a battle in the left/right culture wars, with notoriously racist right wing culture warriors like columnist Andrew Bolt leading the charge against Pascoe and left wing ideologues closing ranks in defence of him.

But it was clear that many historians, archaeologists and anthropologists had genuine problems with Pascoe's book and the way it overstates its case. Most were reluctant to enter the fray, given the way the book has been politicised. This makes Sutton and Walshe's sober, careful and meticulous book a useful contribution. It serves as a sharp corrective to many of Pascoe's overstatements and distortions, while giving no comfort to the racists. They make it clear that the general tenor of the idea behind both Pascoe and Gammage's books is correct - the First Nations "Old People" were not "mere" nomadic hunter gatherers, scraping a living from what they could stumble across. Sutton and Walshe prefer the term "hunter gatherers plus" to describe the intricate way these peoples tended and utilised the plants and animals of their country, through a detailed understanding of it and a remarkable ability to shape it and use it sustainably. If Bolt and the right wing ranters hoped this book would confirm their racist denigration of Australian Aboriginal culture as primitive and wretched, they will be disappointed.

But Sutton in particular is not stinting in his criticisms of Pascoe's manipulation of his sources. Drawing on his own decades of living with and working with First Nations elders who had been raised in the old ways, this book shows that Pascoe's revisionist picture of sedentary, village-dwelling, cultivating, grain and vegetable growers is largely a fantasy; cobbled together from selective evidence and misrepresentation. Sutton and Walshe sharply criticise Pascoe for buying into outdated thinking by representing sophisticated hunter gatherer systems as primitive and presenting his village-dwelling cultivators as more "advanced". This is, as Sutton and Walshe argue, getting the whole picture wrong. The Old People were neither "mere" hunter gatherers nor Pascoe's fantasy people - they were something else and it was not something primitive or unsophisticated.

The reaction to Sutton and Walshe's book has been predictable if rather depressing. The right wing ideologues have hailed it as vindication of their vendetta against Pascoe. The left wing defenders have rejected it as white academics maintaining a conservative status quo against a radical thesis presented by a "blackfella" (despite Pascoe's claims to aboriginal ancestry being, at best, highly dubious). Few of the commentators or shriekers on Twitter seem to have read the book. Indeed, most of the shrieking and condemnation on Twitter came the day its publication had been announced and the book had not yet even been released.

Since its release Sutton and Walshe's book has been generally well-received. Attempts at criticism of it by Pascoe's defenders have been muted and rather weak. Bill Gammage wrote a short piece that concentrates largely on things Pascoe said in support of Gammage's book, though Sutton and Walshe only mention Gammage a few times and not in any genuinely critical way. A strange article in The Conversation by University of Technology Sydney's Professor Heidi Norman ("How the Dark Emu debate limits representation of Aboriginal people in Australia", July 8, 2021) claims that Pascoe's book is "a persuasive account of Aboriginal people and the way they lived" and characterises Sutton and Walshe's critique as "churlish" and "pre-occupied with the historically dominant position of anthropologists in their claim to know Aboriginal people". But Norman doesn't manage to give much reason to question that "dominant position" and doesn't address the extensive evidence that Sutton provides that it, unlike Pascoe's thesis, is based on solid evidence and a detailed knowledge of living Aboriginal lore. She also has to admit they provide "numerous examples" of Pascoe misusing his sources, but insists, without substantiation, that while "some are significant omissions, others do not change the meaning Pascoe conveys." Anyone reading both books would have to seriously question this blithe assessment.

Norman ends with a rather flaccid defence that Pascoe's book makes her undergraduates rethink their ideas about traditional Australian Aboriginal life and so is somehow a good thing as a result. Many would find this a strange argument if, as seems clear, Pascoe's book is not accurate. Her complaint that Sutton and Walshe "strip the debate of any contemporary meaning" and her nonsensical assertion that "Pascoe’s work is focused on the history of the present" are similarly odd. Her argument, such as it is, seems to be that she and her students like Pascoe's version and so Sutton and Walshe are spoilsports for ruining it for them. This is simply childish.

It's easy to see why Pascoe's pseudo historical fantasy has appealed to many people and struck a chord with many in a nation only beginning to come to grips with the sorry history of Australia's treatment of its First Nations and the often murderous destruction of their cultures. It's also typical of discourse about anything to do with Australian Aboriginal culture that the right wing culture warriors have chosen to attack Pascoe's work. If we are to truly understand our First Nations peoples and the history of white invasion and colonialism, we have to understand what was (largely) destroyed. Political and social reconciliation has to be based on genuine knowledge, not fantasies or distortions. Far from damaging this process, Sutton and Walshe's book aids it by tempering a lot of the well-meaning but misplaced enthusiasm for Pascoe's amateur effort.

Bad history is bad history, and should be shown to be so, regardless of how inconvenient this may be for some. It's a pity their book is rather dry and academic in tone, because that means its unlikely to get anything like the readership of Pascoe's accessible and entertaining if rather flawed work.

[Boy Blue · Rating 4 out of 5]

DARK EMU DECEPTION!

PASCOE FIASCO!

TOTAL SMACKDOWN!

There's your Newscorp or Sky News headlines.

It's true that this book is an exceptional piece of scholarly work and the most comprehensive takedown of another book I've ever read. It is also a completely vampiric text that feeds on the life and popularity of Dark Emu and leaves nothing but a hollow corpse.

Sutton has the experience, academic rigor, and humility to write a true account of the indigenous people of Australia. He has no desire to be front and centre but you can tell he also has no desire to see a false prophet destroy a field he's worked in for 50 odd years.

I could go through Sutton's refutations one by one and try to share quite how well composed they are but if you want those you really need to read the book. As already identified this book is nothing without Dark Emu and there's essentially no point in reading it if you haven't read the other book first.

The nature of written text means that rather than a Rumble in the Jungle this is more like Sutton working over the heavy bag of Dark Emu until it tears, and then sand spilling everywhere, falls to the floor. Pascoe can't fight back and though it seems unlikely he would be able to mount a good defence, it can be hard to watch such a severe beatdown.

Sutton's ultimate purpose can be boiled down to the following:

1. Pascoe has fallen into a trap of social evolutionism where he sees hunter-gatherers as a primitive outmoded group just waiting to evolve into sedentary agriculturalists. Therefore Pascoe makes the attempt to paint Australia's first inhabitants as sedentary agriculturalists.

2. Sutton argues convincingly that social relativism is a better theory and that the traditional Aboriginal way of life is just different not less than. Aboriginal culture has a way of living with the land, not exploiting it. This is part of the reason they are the longest extant culture in the world. Just to reiterate that does not make the culture less, just different.

3. Cultural cringe is a term most Australians will be familiar with, and it's a term that best describes what Sutton is accusing Pascoe of. Despite positioning himself as an advocate for Aboriginal culture, Pascoe has besmirched the very culture he seeks to empower. He essentially defines Aboriginal Australians through the lens of the coloniser and in so doing, he has committed the same careless crimes he accuses the early colonial settlers of.

Sutton's right to be annoyed with Pascoe's blatant cherry picking of sources, lying by omission, and even just straight up fabrication of information. There's countless times where Pascoe has deliberately left parts of a text out to create what seems to be an endorsement of his thesis. On top of this Pascoe has a tendency to generalise single instances into nationwide truths. So one Aboriginal tribe has a rake because they possibly got it trading with people from New Guinea and suddenly every Aboriginal is a gardener taking their big old Pumpkins to the Easter Show. Sutton takes Pascoe to task on every single crime and trust me the rap sheet is long.

Through all of this my sole wish was that rather than writing a corrective piece, Sutton had wrote his own version of Dark Emu. Because you categorically will not enjoy Sutton's book if you haven't read Dark Emu first. But I can see why that wouldn't have worked and I think Sutton can too. He recognises the power of simplistic narrative, he knows most readers don't have the attention span or interest in learning 250 language variations for certain plant species. Sutton rightly identifies that there's about half a century of decent scholarship and work in this space, that Pascoe's "revolutionary" theories are mostly lies. In Sutton's eyes the revolution in Aboriginal studies has already happened and I think he's disconnected from the average Australian with that position.

The success of Dark Emu showed that the core understanding of Indigenous Australia is not as strong as Sutton would like to believe, otherwise Australia wouldn't have been swept up in Dark Emu fever. Which again gets us back to the same point, people want a holy text on the topic. They want a book they can get behind, one that will both give them factual truth and ease their colonial guilt. They also want it to be written in a way they can easily understand. That book hasn't been written yet and it possibly never will be because these features are unlikely bedfellows. Until it is, you may have to take the rollercoaster combo of Dark Emu and Farmers or Hunter-Gatherers as the most balanced introduction to indigenous culture.

[Jennifer (JC-S) · Rating 4 out of 5]

‘We contend that Pascoe is broadly wrong, both about what Australians have been told of pre-conquest Aboriginal society and about the nature of that society itself.’

I read ‘Dark Emu’ five years ago and was impressed by what Bruce Pascoe had to say. And now I find myself revisiting those impressions, questioning some (not all) of Bruce Pascoe’s conclusions and my own reactions to them. Why, for example, was I impressed by the idea that Aboriginal society was more sophisticated because land management and food production was more like European farming practices? Why would I so readily accept that farming is more sophisticated than the hunter-gatherer lifestyle? Yes, I was taught this over half a century ago and I guess I have not seen cause to question it.

This book has me thinking about why. It also has me thinking more broadly about Aboriginal society and culture, and about the assumptions and values used in assessing sophistication.

I found reading this book simultaneously informative and uncomfortable. Informative because I was provided with new information, uncomfortable because it forced me to reconsider why I found ‘Dark Emu’ so comforting.

I’d recommend reading both.

‘People keep telling us, even those aware of Dark Emu’s many flaws, that at least it has got people thinking about an important subject.’

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

[Callum's Column · Rating 4 out of 5]

In Dark Emu, Bruce Pascoe makes a social evolutionist argument that Indigenous Australians were agriculturally developed in the Western sense, and therefore on the same path of socio-development as Europeans. Peter Sutton and Keryn Walshe systematically dismantle this argument, effectively calling it ignorant at best and racist at worst. Sutton and Walshe demonstrate that Pascoe has egregiously misrepresented the archaeological, anthropological and historical record.

Sutton and Walshe postulate that Indigenous Australians held deep religious connections to the land pre-colonisation, and deliberately chose not to adopt agricultural practices despite being exposed to the them by Makassans, Torres Strait Islanders and eventually the British Empire. Indigenous Australians were instead uniquely complex hunter-gatherers that tenured the environment to sustain a non-materialist and intricately spiritual way of life on the Australian continent.

Despite its excellent scholarship, the book itself reads much like a literature review. Each chapter consequently often becomes quite repetitive and sometimes boring to read. However, it is essential reading for anyone who has read Pascoe's work and most definitely ought to replace Dark Emu as an educational source in the Australian school curriculum.

[Amanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I read Bruce Pascoe's 'Dark Emu', I, like thousands of others, was blown away by his examples of indigenous agriculture, thinking that we had been taught wrongly all along. This book sets out to discredit 'Dark Emu', criticising Pascoe of poor research, too much reliance on European sources and being selective in his use of quotations.

It is not an easy read and the authors are clearly angry with Pascoe's attempt to portray indigenous culture as settled and agricultural where they would prefer to call it 'hunter-gatherer plus'. This labelling as either has been criticised by other writers. However it is labelled, Australian indigenous culture was a complex and sophisticated interaction with the land, and definitely not the 'hapless wandering' assumed by 'terra nullius'.

Pascoe has welcomed the debate and this book is certainly worth reading, if only to get a further understanding of Australian indigenous culture.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am out of my depth when it comes to reviewing Farmers or Hunter-Gatherers by Peter Sutton and Keryn Walshe.  When back in 2014 (as you can see in my review), I read Dark Emu, Black Seeds: Agriculture or Accident? I was convinced by author Bruce Pascoe's use of historical sources to show that, before 1788, there was systematic agriculture and aquaculture; permanent dwellings; storage and preservation methods and the use of fire to manage the difficult Australian environment.  On my LisaHillSchoolStuff blog I recommended the text as one that should be widely read and also taught in schools.

So it was chastening to read Farmers or Hunter-Gatherers, the Dark Emu Debate by Professor Peter Sutton FASSA and Dr Keryn Walshe.  I only had to read the Introduction to realise that I was one of the many who read Dark Emu as a revelatory experience when in fact there were for many decades texts in which a 'simply nomadic' description of the Old People was rejected.  There's more to reviewing books in this debate than just reading them.

The author profiles on the publisher's website are impressive:

Sutton is a social anthropologist and linguist who has, over more than 50 years, contributed to learning and recording Aboriginal languages, promoting Aboriginal art, mapping Aboriginal cultural landscapes, increasing understanding of contemporary Aboriginal societies and land tenure systems, and the successes of native title claimants.

Walshe is an archaeologist with more than 35 years of experience in recording, analysing and interpreting Australian Indigenous heritage sites and objects. She has lectured in archaeology, managed Indigenous heritage museum collections and undertaken site assessments for corporate and government agencies. Walshe continues to write for academic journals, advise heritage managers and give public presentations.

But impressive as these credentials are, it is the authors' cogent argument which makes their work a corrective to my naïve enthusiasm.  I'm not qualified to judge whether what they say about Pascoe's selective use of sources is a problem, but I do know that evidence-based truth telling necessitates research across the available knowledge bases.  I knew that Pascoe was not a trained historian but I assumed that his research was extensive and even-handed.

In contemporary Aboriginal studies, including history, archaeology and anthropology, academic expertise includes respecting the knowledge of The Old People, i.e. Aboriginal collaborators in the research who share facts and insights from their expertise. Here it is pertinent to note that one of the blurbers praising this book is Dr Kellie Pollard, a Wiradjuri archaeologist, lecturer and researcher at Charles Darwin University:

Sutton and Walshe show that Pascoe tried, and failed, to overturn over a century of anthropological and archaeological study, analysis and documentation, in addition to Aboriginal oral testimony, of the ways of life, governance, socioeconomic behaviour, material, technological and spiritual accomplishments and preferences of Aboriginal people in classical society and on the cusp of colonisation.

My own common sense and experience as a language learner tells me that Chapter 3 'The Language Question' is persuasive.  All languages have vocabulary that match the cultural practices and needs of their users.  But missing from the research into the 260 distinct languages of Australia in 1788 are words for 'hoed'; 'tilled'; 'ploughed'; 'sowed'; 'planted'; 'irrigated' or 'reaped'.  If what Pascoe claims is true, then there would be multiple words for agricultural activities in Aboriginal languages.  The only language that has a word for 'garden' or 'to sow, to plant' is Meryam Mir, a Torres Strait language.  (It's not an Australian language, apparently; it's a Papuan language within Australia's borders.)  These people have considerable gardening vocabulary, and mainlanders did adopt some of their technologies such as outrigger canoes and detachable-head harpoons, but they did not adopt horticulture. Sutton makes a convincing argument that this was a choice: obviously Aborigines had expert knowledge of the plants on which they depended but they did not need to farm them and chose not to.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2021/07/26/c...

[Felix · Rating 4 out of 5]

On the whole a clear, sensible, and mostly respectful response to the Dark Emu phenomenon, which acknowledges the strengths of Pascoe's work even in the process of exposing his misreadings and dragging his flights of speculation back down to earth. As an overview of archaeological and anthropological literatures on a range of subjects, it's quite extensive, though very possibly subject to selective tendencies of its own - impossible to verify from my (largely) lay position, but suggested here and there by Sutton's vehemence at certain of Pascoe's claims. Walshe's chapters in particular do a great job of reconstructing the shifting narratives and dialogues of disciplinary scholarship for a non-specialist readership, though Sutton achieves this too in most instances. There's a sense sometimes that Pascoe and Sutton are talking past each other with regard to common non-Indigenous perspectives on Indigenous societies - the former is right about public opinion often being regressive, but wrongly conflates this at times with the general state of academic knowledge, while the latter is right about available academic knowledge being mostly progressive, but wrongly assumes at times that availability of knowledge translates to its being widespread.

The jingoistic Andrew Bolt and 'Dark Emu Exposed' crowds will thankfully find little to no purchase here for their own gripes with Pascoe. The book repeatedly stresses the astonishing cultural, social, spiritual and economic complexity, indisputable historical primacy, and unrivalled ecological viability of Indigenous Australian societies, and contrasts these with the brutal and ecologically catastrophic practices of white settler-colonialism, which are acknowledged in no uncertain terms in the book's first and last pages.

What strikes me as missing from the book (though probably not from the perspective of Sutton & Walshe's project, being a review of sources cited in, or glaringly omitted from, Dark Emu) is any engagement with Pascoe's tentative but rousing suggestions for re-ecologisation of food production in Australia, which have informed his subsequent experiments in native grain cultivation, and which also include such ecological urgencies as transitioning the beef industry to the much less impactful kangaroo meat. Dark Emu's shortcomings notwithstanding, I still hope to see these suggestions vindicated in practice.

[Lish · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is incredible. Finally a properly scathing review that also succeeds on being entertaining and informative

[Carolyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read Dark Emu, by Bruce Pascoe, last year. I was impressed by the arguments Pascoe put forward in support of his premise that Aboriginal groups in various parts of Australia had practised agriculture and aquaculture and lived a more sedentary life than many had previously believed.

Now this new book, by anthropologists Sutton and Walshe, has made me think again. The main argument put forward in this new book is that the value that Pascoe placed on agriculture and settlement is a European one. Why, the authors ask, should we value a sedentary life more highly than a sophisticated hunter-gatherer society, grounded in a spiritual connection to the land?

This book also condemns Pascoe for generalising from specific regional examples and for quoting selectively from the journals of white explorers. The authors also criticise Pascoe for not considering the testimony of the Indigenous people themselves and for not examining the extent to which Aboriginal languages include (or more specifically do not include) words for concepts like gardening. They suggest that much of what he has written and popularised was already well known among educated Australians.

Unfortunately I do not think this was the case, certainly not in my generation (I am in my late 70s). Pascoe’s book opened many eyes and made us give greater respect to Aboriginal life before European colonisation. That can only be a good thing. However, this book is a useful corrective to areas where Pascoe overstated his case or failed to consider other enduring aspects of Aboriginal culture. Sadly, the politicisation of the debate over Aboriginal rights and history may lead to this volume being misused rather than appreciated for its subtle arguments.

[Liam · Rating 3 out of 5]

Farmers or Hunter-Gathers?: The Dark Emu Debate by Peter Sutton (and Keryn Walshe), is an interesting read filled with a significant amount of well referenced research, as well as personal insights and personal accounts by the author. Its delivery is largely aimed at calling out Bruce Pascoe on his research and his delivery of that research in the widely acclaimed book, Dark Emu. While this book is quite readable and Suttons insights quite fascinating, the tone and the nit-picky-ness, as well as the accusations and attacks on Pascoe, are at times quite unsavoury.

Sutton is obviously very knowledgable about Aboriginal history, culture and customs, however he is also clearly an academic with his nose out of joint because (possibly) his life's work is being questioned by a book now widely read around the nation. While I do understand there is questionable information in Dark Emu, of which Sutton makes many good counter points to, I do also feel Sutton's knowledge and insights would have been better portrayed in a stand alone book without all the bitterness towards Pascoe. However, I'm guessing that such a book would not have received the same media attention nor sales as one disputing Dark Emu.

3.5/5 yams

[milo · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 stars. ‘Farmers or Hunter-Gatherers?: The Dark Emu Debate’ by Peter Sutton and Keryn Walshe is an engaging, stimulating, and incredibly well-researched response to Bruce Pascoe’s landmark book ‘Dark Emu’. As someone who was initially intrigued by Pascoe’s claims about Indigenous Australian society’s pre-invasion practices, this book provides a crucial counterbalance. Sutton and Walshe skillfully challenge Pascoe’s assertions about the nature of agricultural practices in Indigenous societies pre-invasion, such as in practices of aquaculture and food storage, revealing a more nuanced view that prompts readers of ‘Dark Emu’ to reevaluate our preconceptions.

Sutton and Walshe delve right into the heart of the debate, questioning the extent to which Indigenous societies engaged in sedentary farming practices akin to European agriculture. Their meticulous analysis, drawn frm decades of anthropological scholarship and sincere involvement w various Indigenous communities, highlights the need fr “evidence-based truth-telling,” as Dr. Kellie Pollard, a Wiradjuri archaeologist, lecturer and researcher, underscores in a review at the start of this book. As she explains, “This book has been shown to discredit the Pascoe thesis of social evolutionism as the ‘true’ basis of Aboriginal economy before and after European colonisation… This corpus of research overwhelmingly suggests that ancestors of Aboriginal people before and after European colonisation were predominantly hunters-gatherers-fishers, not agriculturalists. As Sutton points out, the Old People were proud but humble about economic practices of the ancestors, and the Old People still are. That should give every young Aboriginal person in Australia a reason to also be proud of ancestors as hunters-gatherers-fishers.”

Likewise, I really appreciated Sutton and Walshe’s crucial point that regardless of whether Indigenous people were hunter-gatherers or farmers, the level of sophistication or complexity of their societies (and of other Indigenous societies globally) does not justify or excuse colonisation and its resulting legacies. The recognition of the rich cultural heritage and practices of Indigenous communities stands independently frm any assessment of their economic practices, and this perspective reinforces the importance of respecting and valuing the cultural diversity and resilience of these societies, regardless of the specific economic activities they engaged in. Sutton and Walshe remind us that the historical injustices and impacts of colonisation cannot be justified by simplistic categorisations, but rather they call fr a more comprehensive understanding and acknowledgement/recognition of the experiences and contributions of Indigenous peoples, asking us to develop a deeper appreciation of their societies, cultures, traditions and customs, and spiritualities.

By examining the huge breadth of available research - not just frm the early colonists, but also frm consulting Indigenous Elders whose mobs/clans/ancestors are being discussed, and who Pascoe curiously didn’t consult in ‘Dark Emu’ - and presenting an incredibly sound and comprehensive argument, ‘Farmers or Hunter-Gatherers?’ encourages us to reconsider assumptions about Indigenous societies prior to British invasion. This book serves as an invaluable resource fr those seeking a well-rounded understanding of the complexities surrounding this topic. It prompts us to recognise the multifaceted nature of Indigenous societies and, very importantly, invites every Indigenous person in Australia, young and old, to take pride in their heritage as hunters-gatherers-fishers, w there being nothing “mere” about it, as Pascoe labelled it. Sutton and Walshe’s contribution to the discourse challenges us to approach history w a critical yet open mind, making it an essential addition to the ongoing debate.

Overall, as Sutton questions, “Has Pascoe in Dark Emu simply reflected a modern Eurocentric attitude in which physical resource management is central, separable from the spiritual domain, and clearly the preferred medium for showing ‘advancement’ and ‘sophistication’ beyond ‘mere’ hunting, gathering, trapping and fishing? If you're looking for ‘sophisticated’ complexity in classical Aboriginal society, you will find it above all in the intricate webs of kinship and social structure; in the richness of the grammars of the languages; in the innumerable mythic narratives that bind place to place and engage the full range of the emotions; in the thousands of song series and the prodigious feats of memory by which they have been locally maintained; and in the elaborate intertwining of totemic religion, linguistic group organisation and land tenure systems.”

[Tom Evans · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bruce Pascoe’s ‘Dark Emu’ was a sensational book, lauded with awards and national success. When I heard about ‘Farmers or Hunter-gatherers?’ by Peter Sutton and Kerryn Walsh, I was unsure about the subject matter due to the media framing it as ‘attacking’ Bruce Pascoe. However, Sutton and Walsh construct a respectful and clear argument that highlights the dangers of assuming hunter-gathers are undesirable to a Eurocentric view of farming and agriculture. Essentially, Pascoe puts forward this argument and cherry-picks sources, particularly entries of biased white explorers who wanted to find European customs and not the customs of First Nations people and their own history. It’s important that ‘Dark Emu’ captured readers so distinctly with its narrative, however we also need to be aware of the cognitive biases many Australians have of First Nations people and their history. If you’ve read ‘Dark Emu’, I would strongly recommend you read this too.

[Gary Reger · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like so many others naive about the research, Dark Emu impressed me when I read it a couple of weeks ago. When searching for a copy, I had noticed Peter Sutton and Keryn Walshe's Farmers or Hunter-Gatherers? and ordered it at the same time. While Dark Emu arrived in a couple of days, Farmers or Hunter-Gatherers? took a couple of weeks. So I read it fresh from Bruce Pascoe's book.

The short take is simple: Sutton and Walshe demolish virtually every aspect of Dark Emu, and not with polemics or ad hominem attacks (mostly) but with a mass of well-researched, thorough treatment of the scholarship on Indigenous Australian people's lifeways. Pascoe's basic claim, that everyone sees pre-conquest Indigenes as simple nomads, has not in fact been held since the 1930s. Pascoe ignores, or maybe better, just doesn't know about, almost all the research published on the sites he discusses. Worse yet, he distorts the authorities he does know and misquotes, sometimes egregiously, the early explorers on whom he relies, always to buttress his thesis--even when the actual comments of his sources, seen in context, refute the position he attributes to them.

Sutton and Walshe insist, strongly, that the reasons the Indigenous people did not practice agriculture--and they show indisputably that they did not--was because they had a deep spiritual connection with the land and its flora and fauna that governed their relations to them and the ways they chose to harvest food. Pascoe's materialist approach to Indigenous economies ignores and so disrespects this fundamental aspect of Indigenous culture. He also accepts an evolutionary view of cultures in general, going from hunter-gatherers on to fully settled agricultural societies, each stage seen as "higher" and "more advanced"--again, a view anthropologists and archaeologists rejected decades ago.

Sad to say, perhaps, but there is nothing left of value in Dark Emu after reading Farmers or Hunter-Gatherers?>/i>.

[Sheila · Rating 4 out of 5]

probably nearer 3 and half stars. It was very readable and well referenced and definitely pushing an agenda!. Walshe's chapters were a bit too detailed to be very readable. I didn't like the way the author minimised yam cultivation, with the term "yam-using" . I thought they unfairly emphasised that much of the info about Aboriginal ecological land management was already available - yes it was to academics, but knowledge of Aboriginal culture is sketchy in the public sphere. I thought it was unfair to dismiss Pascoe's use of Brewarrinna and Lake Condah as atypical examples, I think we should thoroughly celebrate Brewarrina and Lake Condah as iconic world heritage sites. Yes, it is wrong to extrapolate what was happening in one part of Australia to the whole of Australia, but I think Sutton himself does that too, as most of his work has been in Northern parts. In my opinion , the best book on this subject is Sylvia Hallam's 1975 book Fire and Hearth, specific to WA, and she doesn't try to extrapolate! Here is a quote from Facebook reviewing the book:
"Australia is a big island and Aboriginal people lived in most parts of it. Why can't they be both Hunter gatherers (in arid regions) and perhaps farmers also in more fertile places? Why does it have to be either or? In any case if they were only hunter gatherers does that make them less worthy? Certainly not to me. Their understanding of the land and the water spaces is phenomenal."

[Ellen Jacobs · Rating 4 out of 5]

Truly, no one hates Bruce Pascoe more than Peter Sutton and Keryn Walshe— gotta love an academic feud that plays out on the bestsellers list LOL

[Reg Murray · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent book written by two highly qualified people, as contrasted to Pascoe's "Dark Emu" which was written by a man whose only academic qualification is a minor one in teaching.

Sutton and Walshe absolutely destroy "Dark Emu" at every level.

Pascoe has perpetrated a fraud on the Australian people and done much damage to the Aboriginal cause.

[Jan Bos · Rating 4 out of 5]

Respectful rebuttal of the claims that Aboriginal people engaged in early forms of agriculture.

[Tania · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn’t really want to read this; Dark Emu had been enough of struggle. But I thought that maybe somewhere between these two books would lie a more substantial truth, and for me I think does.

This is not a well written book and that’s my main gripe. Sutton obviously has vast experience, knowledge of, and empathy with, Australia’s First Nations culture and history, but he is not a writer for lay people. It is dull, repetitive, and has too much of an antagonist edge toward Pascoe.

There is so much valuable information to extract in this book, but that’s just it: it has to be extracted. If general education is the main aim (which I think it was) make it flow, make it readable. It doesn’t need to be less academic, just not as stilted as this is.

Overall, it is a worthy exposé of the problematic issues in Dark Emu, and in the end (because of neither book individually but some strange wrangling of the two) I have come away with an even deeper respect for First Nations peoples’ cultures globally, and a ever deepening sadness for what they, and the rest of us, have lost.

[Alphared Chadstick · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fantastic read, especially great to read after reading dark emu (which is how I suggest you go about reading both books - one after the other). Sutton shows the inconsistencies with some of the content in dark emu and separates fact from fiction. Both are good books, but if you want a truthfully painted picture, read this book.

[8/12]

[Sally O'wheel · Rating 5 out of 5]

This excellent book makes me feel embarrassed about how enthusiastic I was about Bruce Pascoe's Dark Emu. That is nothing to the embarrassment Bruce Pascoe must be experiencing! I found this book quite accessible, not like some academic texts, and was amazed that we have all been so taken in by Pascoe's extreme proposition. Sutton gives us the up to date research, and lots of 20th century research that was accessible to Pascoe, which paints classical Aboriginal life, pre 1788, as being complex and certainly not anything like farming. They did not live in villages as we might use the term. It is disturbing that previous archaeological and anthropological research has been discounted, that Aborigines were not consulted. It is disturbing that Young Dark Emu has continued these misguided ideas and that this material is being taught in schools.

[Sue · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a readable while scholarly detailed examination of Bruce Pascoe's Dark Emu. Peter Sutton and his co-writer Kerryn Walshe have a different story to tell and the evidence to support their version of the fascinating history of our First Nation peoples. Respectful yet passionate, they demonstrate that Pascoe set out to make an argument by careful selection of information rather than by scientific method and that there is another way to honour the First Peoples of Australia.

[Lloyd Downey · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm very grateful to Peter Sutton and Karyn Walshe for putting this book together. I'd read Dark Emu and had been rather astonished at the message ...basically that the Australian Aborigines were far more "advanced" than we had been giving them credit for. According to Bruce Pascoe, they were active agriculturalists, built stone houses, which they lived in more or less permanently, dug wells, engaged in aquaculture etc. etc. Though, I've just gone back and had a look at my review of Pascoe's book and realise that I was a bit sceptical even then and felt that Bruce was using one instance to generalise to the whole of Australia. And that's what the current Authors say too.
I must say that I was impressed with the scholarly nature of the current book; the careful cross referencing, the way they dealt with all the issues. For example there is some supposed evidence of very old stone implements (120,000 years old) being found on Rottnest Island off Perth in WA. But, as the authors point out....this is a real outlier with no supporting evidence whatsoever and big claims demand big evidence. What's the evidence?....well a snail shell found nearby. But that, or the implements themselves might have been placed together much more recently.
Time and time again they catch Bruce Pascoe out with selective quoting....leaving out the qualifiers in the narrative or simply just making stuff up. I've come away pretty convinced that what Sutton and Walshe say is much more likely to be the correct picture: that the aborigines, pre 1788, were hunter gatherers with minor variations, they were generally not sedentary but moved around following food and water resources. their belief system was that the earth would provide and they did not harvest and plant seed, in general they did nothing like practice agriculture or aquaculture, they did not build stone houses and live in them (with, perhaps the single exception of some stone foundations where it was on a rock foundation in Western Victoria), Yes they built fish traps but these should not be overstated as marvels of engineering, etc etc. I'm now concerned that Pascoe's book has been received with great enthusiasm ...even a version being developed for schools...which is really worrying and it plays right into the hands of those who, for political reasons are claiming that the aborigines have 70,000 years of the world's oldest "civilisation". Well they certainly had a long culture which had enabled them to live and survive quite well in Australia and to live very lightly on the land. But whatever they had it does not fit the normal archeological definitions of a civilisation: Buildings, large stratified societies, Complex tools, and creations, etc etc. I get the impression from Sutton that he has enormous respect for the Aboriginal culture as it stands and sees that Pascoe actually diminishes it by suggesting tht the closer it comes to the Western view of development (agriculture, sophisticated dwellings, and engineering works) then the more advanced they were. It seems that there is a lot of evidence for the Aborigines being in Australia for 45,000 - 50,000 years but beyond this the evidence gets a bit thin. Oh, one other thing struck me and that was the use of Melanesian influences from Torres Strait (domed huts) being generalised for the whole of Australia. In a way, I'm a bit disappointed. It would have been nice to think of the aborigines harvesting grain for sowing into prepared seed beds ....but the reality seems to be that if they had such seed they would eat it. Here's some highlights that I noted in the book:
2. Spiritual propagation
Aboriginal traditional maintenance of the fertility of the biota in many different regions by spiritual means is ignored in Dark Emu.
Instead, Dark Emu’s focus is completely on material methods of species cultivation. Yet Aboriginal spiritual management of species fertility was clearly the dominant mode by comparison with physical species management practices. It was dominant, but the two were often complementary.
3. The language question
The basic pattern with regard to the possession of specifically ‘horticultural’ vocabulary in traditional Australia is that it is found only in the Torres Strait, where horticulture (gardening) was in fact traditionally practised to a degree, on the western islands, and to a greater degree in the east and north.
4. Ecological agents and ‘firestick farming’
In 1959 Tindale had published a paper, which Jones cited, containing these passages: Man, setting fire to large area of his territory at all times of the year convenient for his hunting, often causes destruction far beyond that done by nature [that is, lightning].
If people want to metaphorically call that ‘firestick farming’, as Jones did in his 1969 paper, they well may, but producing young grass was never their main motivation in engaging in grass firing in the extensive Wik grasslands and thickets. I never heard of people intending fire to maintain grasslands free from trees, although this may well have been an effect of their actions.
‘Proto-agriculture’ is not agriculture. It may well have been, instead, a long-term stable skill beyond which it was unnecessary to venture, and therefore was not proto-anything. We should not assume that it was ‘on the way’ to something other than its own continued effectiveness.

Some San communities have oscillated between foraging and cattle herding over several centuries—perhaps for millennia’. As Layton, Foley and Williams say, ‘These examples underline the danger of perceiving the transition between hunting and gathering and specialized husbandry as a one-way process that in some absolute sense constitutes progress.’

The writings of David Harris are particularly relevant here; he constructs a continuum from dependency on wild plants and animals to dependency on domesticated ones. Even where production of wild plant-foods and animals dominates, it may be combined with cultivation involving small-scale clearing of vegetation and minimal tillage, and/ or the taming, protective herding, or free-range management of animals.
Pascoe’s presentation of his findings as new, and his frequent assertion of the ignorance of the Australian public, appear at least partly based on an unwillingness to acknowledge this kind of highly relevant published discussion and the direct teachings of Aboriginal people.
On the basis of what I have learned from senior Aboriginal mentors over a period of fifty years, it is clear to me that the non-adoption of horticulture and agriculture by the Old People was not a failure of the imagination but an active championing and protection of their own way of life and, when in contact with outsiders, resistance to an alien economic pattern.
When it came time for planting it seemed ridiculous to the nomad to bury good sweet-potatoes instead of eating them
5. Social evolutionism rebirthed
There are moments in Dark Emu where a medieval European peasant economy seems to be held up as the progressive target for Australians before conquest, or even claimed as its ‘achievement’.
Pascoe regards the possession of pottery, sewn clothing, agriculture, permanent settlements, and houses that employ stone rather than tree limbs, grass and bark as hallmarks of a more ‘advanced’ or more sophisticated society.
If Australian societies were, as Pascoe argues, on a ‘movement towards agricultural reliance’, was this same movement going on for over 50,000 years? If people devised these adaptations 50,000 years ago, have they been stuck in a time warp of ‘lack of advancement’ ever since?
Pascoe’s book is an essay in admiration of creativity and invention. Readers are encouraged to feel rushes of wonder for ingenious devices, for ‘achievements’. This is dangerously close to a Western notion of culture focused on constant innovation, competition, progress and, in its lighter moments, gadgetry, gimmickry, smartness, novelty.
The fish traps of Brewarrina and eastern Cape York were not claimed as the ingenious works of human beings, but were regarded as having been put there in the Dreaming, by Dreamings.
One of Pascoe’s focal subjects, the milling of seeds into flour for the making of seedcakes, is a relevant case. Use of millstones for grinding seeds was adopted through much of arid-zone Australia and nearby beginning somewhere around 4000 years ago.
Dark Emu bypasses the widely based evidence for the introduction of seed grinding around 4000 years ago and instead uses the isolated Cuddie Springs site case as evidence that Australians had begun grinding seeds, and were the world’s ‘first bakers’, around 30,000 years ago (in the Pleistocene period), 15,000 years before the Egyptians
Professor Mike Smith, senior archaeologist at the National Museum of Australia (NMA), after a detailed discussion of the evidence, concluded instead: ‘In this context, claims for late
Pleistocene seed-grinding implements at Cuddie Springs … are tenuous.’
6. The agriculture debate
On that basis I can say that, out of the many dozens of fruits, root vegetables and swamp plants we investigated, this ‘replanting’ practice was confined to only one class: the yams. Of these, five species were identified, but probably only two species of yam were replanted or conserved in situ: the long yam and the hairy yam. This alleged link to ‘farming’ does not make classical Wik society an agricultural one or even a horticultural one. It was hunter-gatherer-plus.
recent fine-grained and authoritative study of plant use traditions of the same people and their neighbours, by Jeff Hardwick, has produced a great deal of detail but nothing that even suggests that they practised horticulture or agriculture prior to conquest.
He suggests the fruit was brought to the ranges by people travelling from elsewhere, and possibly established by people defecating near camp sites.
It is notable that detailed studies of Aboriginal seed use in the seed-grinding region characteristically make no suggestion of the physical cultivation of crops through sowing of seeds stored from previous seasons. Had this practice been widespread it would have been observed and recorded ubiquitously.
One can legitimately interpret these stretched definitions and uses of qualifiers such as semi-( cultivation) and proto-( agriculture) as Eurocentric wishful thinking.
Why were these practices not read as evidence of a long-term stable relationship with the biota, as an achievement of relative equilibrium, rather than unfulfilled steps up some supposed ladder of progress?
They provoke questions such as: ‘What heldpeople up, for around 55,000 years, from making progress?’ The question is false. It glamorises agriculture, and fails to respect the spiritual propagation philosophy of the Old People.
If ‘agriculture’ was the way of life of the Old People, why did they not segue smoothly into the domestic gardening—and the broad-field ploughing, sowing and cropping—of the British settlers?
The view we express in this book—that is, that at conquest Aboriginal people were practical and spiritual managers and modifiers of their environment, skilled hunters, adept fishers and trappers, and very botanically knowledgeable foragers who had long come to grips with the problems of making a living in a wide range of ecologies. A minority harvested grass seeds and ground them into a paste that could be cooked or eaten raw. They had not, however, become farmers who created and tended fields, sowed crops and lived in permanent villages.
Nor had they become horticulturists (gardeners). They had their own way. This way should be cherished.
8. ‘Aquaculture’ or fishing and trapping?
Dark Emu refers to several kinds of traditional fish trap (pages 53–71). Those given the most prominence, generally, are the ones that constitute exceptional creations. ......There is abundant evidence that Aboriginal people in different regions of Australia harvested wild fish by spearing, angling, netting, grabbing them by the gills, and creating weirs and stone traps, but no evidence that they physically bred, fed, protected and reared them as captive fingerlings and then introduced them into the environment.
Moving offshore, Pascoe here asserts that ‘large, organised fishing expeditions by watercraft were observed all around the coast’ ....Watercraft were absent from the greater part of the south-western coasts. There were also no watercraft in most of the interior.
9. Dwellings
Pascoe provides only fragmentary evidence from a single part of Victoria, namely the Western District, that dwellings were ‘permanent’
Instead, it states that families had their ‘permanent’ dwellings but did not dwell in them all of the time: ......About once in three months the whole tribe unite, generally at new or full moon, when they have a few dances, and again separate into three or more bodies, as they cannot get food if they move en masse; the chief, with the aged, makes arrangements for the route each party is to take. In their movements they seldom encamp more than three nights in one place, and oftener but one. Thus they move from one place to another, regardless of sickness, deaths, births, &c. … … They seldom travel more than six miles [10 km] a day.
The recurring pattern, all over Australia, was one of seasonal and other variation in lengths of stays in one place. No group is ever described, at the moment of colonisation, as living year in, year out, in one single place.
It is just possible, by the stretch of a very fertile imagination to assign the name of village to an assemblage of aboriginal huts, but such a liberty with the English language could only be permitted to one possessing a highly poetical organisation,
The use of stone footings for boughs seems to have been partly prompted by scarcity of organic materials rather than simply chosen. O’Connor suggested that the local islands were used on a ‘sedentary or semi-sedentary basis’
The relative permanency of the dwellings did not mean they were permanently inhabited. ...... ‘In some parts of the country where it is easier to get stones than wood and bark for dwellings, the walls are built of flat stones and roofed with limbs and thatch.’
But when we go to that page in Memmott’s book to check, there is no such statement,
There is no scientific evidence that Aboriginal Australians, before conquest, made stone houses with stone walls rising all the way from ground level to roof level at, say, a height of 2 metres—
As the radius of collected suitable wood expanded over time, wood became harder to find and had to be sought further out. The fuel-based incentive to move to another location thus increased with length of stay.
But this was not one of the domed structures photographed by Thomson and was actually not even from Aboriginal Australia but from the Melanesian region of the eastern Torres Strait, .......Most aboriginal huts were.....assembled with an economy of effort appropriate to their needs and their minimal-impact economic philosophy—the latter being what Stanner called their use of ‘least-cost’ solutions.
Camps numbering in the hundreds were not the norm. In the children’s version, Young Dark Emu......There are no images of the most frequently recorded range of dwellings in the old Australia: modestly sized, low huts.
The text indicates that the authors mistakenly believe Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to have had the same traditional economic system:
The message serves only to seriously mislead secondary students exposed to this material.
10. Mobility
in what is now the Townsville region of Queensland: They never stay long in a locality; as one place becomes a little exhausted of food, they travel to another. In the wet and cold season they put up small gunyahs to live in, but in no particular order … They get their living by fishing, hunting, digging in the earth for roots, gathering fruits.
Aboriginal educator Colin Bourke wrote: In most cases the people moved around their ancestral lands as hunters and gatherers, so many possessions would have been a hindrance. Their movements around their country were not haphazard, but had a purpose. They were part of Aboriginal mastery over the resources of the land.
11. The explorers’ records
All Mitchell says is that his party ‘noticed some of their huts’; there is no mention of anyone counting anything. Pascoe’s ‘over one thousand’ is pure fiction.
Unburned country was also a form of storage. The resources of the grasslands and savannahs were sequentially released, usually in a mosaic burning pattern, during cooperative game drives for which people assembled.
12. ‘Agricultural’ implements and antiquity
Pascoe misquotes Etheridge and implies that the Torres Strait implement is of Australian Aboriginal origin.
The oldest reliably dated shell middens in Australia are about 30,000 years old but most are less than 10,000 years old, coinciding with stabilisation of the current shoreline.
When Dark Emu presents evidence from archaeological sites and objects, it is the caveats that go missing.
When caveats are excluded from the discussion, the reader is grossly misled.
13. Stone circles and ‘smoking’ trees
The study area was principally Lake Condah and the archaeologist was Anne Clarke. She found that terms such as ‘stone house’, ‘hut’ and ‘village’ had been loosely applied without a clear and consistent definition. The vision of ‘hundreds of people living in villages’ had gone unquestioned and become all-pervasive,
If the cultural stone circles had revealed cultural artefacts, such as stone tools, shell, animal bone, ash or charcoal, and the natural stone circles were sterile, then it would have simplified matters. Instead, and interestingly, of the 318 cultural and natural stone features recorded in the region, only one circle was recorded with artefacts. It was excavated, and its charcoal samples returned a date of less than 200 years old, which was fitting with the glass identified on the same site.
There is no reliable or convincing archaeological or ethnographic evidence for thousands of eels being smoke-dried and stored in the Lake Condah district before or at colonisation.
Stone circles have been well recorded around Lake Condah but remain in an unknown ratio of cultural to natural formations. In view of the nineteenth-century ethnographies and illustrations and the excavation of two circles, 90 there is no doubt that some circles represent the base for constructing a dwelling. Other circles close to the fish-trap complex may have been used for caching live eels or to serve some other purpose related to the ponding and channelling of fish within the system.
I was impressed, five stars from me.

[Alan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Clinically punctures the overblown claims of Dark Emu. Well written, well researched and supported, with the huge benefit of providing a rich and intellectually reliable understanding of pre-conquest aboriginal life. A more accurate and more engaging book than Dark Emu. I know some think it's too harsh in the way it calls out the failings of Dark Emu, but I think the tone is well and truly warranted.

[Oliver Hodson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had read Dark Emu a few years ago and admit I was enthralled by its sweeping view of Aboriginal agricultural achievement and the level of disruption and disposession explored. I think another part of its genius was that hope of looking for crops and plants that could be possibly used as domesticated crops more suited to our Australian environment.

Having read this book now, it is clear that Dark Emu is completely out of its depth and yes, denies the non-agricultural achievements and ecosystem management of Aboriginal cultures all over Australia and denies the widespread rejection of agriculture because of the strength of the culture- not because of any deficit to attain agriculture.

This book is fantastic and it is also presented with a bit of a tone of ‘this has been here for you all to see for ages.’ It is true, and once again I stand condemned!
Learning from accurate sources and living cultures has got to be the way forward and I hope we as a country can achieve constitutional recognition and more and more understanding, material improvements and improved ability to maintain culture in the future.

[Hugh · Rating 4 out of 5]

An important work marred a little by some poorly structured chapters and (at times) an unnecessarily acerbic tone

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent read

Very informative and expert correction of the numerous faults in Dark Emu. Should be read by anyone who has previously read Dark Emu.

[Nick · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great book that clearly shows the complete fabrication of Dark Emu, and its false perspective. It is a brief book, and I would urge people wanting to know more to read his reference sources. It shows the amazing spiritual connection to the land in a brief read.

[Emily Fletcher · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is not only a fantastic rebuttal to Dark Emu, but a comprehensive view on the lives of Indigenous Australians written by two people with decades of knowledge propped up by Aboriginal elders. Sutton and Walshe show the exaggerations and distortions in Dark Emu’s selection of evidence, and then support their assertions with countless accurate and credible sources. Two of their overarching ideas that I think are noteable (and leave you thinking) are that of the dangers of social evolutionism, as opposed to cultural relativism, and the dangers of treating Aboriginal experience as a monolith when there was so much variation within landscape and culture.
Overall, this is a fantastically dense read (it was certainly a long read despite being only 201 pages) that is key in the discourse around the rich history of Aboriginal Australia.

[Stewart Monckton · Rating 4 out of 5]

A remarkable book responding to the (very) popualr 'Dark Emu'.

Cant help but think that this volume needs to be read and understood by many, many people.

The cultures described here is truly remarkable, and do not need to be shoe-horned into an agricultural framework. And the people of these cultures do not need to be thought of as (proto) farmers to be respected and valued.

Read this book. SM