Dark Emu Exposed - And the Assault on Australian History |
Real, peer-reviewed history, archeology and anthropology studies confirm that Australian Aboriginal Society was a classic Stone-Age Hunter Gatherer Society prior to British settlement, with albeit a glimmer of an expected Neolithic advancement underway,
We present evidence here for all Australians to make up their own minds.
A Review and Critique of Bruce Pascoe's book Dark Emu* - Myth or Reality?
Dark Emu Exposed was originally set-up to critique Bruce Pascoe and his book, Dark Emu.
Dark Emu Exposed
From 1/9/2021 however, we are entering a new phase of research.
We have acquired a considerable number of new members and additional resources so we can amplify the skills we have honed in our critiques of Bruce Pascoe and his Dark Emu and use them more widely in Australian Aboriginal and Colonial history debates, with an initial emphasis on Tasmania.
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Debunking Dark Emu
Dennis Foley
Edward White History Prize
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SHOW US SOME PROOF, KYAM
Andrew Bolt - HeraldSun 10/2/2023
Is Kyam Maher, South Australia's Attorney-General, really an Aborigine? I've tried asking him privately, and now ask very publicly because this is a big deal.
For one, many Aboriginal activists complain that up to a third of our 810,000 Aborigines are actually whites, or not Aboriginal in any meaningful way.
The examples are many, including Professor Bruce Pascoe, author of the equally fake history Dark Emu; Lauren O'Dwyer, the former Victorian Labor candidate whose allegedly Yorta Yorta great-grandfather was white; and Professor Kerrie Doyle, who claimed to be of the Winninninni tribe, of which no record exists, and claimed her Aboriginality through a stepfather with no Aboriginal ancestors in his genealogy.
Second, Maher, who claims Tasmanian Aboriginal ancestry, is now creating an Aboriginal voice to South Australia's parliament that gives people identifying as Aboriginal extra political rights.
Unlike Australians of any other race, Aborigines would be able to choose a Voice, a kind of Aboriginal parliament, to advise state bureaucrats, sit in on Cabinet discussions and address the state parliament once a year.
But that means whites claiming to be Aboriginal would also have those extra political rights and powers. What a farce.
So shouldn't this profound switch to race-based politics come with tighter checks on who is actually Aboriginal? Shouldn't the Albanese government's own plans for a Voice demand the same?
And shouldn't Kyam Maher set an example by himself giving proof he's Aboriginal?
It was seven years ago that Maher publicly announced his Aboriginality on National Indigenous Television.
As the presenter said excitedly: "South Australia's newly appointed Aboriginal Affairs Minister has revealed an indigenous background he knows very little about.
"Kyam Maher says his mother recently discovered she has Aboriginal bloodlines from Western Victoria.
"Mr Maher says details of which Aboriginal nations have become lost over the past couple of generations, but his mother now identifies as a proud member of Mt Gambier's Aboriginal community."
Then a beaming Maher spoke: "Our family includes indigenous heritage but for two generations it's not something families discussed a lot. It's only later in life my mum became acquainted with her heritage ...
"It's not something that played an active role in my growing up ... but it's something that I'm very proud of."
But where's the evidence?
Genealogists from the impressive dark-emu-exposed.org website have examined Mrs Maher's family tree - and her husband's - but couldn't find one Aboriginal ancestor.
What's more, Viv Maher's story changed. Her Western Victorian Aboriginal ancestry had switched to Tasmanian Aboriginal ancestry in an obituary for her in 2018: "Later in her career, Viv found and acknowledged her Aboriginal heritage through a male forebear of hers married to an Aboriginal Tasmanian woman. The name of that 'wonderful woman' was unrecorded, Viv said."
Not recorded? Odd.
And when dark-emu-exposed.org checked, every ancestor who could have been that "wonderful woman" turned out to be of British or German descent.
Last year, the story changed again. Remember, in 2015 we were told Kyam Maher's mother had "only recently" discovered she had Aboriginal bloodlines, supposedly from Western Victoria.
But last year her son said not only was he of Tasmanian Aboriginal ancestry, but "it's always been known in my family that we have Aboriginal heritage".
Now, I'm not claiming anyone was dishonest. Maybe Mrs Maher was confused or misinformed, or made assumptions that turned out to be wrong.
After all, many people these days really, really want to identify as Aboriginal out of the fullness of their good hearts, and maybe don't check closely enough whether they really are.
On the other hand, maybe the genealogists made a mistake. Maybe I've misinterpreted what Mrs Maher and her son have been saying, and maybe they do have proof.
That's why Roger Karge, head of dark-emu-exposed.org, wrote to Maher last month, asking him to explain his Aboriginal ancestry. Perhaps show some evidence.
I also wrote to Maher last Friday, asking the same thing; my producers at Sky News have emailed and rung his office half a dozen times since to follow up. Maher's staff received these inquiries; but haven't answered them.
I don't think that's appropriate. Most importantly, Maher should set an example so fake Aborigines don't steal the limelight from real Aborigines, or hog their benefits or misappropriate their political power.
Indeed, Maher himself seems to have gained politically - certainly in media coverage - by identifying as Aboriginal, and as South Australia's first Aboriginal Attorney-General.
So it's only right he proves he's Aboriginal. Isn't it? And not just him.
Source: pagesuite.com
Andrew Bolt: ABC pulls every punch on Dark Emu literary hoax
The ABC's film on the greatest literary fake we've ever known at least served to explain why so many people are so desperate to believe Bruce Pascoe and his made-up history.
Andrew Bolt
July 19, 2023
The ABC on Tuesday finally came clean about Bruce Pascoe, the fake Aborigine behind our biggest literary hoax.
No, the film it screened, The Dark Emu Story, didn't actually admit Pascoe isn't Aboriginal, or show his family tree - 100 per cent from England.
It also refused to detail how Pascoe invented "evidence" for his massive best-seller, Dark Emu, to falsely claim Aborigines weren't "mere" hunter gatherers, but farmers, living in "houses" and "towns" of about 1000 people.
But accidentally or not, this taxpayer-funded film, backed by Film Australia, did do us one great favour.
It explained why so many people are so desperate to believe Pascoe and his made-up history.
It's the shame. Too many Pascoe fans seem embarrassed and ashamed that Aborigines were so technologically backward when whites first arrived.
Here are people supposedly here for 65,000 years, long before the last Neanderthal disappeared, yet in all that time did not invent even the wheel, or a written language.
But Pascoe rescued them.
He denied pre-colonial Aborigines were "mere hunter-gatherers", as if that were shameful.
He absurdly insisted they were "farmers" instead, in big towns. Just like white people!
The Dark Emu Story ran with more of the same. They were the first astronomers, claimed one Aboriginal talking head.
Another, a traditional owner, enthused: "For years people were saying Aborigines were only hunters and gatherers, right?"
He pointed at a very rare fish trap found in Brewarrina - lines of rocks in a small river: "Our people designed the fish traps which makes them architects, they built the fish traps which makes them builders ... Genius engineering!"
Another activist added: "I would describe the fish traps as the oldest human-made structure in the world. Older than the Egyptian pyramids, older than Stonehenge."
Later we were shown a few tangled branches, forming a shallow arch, and were told this was "the oldest standing house in Australia".
There is desperation here to believe Aborigines were "better" or more "sophisticated" than "just" hunter-gatherers, a desperation Pascoe exploited. The Dark Emu Story, made by the Aboriginal-led Blackfella Films, showed that brilliantly. Here are some people testifying to Pascoe's appeal to the ashamed.
Keryn Walshe, archaeologist and Pascoe critic, explained: "We want Aborigines to be agriculturalists, as if there is this need to make them into something we understand, recognise."
Professor Emeritus Tom Griffiths, a Pascoe sympathiser agreed: "White Australians might think Aboriginal people seem to be like us. They had agriculture, they had farms, they had fish traps (White people) can imagine that and ... identify with them.''
Aboriginal activists in the film were also grateful Pascoe made tribal Aborigines look less like "savages", as if they had to be farmers to qualify.
Marcia Langton, the Voice architect, claimed the success of Dark Emu was to "shift the racist paradigm in Australia from (Aborigines as) savage to fully-fledged human being".
Pascoe himself said he wanted "Aboriginal kids to know these things to have more pride in the old ancestors", as if they couldn't have pride in hunter gatherers, however ingenious.
Maybe that's why The Dark Emu Story tried hard to keep the Pascoe myth alive.
Back in 2019, Screen Australia announced it would actually finance this project - a series, originally - to promote Pascoe's theories: "It's a chance to challenge the myth of pre-colonial Indigenous Australians being just hunter gatherers."
"Just". That word again.
But in the four years since, the evidence that Pascoe isn't Aboriginal and his book isn't true become too overwhelming to ignore.
The series was cut to just one film, Pascoe was dropped as a co-writer, and the allegations against him were - in fairness - mentioned.
But every punch was pulled.
Pascoe wasn't asked for evidence for his most ludicrous claims, or asked, for instance, why he'd used false citations from diaries of early explorers such as Charles Sturt.
True, the film shows Pascoe confronted by anthropologist Peter Sutton, co-author of a book destroying Pascoe's theory, but the heavily edited footage of their debate omitted any discussion of any example of Pascoe's fakery.
The closest we got to seeing Pascoe's technique involved him fantasising rather than fabricating.
The film shows him taking a single colonial drawing of Aboriginal women digging for yams as proof they also planted them as farmers.
Meanwhile, the film had Marcia Langton smearing Pascoe critics - notably me and Sutton, of the Left - as "racists" and "proto-fascists", without right of reply.
Your ABC, screening such defamation, to defend the greatest literary fake we've ever known.
Source: heraldsun.com.au
* Book - Dark Emu
Aboriginal Australia and the Birth of Agriculture
By: Bruce Pascoe
Dark Emu injects a profound authenticity into the conversation about how we Australians understand our continent ... [It is] essential reading for anyone who wants to understand what Australia once was, or what it might yet be if we heed the lessons of long and sophisticated human occupation.' Judges for 2016 NSW Premier's Literary Awards
Dark Emu puts forward an argument for a reconsideration of the hunter-gatherer tag for pre-colonial Aboriginal Australians. The evidence insists that Aboriginal people right across the continent were using domesticated plants, sowing, harvesting, irrigating, and storing - behaviours inconsistent with the hunter-gatherer tag. Gerritsen and Gammage in their latest books support this premise but Pascoe takes this further and challenges the hunter-gatherer tag as a convenient lie. Almost all the evidence in Dark Emu comes from the records and diaries of the Australian explorers, impeccable sources.
Bruce's comments on his book compared to Gammage's: " My book is about food production, housing construction and clothing, whereas Gammage was interested in the appearance of the country at contact. [Gammage] doesn't contest hunter gatherer labels either, whereas that is at the centre of my argument."
Winner - Book of the Year in the 2016 NSW Premier's Literary Awards
Winner - Indigenous Writer's Prize in the 2016 NSW Premier's Literary Awards
Shortlisted - History Book Award in the 2014 Queensland Literary Awards
Shortlisted - 2014 Victorian Premier's Award for Indigenous Writing
About the Author: Bruce Pascoe
Bruce Pascoe is a Bunurong man born in the Melbourne suburb of Richmond. He is a member of the Wathaurong Aboriginal Co-operative of southern Victoria and has been the director of the Australian Studies Project for the Commonwealth Schools Commission. Bruce has had a varied career as a teacher, farmer, fisherman, barman, fencing contractor, lecturer, Aboriginal language researcher, archaeological site worker and editor.
Books include the short story collections Night Animals and Nightjar; the novels Fox, Ruby Eyed Coucal, Ribcage, Shark, Earth, and Ocean; historical works Cape Otway: Coast of secrets and Convincing Ground; the childrens book Foxies in a Firehose and the young adult fiction Fog a Dox, which won the Prime Ministers Literary Award for YA Fiction, 2013.
Book On Sale: Booktopia
Published: 1st June 2018
ISBN: 9781921248016
booktopia.com.au
❊ Web Links ❊
➼ Dark Emu Exposed - And the Assault on Australian History
➼ www.dark-emu-exposed.org
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