Dark emu
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. --back cover
Stats for nerds
9recommend
22mentions
17people
2017–2024years
59% recommend32% neutral9% critical
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- You’ve read Bruce Pascoe? His reputation tarnished or otherwise, Dark Emu was a brilliant book for me.
- It's worth giving Dark Emu a (critical) read. It gathers numerous primary sources from early explorers which describe practices of cooperative harvesting, cultivation, and land management between indigenous tribes in Australia. They also had totemic moieties which governed who could conceive together within and between tribes, ostensibly to avoid in-breeding.
The agricultural revolution that spawned from the Indus valley civilisations were dependent on beasts of burden which were lacking in Australia. Though maybe with time something similar might have happened in Australia to, as it did in the Incan empire before it was destroyed by the conquistadors
- The Listening Society by Hanzi Freinacht. It taught me that there is indeed a direction for society to go beyond PostModernism, that is constructive and nuanced. Also explained why it is so rare for people to move into such a stage of development.
The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow. Showed all of the archaeological evidence for vast time periods where alternate governance models were put into practice, and how the history of progress that we are given is not the whole story. Useful for seeing that we are in a local minim, and can evolve into something better.
Dark Emu by Bruce Pascoe. Goes through the diaries and historical evidence of the early interactions with Australia's Aboriginals. Shows how over time their agricultural practices, towns and living environments were destroyed and replaced with a narrative that they were backwards and not using the land. Good example of how sustainable practices can look like unused natural spaces, and thus dismissed as poor uses of space.
- I recently read “Dark Emu” by Bruce Pascoe. It’s a great read on Australian indigenous culture.
He notes similar experiences documented by British colonists in Australia. They remarked on how the whole continent was kept like a large and beautiful garden.
- I live in Australia and the diversity of bush-tucker is absolutely amazing! Tons of strange tomatoes (bush-tomatoes), of course kangaroo meat, quandong, kakadu fruit, kutjera, bunya nut etc. Except for kangaroo meat you can't get these in the supermarket here either, there's no industry growing them on a large scale due to cultural and sometimes religious reasons.
Pascoe's Dark Emu or Gammage's Biggest Estate on Earth (less fought about) are good reads in that area.
- For context there's a pseudo debate going on in Australia about whether the indigenous people had large-scale agri- and aquaculture. A book, highly recommended, called Dark Emu quotes primary sources from early settlers and white explorers clearly describing an agrarian economy that was rapidly wiped out by invading settlers and their livestock. If true, and it's a convincing theory, the indigenous first Australians had a completely different culture to that we've all been taught. Settled agriculture actively managing the land as opposed to hunter gatherers. And the history goes back 50-60k years.
This idea has touched a nerve with the Murdocracy who opened a new front in their culture wars attacking the idea without really attempting to refute it from historical sources.
So I think reading this piece in that context is helpful.
