And the new book - and Good Weekend’s big launch - was all his Christmases come at once. Yes, none have criticised Pascoe’s work more than Andrew Bolt. The Bolt Report, Sky News, 14 June, 2021 A hoax that on Saturday blew up, was finally admitted by left-wing newspapers The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald that had fallen for it and promoted its author for years. Pascoe says he welcomes the difference of opinion.īut his defenders - of which there are many - have been forced to see his work in a new light.Īnd critics - of which there are far fewer, but vocal - have new ammunition to attack Pascoe and anyone who supports his book:ĪNDREW BOLT: … the greatest literary hoax ever perpetrated in Australia.

They write that while Dark Emu “purports to be factual” it is “littered with unsourced material, is poorly researched, distorts and exaggerates many points, selectively emphasises evidence to suit those opinions, and ignores large bodies of information that do not support the author’s opinions”. In page after page, Sutton and Walshe accuse Pascoe of a “lack of true scholarship”, ignoring Aboriginal voices, dragging respect for traditional Aboriginal culture back into the Eurocentric world of the colonial era, and “trimming” colonial observations to fit his argument. Leading anthropologist Dr Peter Sutton and archaeologist Dr Keryn Walshe have their own book - Farmers or Hunter-Gatherers? The Dark Emu Debate - which hit the shelves on Wednesday.Īnd as respected journalist and author Stuart Rintoul revealed in Good Weekend, it promises to make as much of a splash as Pascoe’s celebrated work: Now, in a new book, two highly respected academics say that there is little evidence for these claims. In 2014, Bruce Pascoe’s Dark Emu revolutionised interpretations of Indigenous history, arguing that Aboriginal people engaged in agriculture, irrigation and construction prior to the arrival of Europeans.

That publishing phenomenon is Bruce Pascoe’s 2014 book, Dark Emu, an award-winning bestseller that challenged theories of Indigenous Australians as hunter gatherers and painted a new picture of supposedly more advanced societies.īut now that theory is being challenged too, as Nine’s Good Weekend magazine put a new assessment at centre stage: Good Weekend, The Sydney Morning Herald, 12 June, 2021

Two eminent academics take aim at a publishing phenomenon

But now to competing histories of Australia before European settlement and this Good Weekend splash that set an emu among the pigeons:

Dark emu by bruce pascoe