Dark Emu

Black Seeds: Agriculture or Accident?

By: Bruce Pascoe

Narrated by: Bruce Pascoe

Length: 5 hrs and 36 mins

Publisher's summary

A completely accessible, compelling and riveting account of pre-invasion Aboriginal agricultural systems.

Dark Emu argues for a reconsideration of the 'hunter-gatherer' tag for pre-colonial Aboriginal Australians and attempts to rebut the colonial myths that have worked to justify dispossession. Accomplished author Bruce Pascoe provides compelling evidence from the diaries of early explorers that suggests that systems of food production and land management have been blatantly understated in modern retellings of early Aboriginal history, and that a new look at Australia's past is required.

©2014 Bruce Pascoe (P)2017 Bolinda audio

One of the best books ever!!!!

Worth every penny and more!!! Thank you so much for this amazing and precious work - I wish I had all your resources to read now!!

A thought provoking, perception changing read

Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari was a book that affected my overall perception of the relationship between humans and planet earth in quite a profound way, This book and the narrative explained by Pascoe had the same impact on me about Australia, as an Australian, albeit a relatively recent migrant Australian. The basic narrative is that the tale spun by colonialists and now the established narrative for modern day Australians, is that the indigenous inhabitants were primitive nomads. Pascoe makes the entirely plausible case, backed up by evidence from the writing of early settlers themselves, that the indigenous peoples of Australia had co-existing with the Australian flora and fauna for 60,000 to 120,000 years and had actually evolved to have quite a sophisticated and well evolved relationship with the land from which the modern settlers (and even us now) could have much to learn. He argues they were farmers as well as hunter gatherers and did live in dwellings and formed communities and forms of governance structures that worked well and enabled them to live in relative harmony both with each other and with nature. Western settlers came in and changed everything, with a degree of what can now clearly be perceived as a superior arrogance which resulted in a complete failure to notice what the original Australians had achieved. A fascinating read for any Australian.

An important look at the true agricultural and land management of Aboriginal Australia

I learned a great deal about the miscategorization of Aboriginals as mere hunter-gatherers. In fact Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples had developed sophisticated and appropriate land and agricultural management practices. Pascoe has persuaded me to delve further into the pre-colonization history of Aboriginal Australia and provided me with an excellent bibliography of primary and secondary sources to pursue.

JUST WOW

I was interested in this book after watching Down to Earth on Netflix. This book is excellent. Before reading this book, I had read a book about Australia. A super white washed version of Australia. This book is so beautiful and shines such a light on indigenous people of Australia.

Brilliant and insightful

Very well written and research. Fascinating and challenging look at the history of Australian Aboriginals.

Propaganda posing as scholarship

Let me save you time reading this book. It can be summarised as Australian Aboriginals good, Europeans evil. With sloppy research, cherry picking of facts, and mere wishful thinking, the author presents a politically correct fantasy. Note that whenever facts are not available that supports his argument, the author assumes that's because evil Europeans destroyed the evidence. Whenever a settler’s journal notes something positive about the natives, it is accepted without question. Yet whenever a settler’s journal remains silent or says something negative, its because evil Europeans are biased. This isn't scholarship - it’s mere propaganda.