Monday, Dec 13, 2021 at 16:12
Nothing like burleying the waters to hook a big one. Yep RMD, as the annual Australian media survey has confirmed for yonks, there are plenty of delusional people out there who put the ABC (and shock, horror, SBS) significantly ahead of all other "traditional" media sources as far as trust and credibility goes. Some people place great store in the wisdom of the majority but I'm not one of those so you being among the 12% who think the ABC is not trustworthy (as against the 70% who rate them trustworthy) is of no significance to me.
There are some very good, IMPARTIAL, analyses of Pascoe's book and the claims he raised by respected sources - including an archaeologist and anthropologist - around if you're interested. Even a fairly disappointing (imo)
ABC Nightlife radio podcast for those too busy to read.
This is a good overall summary of the controversy, if not the book itself:
Taking Sides Over 'Dark Emu'
The extract below hits most of the conservative hyperbole surrounding the book right out of the park. Apologies for the long post but most won't read links (esp tldr sufferers) so I think it's necessary.
".....But Dark Emu isn’t an “academic” history, because its author isn’t a trained historian (he has an education degree and taught in regional Victorian schools). Dark Emu’s cultural role, much like Tim Flannery’s The Weather Makers (2005) and Henry Reynolds’ Why Weren’t We Told? (1999), is to “translate” knowledge hitherto trapped inside the academy and broadcast it to the world. Historians had known for a long time that so-called hunter-gatherer economies were highly sophisticated (see Marshall Sahlins’ seminal Stone Age Economics, published in 1972), and there have been many books, journal articles and conferences devoted to exploring what the historical, archaeological and paleontological records show about how various nations, tribes, clans and groups lived on this continent before Europeans came and destroyed physical and economic structures. Before he became embroiled in the “history wars” himself, Geoffrey Blainey with Triumph of the Nomads (1975) offered an earlier public translation of this kind of history."
Interestingly the archaeology claims are now being further examined:
New archaeological research investigates Dark Emu's idea of Aboriginal 'agriculture' and villages. As ever, science questions and hopefully provides SOME enlightenment in due course - something many ideologically driven commentators could learn from.
Not much doubt Pascoe embellished some things in Dark Emu, and his aboriginality claim appears tenuous, but his National Dreamtime Award for “significant contribution” to the advancement of Aboriginal and Torres Strait people in 2018, and his background, would suggest your last sentence is, er, somewhat misplaced. Or, or as some who know him far better than you or I might say - horse manure.
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