The "Dark Emu" controversy

Bruce Pascoe’s Dark Emu was first published seven years ago, but its popularity began after it won the NSW Premier’s literary award in 2016. By the end of 2018 it had sold 35,000 copies and UK and USA editions were being planned[1]; currently it has now sold more than 260,000 copies[2].

In an academic review in 2014, the year it was first published, Dr Michael Davis writing in Aboriginal History gave it a mixture of mild praise and some criticism:. While he wrote that the book showed that  ‘Indigenous people, before European arrivals, maintained a sophisticated economy’, at the same time Davis commented on the limitations of Pascoe’s evidence for these statements and in particular his over reliance on secondary sources:

… his reliance on secondary sources and compilations, through which he accesses the works of colonial observers is puzzling. So too is his reliance on the works of the late Rupert Gerritsen. Why this excessive use of Gerritsen and other recent syntheses, rather than go to the primary sources themselves?[3]

Despite its popularity and praise from people like the Indigenous Academic Marcia Langton, it was not until this year that a scholarly refutation of both its evidence and interpretations received wide acknowledgement in a  book by the social anthropologist Professor Peter Sutton and archaeologist Dr Kerry Walshe: Farmers or Hunter-Gatherers? The Dark Emu Debate[4]:

Pascoe’s book purports to be factual. It offers support for propositions in footnotes that lead to an extensive list of published and archival sources, and has an index. However, it is littered with unsourced material. It is poorly researched. It distorts and exaggerates many old sources. It selects evidence to suit the author’s opinions, and it ignores large bodies of evidence. It contains a large number of factual errors … Dark Emu is actually not, properly considered, a work of scholarship. Its success as a narrative has ben achieved in spite of its failure as an account of fact.[5]

Sutton and Walshe do more than just provide a critique of Pascoe’s careless use and misinterpretation of sources; in some ways they turn the argument on its head. While Pascoe’s aim in finding incipient farming practices was to show that Indigenous Society was more similar to the invading society, what Sutton fears is lost in Pascoe’s account are the ways in which it was different. We lose the uniqueness of that society:

…the First Australians and all of us deserve better than a history that does not respect or do justice to the societies whose economic and spiritual adjustment to their environment lasted so well and so vigorously until the advent of the colonies and the subsequent degradation of much of the environment through land clearing, pastoral stocking and the spread of feral animals and plants.[6]

A similar opinion was expressed in the Online Journal Crikey by Guy Rundle:

Without a strong notion that pre-1788 society was filled with meaning, purpose and process – but of a fundamentally different character – the claim for contemporary regional/remote society as a modern/traditional hybrid which should have specific modes of sovereignty and governance fails also.[7]

The criticism of Dark Emu, was, of course, grist to the mill for the Right Wing populists. Andrew Bolt, not known for moderation, wrote in a blog on June 14, 2021 that ‘“Aboriginal historian” Bruce Pascoe pulled off the biggest hoax in Australia’s literary history’.

Earlier criticisms of Dark Emu

The first detailed criticism came in 2019 from Quadrant Books, the publishing arm of the Conservative Quadrant Magazine, currently edited by Keith Windschuttle.  Windschuttle is a historian whose aim is to prove that massacres of Indigenous Australian did not exit or have been highly exaggerated.

This book, Bitter Harvest: the illusion of Aboriginal Agriculture in Bruce Pascoe’s Dark Emu was written by Peter O’Brien, a former Military Colonel, a businessman and a Science graduate. (Because it was published by a small press to a small audience, copies are hard to find.) For the first two thirds of the book he provided a thorough and critical analysis of Bruce Pascoe’s sources and did so in a readable style, although where Pascoe sometimes saw too much in the sources, O’Brien can see too little.

However, in his conclusion, O’Brien moves from an academic refutation of Pascoe’s approach to sources to the conservative political position that motivated him and that is critical of much contemporary thinking about Indigenous policy.

O’Brien first quotes the Law Academic, Professor George Williams on the ‘Uluru Statement from the Heart’- a statement by the Aboriginal Community demanding recognition in the Constitution, acknowledgement of their prior occupation, and a separate voice in Parliament. The Uluru Statement, said Professor Williams ”outlines three proposals to empower indigenous peoples so they can take a rightful place in our country.[8]”

 O’Brien then goes on to attack the concept of ‘rightful place’:

1.       ‘Whatever the ‘rightful place’ looks like, you can be sure it will involve ‘rights’ not available to other Australians’

2.       ‘By our own country … do not be deceived into thinking they mean Australia. They are clearly talking about a political entity, either totally separate from Australia or more likely as a seventh state within the Commonwealth.[9]

O’Brien’s lack of empathy is clear from his conclusion:

… Dark Emu is nothing more than just another motif in a rich tapestry of grievance that seems to grow larger, as it becomes more remote in time from the upheaval that changed the lives and the culture of the Aboriginal people forever. Aboriginal advancement as part of a united Australia will not come until the Aboriginal people can let this grievance go.[10]

Does this controversy mean a step backwards?

What now do those tens of thousands of people who, concerned about the situation of the First Nations people today, embraced this book, now think? Are they disillusioned? Why didn’t people like us speak up to express our concerns earlier.

I was given a copy as a gift by someone who thought I had ‘progressive views’. I wasn’t a third of the way through the book when I gave it up. It became obvious to me that Pascoe had a ‘thesis’ – that incipient agricultural practices took place all over Australia - and was continually going beyond the evidence in order to ‘prove’ it. But rather than pursue this, I felt at that time that if reading the book made people feel more aware of Aboriginal culture that was sufficient.

The popularity of ‘Dark Emu’ showed the desire for more knowledge of Indigenous society. The challenge is for scholars in areas such anthropology, archaeology and history to assist the Reconciliation process by working towards better informing the general public about insights in pre-colonial and post-colonial history that go beyond the technological and are currently ‘hidden’ in academic journals or monographs.

Ian Keese

[1] https://www.australiacouncil.gov.au/arts-in-daily-life/artist-stories/bruce-pascoes-dark-emu/ accessed2 July 2021

[2] Victoria Grieve-Williams, Weekend Australian Review, July 3-4 2021 p 14

[3] Michael Davis ‘Aboriginal History’ p 198

[4] Sutton P and Walshe K Farmers or Hunter-Gatherers? The Dark Emu Debate, MUP 2021

[5] Sutton and Walshe  p 23

[6] Sutton and Walshe p. 202

[7] https://www.crikey.com.au/2021/07/16/in-defence-of-bruce-pascoe/

[8] Quoted in Peter O’Brien Bitter Harvest: The illusion of Aboriginal Agriculture in Bruce Pascoes’s Dark Emu 2nd Edition. Quadrant Books Sydney 2020 p 300. The quote from Professor Williams is from The Weekend Australian 6 June 2020

[9] O’Brien p 301

[10] O’Brien pp 302-3

History and Fiction - Studying Hilary Mantel

On one hand, History and Fiction might seem opposites, but really isn’t written history a form of literature? It is a choice of words made by the historian to not just record events but to interpret them.The actual events were ‘real’ but the moment a historian writes about those events they are making choices - choices about which events are important and assumptions about people’s motivations, even if these assumptions are hidden.

A good writer of historical literature, through deep research, emotional sensitivity and literary skills can sometimes get closer to the real event, but so could a historian if she had the same set of skills. What I intend doing is what follows is to look more closely at an extract from Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall, the first in her trilogy on the life of Thomas Cromwell, advisor to Henry VIII of England

. I have annotated some of the techniques she has used.

First the context of the passage

Thomas Cromwell and Stephen Gardiner have just had dinner at Thomas More’s. Cromwell, through his own talents, has risen from being the son of a blacksmith in Putney to being an acquaintance of the King. Stephen Gardiner is secretary to Archbishop Wolsey and later to become Master Secretary to Henry VII and eventually Cromwell’s enemy. Almost all the discussion during the meal has been carried out in Latin, despite More’s wife being present but not having Latin.

This extract takes place as they leave More’s house to return to Westminster by boat along the Thames (pp. 233-235).

 Thomas Cromwell is responding to a comment by Alice in English as they are leaving.

He [Cromwell] looks around him; he feels something he identifies as pity[1], a heavy stirring beneath the breastbone. He believes Alice has a good heart; continues to believe it even when, taking his leave, permitted to thank her in English, she raps out, ‘Thomas Cromwell, why don’t you marry again?’

‘No one will have me, Lady Alice’

‘Nonsense your master [Wolsey] may be down but you’re not poor are you? Got your money abroad, that’s what I’m told. Got a good house, haven’t you? Got the king’s ear, my husband says. And from what my sisters in the city say, got everything in good working order.’

‘Alice!’ More says. Smiling, he takes her wrist, shakes her a little. Gardiner laughs: his deep bass chuckle, like laughter through a crack in the earth[2].

When they go out to Master Secretary's barge, the scent of the gardens is heavy in the air[3]. ‘More goes to bed at nine o’clock’ Stephen says.

‘With Alice?'

‘People say not’

'You have spies in the house?

Stephen doesn’t answer.

It is dusk; lights bob in the river. 'Dear God, I am hungry,’ Master  Secretary complains. 'I wish I had kept back one of the fool’s crusts. I wish I had laid hands on the white rabbit; I’d eat it raw.’

He says, 'You know he daren’t make himself plain.’

‘Indeed he dare not,’ Gardiner says. Beneath the canopy he sits hunched into himself, as if he were cold. ‘But we all know his opinions, which I think are fixed and impervious to argument. When he took office, he said he would not meddle with the divorce, and the king accepted that, but I wonder how long he will accept it.’

‘I didn't mean himself plain to the King. I meant to Alice.’[4]

 Gardiner laughs. ‘True if she understood what he said about her she'd send him in down to the kitchens and have him plucked and roasted’

'Suppose she died? He'd be sorry then.

'He'd have another wife in the house before she was cold. Someone even uglier.'

He broods: foresees, vaguely, an opportunity for placing bets. ‘That young woman,' he says. 'Anne Cresacre. She is an heiress, you know?  An orphan?'

‘There was some scandal, was there not?’

'After her father died her neighbours stole her, for their son to marry. The boy raped her. She was thirteen. This was in Yorkshire…that’s how they go on there. My lord cardinal was furious when he heard of it. It was he who took her away. He put here under More’s roof because he thought she'd be safe.'

'So she is.'

‘Not from humiliation. Since More's son married her, he lives of her lands. Site has a hundred a year. You'd think she could have a string of pearls.'[5]

‘Do you think More is disappointed in his boy? He shows no talent for affairs. Still, I hear you have a boy like that. You'll be looking for an heiress for him soon.’. He doesn’t reply[6]. It's true; John More, Gregory Cromwell, what have we done to our sons? Made them into idle young gentlemen - but who can blame us for wanting for them the ease we didn’t have? One thing about More, he's never idled for an hour, He's passed his life teaching, writing, talking towards what he believes is the good of the Christian commonwealth. Stephen says, 'Of course you may have other sons. Aren't you looking forward to the wife Alice will find you? She is warm in your praises.'

He feels afraid. It is like Mark, the lute player: people imagining what they cannot know. He is sure he and Johane have been secret.

He says, ‘Don't you ever think of marrying?'

A chill spreads[7] over the waters. 'I am in holy orders.'

‘Oh, come on, Stephen. You must have women. Don't you?

The pause is so long, so silent, that he can hear the oars as they dip into the Thames, the little splash as they rise; he can hear the ripples in their wake. He can hear a dog barking from the southern shore[8]. The Secretary asks, ‘What kind of Putney enquiry is that?’[9]

[1] Pity in responding to More’s patronising of his (second) wife)

[2] Could this be a hint of evil – coming from the underworld?

[3] One of the many ways Mantel draws us into the scene

[4] This is nice little’ trick’ Hilary Mantel sometimes uses. On the surface it is a simple misunderstanding, but it provides an opportunity for Mantel to show us what Gardiner is thinking and provide historical detail, but also show us that here Cromwell is more interested in the way Thomas More treats his wife than in politics.

[5] This refers to part of the dinner conversation, where More says about his daughter-in-law Anne: ‘Anne craved’ – shall I tell them my dear? – she craved a pearl necklace. She did not cease to talk about it, you know how young girls are. So when I gave her a box that rattled, imagine her face. Imagine her face again when she opened it. What was inside? Dried peas’.  More wears a hair shirt for self-mortification but others must suffer as well!

[6] Cromwell doesn’t reply partly because it is personal. But we now enter his mind in a more intimate way than conversation.

[7] A physical representation of a cool feeling.

[8] Again we almost physically feel the pause as both men become aware of their surroundings

[9] Half-jokingly, Gardiner refers to Cromwell’s humble origins as the son of Putney blacksmith.