doesn’t contest hunter gatherer labels either, whereas that is at the centre of my argument. Dark Emu Young Dark Emu: A Truer History Farmers or Hunter-gatherers: The Dark Emu Debate Dark Emu: Aboriginal Australia and the Birth of Agriculture Dark. Dark Emu won both the Book of the Year Award and the Indigenous Writer’s Prize in the New South Wales Premier’s Literary Awards. In a nation of 25 million people, the book has sold more than 260,000 copies.

Almost all the evidence in Dark Emu comes from the records and diaries of the Australian explorers, impeccable sources.īruce’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. Dark Emu shifted the gaze, pointing to peaceful towns and well-tended land devastated by European aggression and cattle grazing. 'Young Dark Emu' is beautifully presented in a coffee table size hardback edition. 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. Childrens companion to the absolutely brilliant 'Dark Emu'.

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.

From however, we are entering a new phase of research. 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 Awardsĭark Emu puts forward an argument for a reconsideration of the hunter-gatherer tag for pre-colonial Aboriginal Australians. Dark Emu Exposed was originally set-up to critique Bruce Pascoe and his book, Dark Emu, as explained in the ‘About Us’ section below (2018-2021). ‘ Dark Emu injects a profound authenticity into the conversation about how we Australians understand our continent.

The dark emu book