Dark Emu: Aboriginal Australia and the Birth of Agriculture

Contradicts the conventional wisdom that native peoples were primitive hunter-gatherers

History has portrayed Australia's First Peoples, the Aboriginals, as hunter-gatherers who lived on an empty, uncultivated land. History is wrong.

In this seminal book, Bruce Pascoe uncovers evidence that long before the arrival of white men, Aboriginal people across the continent were building dams and wells; planting, irrigating, and harvesting seeds, and then preserving the surplus and storing it in houses, sheds, or secure vessels; and creating elaborate cemeteries and manipulating the landscape. All of these behaviors were inconsistent with the hunter-gatherer tag, which turns out have been a convenient lie that worked to justify dispossession.

Using compelling evidence from the records and diaries of early Australian explorers and colonists, he reveals that Aboriginal systems of food production and land management have been blatantly understated in modern retellings of early Aboriginal history, and that a new look at Australia's past is required--for the benefit of all Australians.

Dark Emu, a bestseller in Australia, won both the Book of the Year Award and the Indigenous Writer's Prize in the 2016 New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards.

Author: Bruce Pascoe
Publisher: Scribe Us
Published: 05/15/2018
Pages: 288
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.65lbs
Size: 8.20h x 5.30w x 0.90d
ISBN: 9781947534087


Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 04/30/2018

About the Author
Pascoe, Bruce: -

Bruce Pascoe lives in Australia and has a Bunurong, Tasmanian, and Yuin heritage. Dark Emu won both the Book of the Year Award and the Indigenous Writer's Prize in the New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards.

Bruce is currently working on two films for ABC TV and a novel.