‘Dark Emu’ by Bruce Pascoe

Every two pages, I had to put this book down and reassess one of my core beliefs about Australia.

I believed that aboriginals were primarily hunter and gathers. I believed that while some tribes traded, particularly with the Makassans from Indonesia, there was not an economy of any scale in Australia prior to white settlement. I believed that the furtherest extent of agricultural technology was the use of fire to create ‘paddocks’ for kangaroos.  I believed that indigenous people did not like to wear clothes. I believed that there was some evidence of landscape-scale grooming but that it was not widespread. I believed that indigenous people didn’t bury their dead with any significant tombs or memorials. I believed that indigenous people were not interested in building significant homes or permanent dwellings. I believed, up until recently, that an indigenous person faced with a long rainy period, like the one we just experienced in Brisbane, wouldn’t build a water-proof home when every other civilization on earth did exactly that but would just sit uncomfortably on some soaking rock in the bush.

And the worst part of it was that my beliefs was held together by the absence of evidence even though I had never gone looking for it. How many Australians are highly incentivized to unearth the complex, developed, agriculturally advanced, design oriented, egalitarian, resource stewarding civilization that was abruptly halted at the arrival of white people? It may be that most Australians feel that their current limited and mostly negative understanding of Australia pre-contact helps assuage their guilt. I am one of those people.

A cross-section of a Gunditjmara dwelling made with rocks, peat sods and reeds. Image courtesy of ABC TV

What amazes me is that I wrongly believed that indigenous Australians did not possess the defining elements of being human. They were not curious and develop new methods of food production, shelter construction and artistic style. They would not aim to make the lives of their children better than their own by undertaking resource management projects conflict. They would not develop systems of trade and diplomacy to utilize their competitive advantage and minimize conflict. They wouldn’t seek to build sturdy dwellings to protect their loved ones from weather. They wouldn’t revere their elders by building tombs and shrines to honour them. Time and time again, I denied that indigenous people would do things that are common across humanity.

hat is an act of violent dehumanisation.

The evidence in Dark Emu is powerful and the writing is compelling but what floored me was the rotten foundations that I found in my thinking once I begun to ask what I believed and why I believed it.