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A tale of two books - Book 2

Stu Pocknee
Stu Pocknee
tags general , writing , Dark Emu , indigenous affairs

Book 1: Dark Emu by Bruce Pascoe
Book 2: Farmers or Hunter-Gatherers? The Dark Emu Debate by Peter Sutton and Keryn Walshe

"Farmers or Hunter-Gatherers? The Dark Emu Debate"

As I noted earlier, I wish I had read "Dark Emu" before being made aware of its shortcomings. Would I have been receptive to its message? Had I been, it is a book that would have unquestionably made me dumber for having read it.

I will not lie.

When I first heard of "Farmers or Hunter-Gatherers? The Dark Emu Debate" by Sutton and Walshe (S&W) my motives in reading it were not altogether pure. I wanted to read a legitimately righteous hatchet job. I wanted to see Pascoe get the slapping he so richly deserves.

I was disappointed.

I should have known I would be.

True academics rarely write such books. The ethical traditions of academia demand practitioners stay conservatively within the bounds of a prudent interpretation of evidence. Dispassionately playing the ball and not the man can result in emotionless, dry, and difficult reading. This is the price of efficient and credible advancement of human knowledge.

Accordingly, what I got was far less titillating, and far more useful. An education.

This is not a book about politics, or subject to the whimsy of current attitudes and fashions. In large part it is not a book about "Dark Emu" at all. Instead, S&W use "Dark Emu" as a kind of teachable moment.

S&W methodically and conclusively dismember Pascoe's arguments, not so much by a direct refutation of them individually (although this does happen), but rather by a more broad explanation of the true pre-colonial situation in Australia. This explanation is supported by compelling scientific evidence as well as primary sourcing the knowledge of indigenous elders 1.

"Farmers or Hunter-Gatherers?" reveals the Aboriginal culture as one that was based on a philosophical intertwining of daily activities with ancient religious and spiritual beliefs. As described, it was a culture that valued stasis: preserving and replicating that which the Dreaming had already created. Ingenuity, innovation, and change all challenged this ancestral authority. Not only were they not valued, they were actively seen as dangerous.

For someone with a non-indigenous mindset this way of thinking is inscrutably foreign, perhaps even backward and primitive. S&W refute this, showing how this cultural strategy allowed Indigenous Australians to successfully maintain their ascendancy in Australia across countless millennia.

Pascoe's fairy tale situates Indigenous Australians as materialistic innovators and technologists in ways similar to the invading British conquistadors 2. He tries to show an equivalency in social worth. Not only are Pascoe's farming claims shown to be unsupportable, S&W show that his desire to judge "Old People" 3 Aboriginals based on western notions of social value is pointlessly nonsensical.

"Farmers or Hunter-Gatherers?" seems to be the book that Pascoe wishes he could have written. Where Pascoe seeks to elevate the status of Aboriginals by creating a fantasy version of their existence, S&W achieve the very same end by describing them exactly as they were. For the average Australian 4, to read this book is to develop a new appreciation for the complexity, sophistication, spirituality, and appropriateness of the nomadic hunter gatherer lifestyle of native Australians. Unlike Pascoe, whose definitions of value demand that Aboriginals show similar skill sets to Europeans, S&W show that farming and nomadic hunter gathering are just different sides of the same valuable coin. Without reference to further context, one can not be innately defined as better or worse than the other.

I commend this book to the reader, just as strongly as I recommend steering clear of Pascoe's. If you are (like I was) seeking petty academic cheap shots and the spectacle of a scientifically grounded pogrom, you will be disappointed. What you will find is knowledge and understanding. In spades.

I leave this book with a new appreciation for the Indigenous Australian culture. Western conquest has battered it mercilessly. Perhaps its time is over. Change happens, and it's not always worth railing against it. However, I think there is a part of all of us that wonders whether we have failed in not being more active in seeking the knowledge of our indigenous peoples. Would it help us be better stewards of this expansive continent? Perhaps even better humans?

Peter Sutton makes the interesting point that the majority of human history has been lived as hunter gathers, not as farmers. Those who cultivate plants are, from this perspective, the exception. It may be that in millennia hence, farming will be looked back on as a curious aberration. A 'flash in the pan' 5. If so, who knows what parts of the future might be derived from the culture of Australia's first peoples.

No book is flawless. "Farmers or Hunter-Gatherers?" has not escaped criticism 6. None I have seen seriously impugns the book's credibility.

For me S&W's book triumphs in the following ways:

  1. It allows a fabulous insight into, and appreciation for, pre-colonial Aboriginal life.
  2. It shares a fascinating understanding of the academic tools, research methods, and firsthand experiences required to explore this complex subject. 7
  3. It commends anew the incredible value of deep expertise and specialist knowledge. 8
  4. Lastly, and perhaps least importantly, it debunks the fanciful and harmful narrative of "Dark Emu".

Is there some redemption logic for Pascoe in the argument "If he hadn't written his book, you wouldn't have been introduced to S&W's marvelous work"? Not enough. For me personally, this was true. But the rest of Pascoe's readers? When S&W sell as many books as Pascoe I'll give credence to this logic.

S&W go out of their way devoting a section to acknowledging what they call "the positive contribution of Dark Emu". It is the one point on which we will have to agree to disagree. I'm not having it.

Book 1: Dark Emu by Bruce Pascoe
Book 2: Farmers or Hunter-Gatherers? The Dark Emu Debate by Peter Sutton and Keryn Walshe

  1. We all hit the nail with the hammer we have. It is eminently sensible for Sutton to rebut the premise of "Dark Emu" using Indigenous sources. I am going to point out that there must exist Australian farming families that can trace their roots to periods of co-tenure with Aboriginal peoples. These farmers would have been keenly interested and finely attuned to any evidence of native agriculture. Like Aboriginals, these farming families have their own intergenerational "song lines". Even today, current custodians would be able to recollect stories of Aboriginal agriculture, had it existed.↩

  2. Yes, I know it is problematic (on several levels) to refer to "English settlers" as "invading conquistadors". On the other hand, referring to them as "English settlers" is at least as problematic.↩

  3. "Old People" is a term used by S&W to refer to pre-1788 Aboriginal Australians. Everywhere the term "Aboriginal" is used in this post it refers to the "Old People".↩

  4. I'm arrogantly defining an average Australian as "someone just like me".↩

  5. The Dark Emu Debate ABC Nightlife. 6min21sec. Wed 15 Sep 2021.↩

  6. eg Dark Emu's Critics. Richard Davis. Arena Qrtly #7 Sep 2021↩

  7. I never would have thought to use indigenous language, examining terms (or lack thereof) as as indicator of the prevalence of a particular practice.↩

  8. S&W observe that Pascoe is neither a trained anthropologist nor archaeologist. While both Australian egalitarianism and the current wave of populist anti-intellectualism might disagree, this is an under-rated observation. One of the undisputable triumphs of "Farmers or Hunter-Gatherers?" is the way in which it so clearly demonstrates the value of academic rigour combined with decades of study and research.↩