Farmers or Hunter-gatherers‪?‬

Emu? What emu?

4.5 stars

Authors
Australian. Prof Sutton is a social anthropologist and linguist. Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia, Fellow of the Australian Anthropological Society, Honorary Research Fellow, Institute of Archaeology, University College London.
Has worked with, and lived with, Aboriginal people in traditional groups since 1969, speaks three Cape York languages, and is an expert on Aboriginal land ownership who has assisted with fifty land rights cases. Dr Walshe is an archaeologist with >35 years experience recording, analysing and interpreting Australian Indigenous heritage sites and objects.

Background
Bruce Pascoe, a former teacher who has also written fiction, poetry and children’s literature, started investigating his ancestry in his thirties. Having identified Aboriginal forebears on both sides of his family, he identified as Koori at the age of 40 (1987). He achieved notoriety in 2014 after the publication of Dark Emu, in which he argued that classical Aboriginal society was considerably more sophisticated than has long been understood by non-Aboriginal Australians, specifically because traditional First Nations peoples were not just “primitive” nomadic hunter-gatherers. Rather, they practised agriculture, built villages to live in, and undertook other practices similar to the farming communities of Europe and elsewhere. Mr Pascoe’s thesis is now incorporated into Australian school curricula. In August 2020, he was appointed Enterprise Professor in Indigenous Agriculture at the University of Melbourne.

Summary
Sutton and Walshe, who are infinitely better qualified academically in the area of expertise Mr Pascoe staked out for himself in Dark Emu, undertook a comprehensive, systematic review of the peer-reviewed literature on research undertaken directly with Aboriginal people living a traditional lifestyle “in country” over a prolonged period. In contrast, Mr Pascoe mainly cites observations and writings by early white settlers. While Sutton and Walshe agree with Pascoe that traditional First Nations peoples were not “primitive nomadic hunter-gatherers,” they argue compellingly that they were, and still are in some places, haunter-gatherers-plus, with centuries old expertise in how to get the most out of, and maintain, their environment. They also stress the importance of spiritual factors in everything traditional First Nations people do, including feeding themselves, something which Mr Pascoe barely mentions. Sutton’s vastly superior and well referenced knowledge of Aboriginal language makes a mockery of Mr Pascoe’s single venture into that area. (What Pascoe translated as “harvest grass” is actually a word meaning “in the vagina” in the original language of the area under discussion!)

Writing
Heavy going at times, if less so overall than previous work by Sutton I have read. Ms Walshe’s two chapters flow better. The reference list is impressive, both in length and intellectual quality.

Bottom line
The post-modern revisionists who dominate the humanities departments of our tertiary institutions are unlikely to abandon their veneration of Bruce Pascoe to embrace Sutton and Walshe. Andrew Bolt, on the other hand, is almost certainly a fan.