Brian Ross wrote on Jun 19
th, 2021 at 3:00pm:
still nothing that argues against Pascoe's quoting of the journals of the early explorers/settlers where they describe encountering fields of native foods.
In page after page, Sutton and Walshe accuse Pascoe of a “lack of true scholarship”, ignoring Aboriginal voices, dragging respect for traditional Aboriginal culture back into the Eurocentric world of the colonial era, and “trimming” colonial observations to fit his argument. They write that 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”.“It is actually not, properly considered, a work of scholarship,” they write. “Its success as a narrative has been achieved in spite of its failure as an account of fact.”
Pascoe has removed significant passages from publications that contradict his major objectives. This boosts his contention that all along Aboriginal people were farmers and/or aquaculturalists.
One example concerns Pascoe’s quoting of the journal entries of the explorer Charles Sturt. Sutton writes:
Sturt is quoted [by Pascoe] on his party’s discovery of a large well and ‘village’ of 19 huts somewhere north of Lake Torrens in South Australia.
Pascoe’s edit of Sturt’s original 1849 text breathes oxygen into Dark Emu’s polemical edge. It’s misleading at best. For Sturt’s diary reveals Aboriginal people didn’t live in “houses” in any single site all year round.
Such accounts destabilise Pascoe’s argument, reinforced by ethnographic, colonial, and archaeological records.
Pascoe records Mitchell’s astonishment on coming upon a large, deserted village during his Australia Felix expedition, which he estimated housed “over 1000” people. This, says Sutton, is “pure fiction”. “All Mitchell says is that his party ‘noticed some of their huts’; there is no mention of anyone counting anything.” Pascoe then quotes a member of Mitchell’s party, Granville Stapylton, as saying that the buildings “were of very large dimensions, one capable of containing at least 40 persons and of very superior construction”. But he omits Stapylton’s speculation that this was “the work of a white man”, probably the runaway convict William Buckley, who lived with the Wathaurong people for three decades.
Pascoe cites no Aboriginal sources and there are no Aboriginal lingustic features to support his claims. People practicing agriculture have words for the activity. No Aboriginal language has such linguistic features.
Pascoe then quotes a member of Mitchell’s party, Granville Stapylton, as saying that the buildings “were of very large dimensions, one capable of containing at least 40 persons and of very superior construction”. But he omits Stapylton’s speculation that this was “the work of a white man”, probably the runaway convict William Buckley, who lived with the Wathaurong people for three decades.
I would think that irrespective of who done the actual building that 19 large built structures accommodating up to 40 people each would ask the question about the need for this capacity and purpose the construction time, the need for extended accommodation etc ? It does suggest well over 100 people living in a stable environment for not a short period.
The very point used to make the emu look less credible askes significant questions that do not damage the Emu's conclusions.
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