‘Media never question the ethnicity of any other Australian’: Minister responds to Dark Emu controversy

[Neferti]

‘Media never question the ethnicity of any other Australian’: Minister responds to Dark Emu controversy

EXCLUSIVE

Indigenous Australians Minister Ken Wyatt has broken his silence on the Dark Emu controversy, a week after fresh questions were raised about the accuracy of the influential Aboriginal history book.

A number of experts now say Bruce Pascoe’s 2014 bestseller – which claimed that Indigenous Australians prior to colonisation were not just hunter-gatherers but engaged in agriculture, irrigation and construction – has been all but “demolished” by a scholarly rebuttal by two respected academics, anthropologist Peter Sutton and archaeologist Keryn Walshe.

Farmers or Hunter-Gatherers? The Dark Emu Debate, published by Melbourne University Press this week, argues while Dark Emu “purports to be factual” it is “littered with unsourced material, is poorly researched, distorts and exaggerates many points, selectively emphasises evidence to suit those opinions, and ignores large bodies of information that do not support the author’s opinions”.

Sky News host Andrew Bolt, who has been an outspoken critic of Dark Emu for years and has questioned Pascoe’s claims of Aboriginal ancestry, this week called on Mr Wyatt to apologise for “his part” in promoting the book, saying the Minister had praised it, advocated for it to be taught in schools, and dismissed questions about Pascoe’s Indigenous identity.
“Mr Pascoe states he has Indigenous ancestry,” Mr Wyatt said in a statement to news.com.au.

“Determining these connections is a matter for Mr Pascoe. I am saddened that questions about Mr Pascoe’s identity have played out publicly instead of being dealt with as they should have been – by the relevant communities. Media never question the ethnicity of any other Australian.”

Mr Wyatt added that Pascoe was an “author of fiction, nonfiction and children’s literature, including the book Dark Emu which re‑examines colonial accounts of Aboriginal people and presents evidence of pre-colonial agricultural and engineering sophistication from various sources as cited”.

“I welcome more people taking the time to read Dark Emu and consulting Mr Pascoe’s references to verify or disprove his assertions as we do with various academic studies or research,” he said.

“Not all Australians agree with every reflection or idea presented in the book, nor is that necessary. What’s important here is that we are open to hearing other people’s perspectives, contemplating and genuinely engaging in working constructively together to reconcile our understandings.”
Speaking on Sky News, Bolt criticised Mr Wyatt for sacking Aboriginal businesswoman Josephine Cashman from a government advisory role after she joined the campaign to discredit Pascoe last year.

The Party Games newsletter Get your political briefing from news.com.au's political editor Samantha Maiden.

Ms Cashman was booted from the group, which was advising on how to create an Indigenous “voice to parliament”, after claims she provided a faked letter from a senior Aboriginal figure denouncing Pascoe.

At the time, Ms Cashman told SBS she helped the elder write the letter at his request, and denied anything underhanded took place.

She told Bolt on Sky News this week that she felt vindicated. “I would prefer to be on the side of truth and what I am really pleased about (is that) this hasn’t denigrated into a race, us against them, debate,” she said.

“I think it shows the level of maturity in Australia. I can’t sit well with Australian children being lied to. I think it’s a horrible thing for our society to allow. I’m hoping this will lead to more reform.”

Speaking to 2GB host Ben Fordham on Thursday, Prof Sutton and Dr Walshe said Dark Emu should be removed from schools.

“I thought it would be a typical kind of amateur’s work that would have its day for five minutes and then disappear,” Prof Sutton said.

“Because it was clearly not the work of someone who’d carefully listened to senior Aboriginal people on these questions, had not lived among them, learned to speak their languages or any of that kind of thing, which is what anthropologists have to do in order to have any kind of wisdom passed on that they can share with others.”

He continued, “But I was wrong. It was quiet for a while but then it took off like a snowball. When it got to the point of being inserted into school curricula, either as a reference or as in fact the major source, I thought about the children – who’s going to stand by and watch them be misinformed?”
Dr Walshe agreed that it “shouldn’t have that status”.

“It doesn’t need to be in the school curriculum and in fact it shouldn’t be in the school curriculum, because of the errors and the incorrectness of the entire work,” she said.

“It’s not about a different interpretation (of history), it’s about misuse of the archival sources, the actual primary sources. It’s a matter of looking at those sources and using them in the correct manner with integrity and reliability, and that is not what Dark Emu reflects.”

In a written response to Nine Newsapers’ Good Weekend last Saturday, which first reported on Prof Sutton and Dr Walshe’s work, Pascoe told the magazine that his book had “encouraged many Australians to recognise the ingenuity and sophistication of the many Aboriginal cultures, societies and land-management practices, which had not previously been brought to mainstream attention”.

“The extent of Aboriginal social and economic organisation has been surprising to many Australians and a nuanced debate needs to be ongoing,” he said, adding it would be “disappointing” if Australia’s understanding of Aboriginal history “digressed to a limiting debate about semantics and nomenclature”.

“Hunter-gatherer and farmer are both settler/colonial labels, and the long prevailing negative interpretation of hunter-gatherer has been used as a weapon against Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples (as a justification for terra nullius),” he said.

“Language can be used to help people to see the world differently, to open minds to new ways of seeing. This is what I tried to achieve with Dark Emu.”

https://www.news.com.au/national/politi ... 83004830a0