Talk:Dark Emu

Farmers or Hunter-Gatherers? The Dark Emu Debate

This is outside my normal area of interest and looking at some of the august names in the page history and TP I assume this will no doubt be integrated soon. This weekend several news outlets ran stories on the impending publication of a book penned by two prominent academics “debunking” Dark Emu, titled Farmers or Hunter-Gatherers? The Dark Emu Debate. I am unsure if it is more appropriate to wait until after publication, but there are a couple of stories available already so there may be enough to add something to this page. Cavalryman (talk) 04:19, 13 June 2021 (UTC).

Cavalryman, all of this was already above in #Academic criticism. Would you like to undo this section? Errantius (talk) 09:23, 13 June 2021 (UTC)

Haha, I should have been more observant, I suspected someone here would be onto this. I am happy to leave this section here. Kind regards, Cavalryman (talk) 10:39, 13 June 2021 (UTC).

Sutton and Walsh were on ABC local radio in Perth this morning, talking about the books. Mitch Ames (talk) 01:58, 19 June 2021 (UTC)

Guardian opinion article Bruce Pascoe has welcomed the Dark Emu debate – and so should Australia. Doug Weller talk 18:21, 26 June 2021 (UTC)

@Cavalryman: the material you added here looks like a quote ("... drags respect for traditional Aboriginal culture back into the Eurocentric world of the colonial era, privileging agriculture above a hunter-gatherer socio-economic system"). If it is, please enclose in quotation marks. If not, it needs rewording - "drags..." is not very encyclopedic. Mitch Ames (talk) 06:57, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

Hello Mitch Ames, it’s a slight rewording of the reporter’s words from the Good Weekend piece, I agree it is a little clumsy and should be reworded. Perhaps something like “emphasises colonial era notions of the superiority of agriculture over respect for the sophistication of traditional indigenous hunter-gatherer culture”. Cavalryman (talk) 09:17, 28 June 2021 (UTC).

Even that seems to be a lot of "padding" of what the article text says. (Possibly the extra details are in the audio, which I haven't listed through.) I suggest it might be better to simply quote directly "[drags] respect for traditional Aboriginal culture back into the Eurocentric world of the colonial era". Mitch Ames (talk) 12:58, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

I'm just not sure Stuart Rintoul is notable enough to be attributing quotes to, how about we ditch him as source for the sentence and look for a fresh one: "... devalues pre-colonial Aboriginal society, privileging agriculture above a hunter-gatherer socio-economic system." Cavalryman (talk) 00:01, 29 June 2021 (UTC).

OK, as long as it is a direct quote from a single source - or two separate quotes, cited independently. I don't have access to Darker issues at play over Bruce Pascoe’s Dark Emu, but I notice that ‘Black armbands or white picket fences’: debating the Dark Emu divide says "devalues pre-colonial Aboriginal society" but not "privileging agriculture above a hunter-gatherer socio-economic system". Mitch Ames (talk) 09:52, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

Yes, the second half of the sentence is from the Taylor story. Kind regards, Cavalryman (talk) 13:09, 29 June 2021 (UTC).

Is the whole quote "... devalues pre-colonial Aboriginal society, privileging agriculture above a hunter-gatherer socio-economic system." from the Taylor story (Darker issues at play over Bruce Pascoe’s Dark Emu)? Mitch Ames (talk) 00:11, 30 June 2021 (UTC)

No, "... devalues pre-colonial Aboriginal society, privileging agriculture above a hunter-gatherer socio-economic system." If you think we need mid-sentence citations I won't object, I think they compliment each other. Cavalryman (talk) 00:16, 30 June 2021 (UTC)

Joining two separate quotes from separate sources into a single quote, within a single pair of quotation marks must surely be wrong. No one source said what is in the single pair of quote marks. A separate pair of quotation marks should surround each independent quote. Even with separate quote marks – "... devalues pre-colonial Aboriginal society", "privileging agriculture above a hunter-gatherer socio-economic system". – joining them together like that is synthesis. Mitch Ames (talk) 00:27, 30 June 2021 (UTC)

The quotations marks are for the quoting the article, not the sources, you added them above and I suppose I should not have retained them for since we're using {{tq}} . So ... I will rewrite it again: ... devalues pre-colonial Aboriginal society, privileging agriculture above a hunter-gatherer socio-economic system. Re SYNTH, using two sources that compliment each other to more clearly articulate the same idea is not SYNTH, arriving at a third conclusion from two non-complimentary sources is. That being said, if you object to the use of Taylor who simply expands upon Marshall you are most welcome to remove it. Cavalryman (talk) 01:49, 30 June 2021 (UTC).

References

separate page for Sutton and Walshe's "Farmers or Hunter-Gatherers? The Dark Emu Debate"

In line with a recommendation made to me by the very experienced user:El_C I've made a separate page for Sutton and Walshe's Farmers or Hunter-Gatherers? The Dark Emu Debate. Thoughts, comments etc welcome! Noteduck (talk) 07:43, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

Need for separate sections on 1. Academic Critiques of Dark Emu and 2. Media Responses to Academic Critiques

While trying to add Bill Gammage's important recent comments on the debate, plus Mark Mckenna's and Tom Griffiths', I found that there is a real problem with the lack of a clear structure to our account of the debate.

I suggest it should be chronological, which makes more sense of the "story" and also leaves an obvious place for future material. I also think we need to expand the article. For instance, Ian Keen's paper, the first peer-reviewed scholarly response to Dark Emu clearly deserves more space, since it makes many or most of the main points later made by Sutton and Walshe. Keen's neat account of the problem for academics of making points already made by rightwingers, without seeming to be a rightwinger oneself, also deserves quoting. Another problem with the present account of academic responses is that it hangs too much on Richard Guilliatt's piece in the Australian in May 2019. Guilliat did well to get such a positive view of Pascoe into the the Australian(!), but in the process he paraded his quotes of praise from academics almost like references for a job application. These quotes are not ideal "sources". There is no written source. We don't know how accurately they represent the persons quoted, or how many others he had asked before getting these favourable quotes. (He does offer a comment on this ---that we might quote.) I think we now have better academic sources to offer.

And it would greatly help to separate the academic from the popular/media debate. We might also need a section for the rush of media responses to the Walsh/Sutton book (in which many of the left-liberal media radically revised their stances). (I know there has already been an attempt to separate out a section on "Academic Responses". It failed, I think, because it lacked any obvious order, and also because most of the academic responses in our article had not in fact been moved into this section.

I had just worked out how I thought I could offer to do this job when the requirement for extended confirmed rights, which I don't have, appeared.

So all I can do is post what I had drafted as a possible re-arrangement and hope that it finds favour with someone who has the "clearance" to post it, or a revision of it. Here it is: Marcasella (talk) 05:53, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

Academic Responses to ‘‘Dark Emu’’

Pascoe’s arguments fall within the area of expertise of Aboriginal archaeologists and anthropologists (and sometimes linguists and ethno-botanists), as well as Settlement historians. Most of these sympathise strongly with Pascoe’s belief that Aborigines were grossly ill-treated by settlers and that their complex cultures are to this day unfairly denigrated and ignored. However, few accept Pascoe’s claims that Aborigines, except on some of the Torres Strait Islands, were largely agricultural (or pastoral), or that they commonly lived in permanent “towns”. Pascoe’s hints that they have missed such evidence because of racist or colonialist bias may ruffle feathers, and might also threaten the relationships that academics have built with Aboriginal people.

The 2018 edition of ‘‘Dark Emu’’ was prefaced by six pages of endorsing comments, but overwhelmingly from non-academics. Most academic journals of Aboriginal or Hunter-Gatherer studies did not review the book when it appeared in 2014. One exception was Aboriginal History Journal, which ran a brief mixed review by Michael Davis. An indirect review also occurred in a review-article in the UK-based Historiographical Review in 2019. The Cambridge academic Stephanie Mawson, claimed that “While the evidence base behind Pascoe’s and Gammage’s works is broadly supported by the wider research community, historians and archaeologists have baulked at their provocative conclusions. She classifies Pascoe as one of those Aboriginal authors concerned with restoring “Aboriginal pride in heritage and culture”.

The public was as yet largely unaware of academic objections to Pascoe’s book. Richard Guilliat, in a generally positive article in May 2019 on ‘‘Dark Emu’’ in The Australian,a newspaper that would later publish several articles highly critical of the book, calls Pascoe “our most influential indigenous historian”, and cites seemingly enthusiastic comments from the academics Harry Lourandos, Bill Gammage, and Lynette Russell. Yet Guilliat notes that many academics, though reluctant to speak publicly against the book, were concerned at the ideas it was spreading:

Many academic experts also believe ‘‘Dark Emu’’ romanticises pre-contact indigenous society as an Eden of harmony and pacifism, when in fact it was often a brutally tough survivalist way of life. It’s a criticism most are reluctant to air publicly, given the sensitivity of contradicting a popular indigenous historian.

Guilliat quotes the archaeologist Harry Lourandos:

“He’s appealing to that younger generation and he’s got the persona of a guru, and once you get that, you are celestialised,” Lourandos notes wryly. “In this age of political unrest, there’s a hankering for that.”

There were for some years no published academic analyses of Pascoe’s claims. Yet academics came under increasing pressure to comment on a book that had so enthused the public. Professor Tom Griffiths, in a November 2019 article “Reading Bruce Pascoe” in Inside Story noted that:

“In recent years, as a historian of Australia, I’ve found that the book people most wanted to talk to me about is Bruce Pascoe’s ‘‘Dark Emu’’ . Many readers speak of it with a sense of astonishment and revelation. . . I’m grateful for a book that has so enlivened the engagement of Australians with their country’s history.”

Griffiths praised Pascoe enthusiastically for raising readers’ estimation of Aboriginal achievements and for his skills as a storyteller, adding, “I’ve sat with Bruce on a stage and found myself captivated by his careful, humble manner of speaking and gruff bush charm”. Yet he complains that Pascoe does not mention that many recent scholars had made similar discoveries about Aboriginal achievements. “This inspiring story has been downplayed in ’‘Dark Emu’’ .” Moreover: Pascoe often over-reads the sources — and for what purpose? To prove that Aboriginal peoples were like Europeans? ’‘Dark Emu’’ is too much in thrall to a discredited evolutionary view of economic stages."… He concluded that Pascoe deserved “admiration for the sheer bravura of a man on a mission” but also “criticism of hyperbole and of evidence being simplified or overblown.” Thus Griffith contrasts Pascoe’s claim that Aboriginal people were “farmers” (“This is meant to be provocative and it is.”) with Professor Bill Gammage’s more nuanced view in The Greatest Estate on Earth that Aboriginal peoples “farmed in 1788, but were not farmers. These are not the same: one is an activity, the other a lifestyle.”

Comments to the media from several other academics, for instance Mark McKenna, followed this pattern, praising Pascoe highly for helping expunge any popular view of Aborigines as aimlessly wandering nomads, yet noting that scholars had long since abandoned such views. They also often expressed concerns about Pascoe’s reliance upon early explorer’s journals and about the accuracy of his accounts of these journals, as well as his seeming belief in the superiority of agriculture over hunter-gathering.

By late 2020 it became clear that many academics’ criticisms ran deeper. In an Australian National University public web-seminar on 2 December 2020, the anthropologist Ian Keen presented the first academic paper on the book: “Foragers or farmers? ‘‘Dark Emu’’ and the debate over Aboriginal agriculture”. After noting that “The academy has been rather slow to react to Dark Emu”, Keen began by lamenting that Pascoe’s theories have become a target in Australia’s populist culture wars, with the Left willing to accept them because they seem pro-Aboriginal , whereas the Right pounces upon errors in scholarship, which are sometimes cited “to support a racist agenda, supporting the view of pre-colonial Aboriginal peoples as primitive”. Keen remarks,

“‘‘Dark Emu’’ has raised a storm from the cultural warriors of the Right, notably Andrew Bolt. …What I see as the tragedy of ‘‘Dark Emu’’ is that many of these criticisms, from the Right, of Pascoe’s use of the sources, are right—unfortunately.”

Keen claims that Pascoe misrepresents some of his historical sources by omitting sentences that contradict his thesis. He notes that the linguists do not find evidence of Aboriginal languages possessing “an agricultural vocabulary”, and that early settlers who collected Aboriginal curios did not collect Aboriginal agricultural implements or record the sight of Aborigines farming. He notes that several amateur and professional anthropologists, including Nicolas Petersen and Donald Thompson, spent extensive periods living with Aborigines in the bush, and did not observe agriculture. “Pascoe largely ignores their evidence.” He concludes that, “‘‘Dark Emu’’ is based very much on selective quotation, exaggeration, and reliance on disputed studies. . . . Unfortunately, a generation of adults and schoolchildren is being misled.”

In June 2021 Ian Keen’s paper was followed by a much more comprehensive book from Melbourne University Press. In Farmers or Hunter-Gatherers? The ‘‘Dark Emu’’ Debate (2021), anthropologist Peter Sutton and archaeologist Keryn Walshe suggest that ‘‘Dark Emu’’ devalues pre-colonial Aboriginal society, privileging agriculture above a hunter-gatherer socio-economic system. They also criticise the work on grounds of being poorly researched, not fully sourced, and selective in its choice and emphasis of the facts. In James Boyce's opinion, their most salient criticisms include that Pascoe uses white explorers’ journals, ignoring the knowledge of Aboriginal sources, and also that he generalises from local examples and claims incorrectly that such technologies were used across the continent. However, he is also critical of some aspects of Sutton and Walshe's work.

Professor Bill Gammage, whose book The Greatest Estate on Earth argues that Aborigines extensively managed the landscape (often by the use of fire), is the academic most cited by Pascoe. Peter Sutton had criticised his seeming tolerance of Pascoe’s claims. Gammage finally entered the debate in July 2021 in Inside Story. While noting that his health had not permitted him to read all of Sutton and Walshe’s book, Gammage attempted to adjudicate between the two sides, remarking that ‘‘Dark Emu’’ is both “a history and a polemic” and that Tom Griffiths’ 2019 article was “the most balanced response I’ve seen to it”. Of the book’s academic critics Gammage remarked, that many

puzzle over why ’‘Dark Emu’’ is so popular. . . pointing to factors including Pascoe’s forthright prose, and the moral guilt non-Aborigines might feel as the horrors of the frontier, the long institutionalisation of Aboriginal people, and the removal of children are exposed . . . They are alarmed by what the public is being led to think, by what might be taught in schools, by how much good research is overlooked. Their remedy is to talk to each other.

Instead, Gammage argues, the two sides should talk to each other. He suggests that academics could be kinder to Pascoe’s claims that his book had “exploded the myth that Aboriginal people were mere hunters and gatherers” if they were less quick to retort the accusation of racism upon Pascoe, and took “the more charitable interpretation” that in his reference to “mere” hunter-gatherers “Pascoe is being ironic”.

Of Pascoe’s views, Gammage wrote:

Pascoe and I are both dissatisfied by the Great Divide [i.e. between hunter-gatherers and farmers] but disagree on some fundamentals. He thinks people were farmers in 1788. I don’t — I think some farmed but none depended on it. He thinks people have been here 120,000 years or more; the earliest possible date I know of is 65,000 years.

Gammage agrees with Sutton and other academics who says that Pascoe sometimes “omits words to give a more agricultural feel to quotes from explorers’ journals”, yet argues that when Thomas Mitchell wrote in March 1846 “I counted nine miles along the river, in which we rode through this grass [native panicum millet] only”, it is plausible to believe that “this was a clean crop. . . so surely it was weeded.” Gammage ends with a plea to both sides in the debate to talk to each other: “The present brawl won’t do. We need to move on.”

Media Responses to Academic Criticisms

Neither the web-seminar presentation nor the subsequent “publication” of Ian Keen’s paper in the peer-reviewed journal Anthropological Forum in January 2021 affected the media debate about ‘‘Dark Emu’’ , which was by now greatly polarised. Most rightwing publications and the Murdoch Press were highly dismissive of ‘‘Dark Emu’’ ’s claims and often of Pascoe’s claims to Aboriginal heritage, while media more to the Left were strongly supportive. However, the publication in June 2021 by Melbourne University Press of Sutton and Walshe’s book brought an immediate change. Most of the more Left or liberal media now ran respectful articles on Sutton and Walshe’s criticisms.

In a long article in the Sydney Morning Herald’s Good Weekend section, Stuart Rintoul, a journalist and author, remarked that “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.” Rintoul also quoted a similarly scathing analysis from Christophe Darmangeat, a lecturer in social anthropology at the Sorbonne in France. Rintoul described Sutton as “outraged” that school curricula were being changed to conform with the ’‘Dark Emu’’ narrative, embracing Pascoe’s descriptions of an early agricultural society: “Sutton says it should be withdrawn from classrooms and rewritten.”

Similar articles appeared in the Age, and again in Sydney Morning Herald, while “The Conversation” ran a review by the Australian National University’s Christine Judith Nicholls, in which she notes that “Despite racist commentary from some, this isn’t an exclusively right or left-wing issue or a bunfight.” She says that “Pascoe’s skilful editing of his sources involves conscious, deliberate intervention” and argues that more accurate citings of the explorers’ journals “destabilize Pascoe’s account” and are “reinforced by ethnographic, colonial, and archaeological records.” She praises Sutton’s and Pascoe’s book as a near-perfect critique: “a volume with the twin virtues of rigour and readability”.

The Guardian followed later in June with an article by the historian Emeritus Professor Mark McKenna: “Bruce Pascoe has welcomed the ‘‘Dark Emu’’ debate – and so should Australia”. McKenna praises and endorses Pascoe’s success in raising the prestige of Aboriginal culture:

No other book dealing with Australia’s history has sold as many copies as ‘‘Dark Emu’’ . Yet the explanation for its remarkable success lies only partly in the text itself. Even more important is Pascoe’s ability to capture and move audiences desperate to hear his stories of Aboriginal “achievement”. … this is precisely how Pascoe has been presented, as an Aboriginal knowledge-holder, and it helps to explain why his ideas have garnered such widespread acceptance.

Like Griffiths, McKenna lavishes praise upon Pascoe’s skills as a communicator and a public performer:

Watching him closely, I saw a man of the people – a self-described “storyteller” and “broken-down cricketer”; an avuncular mediator who had come to explain the sophistication of Indigenous cultures to an eager, largely non-Indigenous audience; a popular writer whose books and sage-like public persona have become a cultural phenomenon.

Mckenna also describes him as “the bete noire of conservative columnists, with Sky News commentator Andrew Bolt leading the pack”. Yet there is new sharpness in McKenna’s curiosity about how Pascoe enthralls his audience. Citing “a shrewd analysis of Pascoe’s public persona” from the Aboriginal commentator Stan Grant, McKenna notes that though Pascoe “claims Yuin heritage”, his book is pitched towards a white readership, and “Pascoe’s sources in ‘‘Dark Emu’’ are predominantly European explorers, not Indigenous knowledge-holders.” Of his critics Mckenna says:

In 200 pages of forensic critique, Sutton and Walshe methodically expose the flaws in ‘‘Dark Emu’’ . They argue how Pascoe ignores, omits, distorts and exaggerates crucial evidence, rehearses well-worn claims, commits fundamental errors, and rebirths the outmoded doctrine of “social evolutionism” by presenting traditional Aboriginal societies as farmers.

Further evidence of the effect of Sutton and Walshe’s book on media attitudes came from the veteran ABC reporter Paul Barry, whose Media Watch program regularly critiques media biases, and is often sharply critical of rightwing commentators like Andrew Bolt. In Media Watch’s 22 June 2021 segment on the ‘‘Dark Emu’’ debate, Barry reported on the article by “respected journalist and author Stuart Rintoul” whose summary of Sutton and Walshe’s criticisms Barry quotes, adding

“Yep, they don’t miss. Pascoe says he welcomes the difference of opinion. But his defenders — of which there are many — have been forced to see his work in a new light.”

Barry then plays clips of his old adversary Andrew Bolt calling ‘‘Dark Emu’’ “a hoax” and asking “will the ABC say sorry? Because no media organisation did more than the ABC, our national broadcaster, to promote Pascoe and to attack his critics, like me, as racist.” Barry does not respond directly to Bolt’s question, but remarks: “It is an uncomfortable lesson for many journalists.”

References

Marcasella (talk) 05:53, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

Critiques section break

Short note: Many scholarly published responses to Bruce Pascoe's "Dark Emu ... " book editions have happened. Google Scholar has 584 citations of the 2014 first edition and 150 citations of the 2018 second edition.

A couple of notably experienced author's citations, J. Peter White's 2019 scholarly review in Archaeology in Oceania and Anna Florin and Xavier Carah 's 2018 article updating the science of the 50 years of publication's referring to the Sahul (New Guinea and Australia) "Neolithic Problem".

I fully referenced the first of these in a comment above under the Academic Criticism heading.

I'm a long time ago former Wikipedia editor (med. sized of ca. 10,000 edits). Out of it now, login not at hand so anon. talk edit here only providing these appropriate ref's. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 119.18.38.166 (talk) 02:01, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

Dear 119.18.38.166Yes indeed. Feel free to edit my proposed Section on Academic Critiques (above) in the light of any major academic papers about Dark Emu, or reviews in peer-reviewed journals, that I have missed. There is probably also some material in the current page's brief Section on Criticism that might be combined into my proposed two sections above. Marcasella (talk) 07:10, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

By the way, I'm not sure where, if anywhere, the remarks by Professor Tony Hughes-d'Aeth might best fit. His claim that Dark Emu excels in "its ability to bridge archaeology, anthropology, archival history, Indigenous oral tradition and other more esoteric but highly revealing disciplines such as ethnobotany and paleoecology" is not one of the as-told-to-Guilliat passages; it is something that he wrote in "The Conversation". The problem is that he is primarily a professor of literature (see https://www.uwa.edu.au/profile/tony-hughes-daeth ), and is not an expert in any of the disciplines he says Pascoe has mastered, except probably archival history. I suspect he was taking Pascoe's scientific and archaeological skills on trust, and assumed that the experts in these fields would by now have spoken out if there were major problems with what Pascoe claims. He may now be feeling a bit embarrassed. But as Ian Keen says, the academy was slow to react--and though a commentator might argue that Hughes-d'Aeth's piece is a useful example of the dangers of such presuming, I doubt that it is crucial to our account of the academic debate. Marcasella (talk) 07:10, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

Well i'm not an editor any more and i am busy organising work.

My note was written with the intent that an existing even handed editors read and edit into this WP article especially these scholarly articles I referred to by especially relevantly experienced authors which review and cite Pascoe's work. Obviously many more scholarly citing articles exist and I was merely suggesting some of the most experienced authors' articles i have read and carefully checked for you editors to read and use.

If you can't access them i can assist with access ways. Regards. 58.171.231.112 (talk) 07:42, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

Please do assist. Marcasella (talk) 14:01, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

• Florin, S. Anna & Carah, Xavier (2018)

Moving past the ‘Neolithic problem’:

The development and interaction of subsistence systems across northern Sahul.

Quaternary International 489 46–62.

→https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:554104/UQ554104_OA.pdf

– more to come, all the best. 59.100.210.186 (talk) 04:45, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

• Kerkhove, Ray (2017)

Bruce Pascoe, Dark Emu Black Seeds: Agriculture or Accident?

Broome: Magabala Books, 2014, ISBN 9 7819 2214 2436, 174 pp., A $35.

Queensland Review 24 (1) 170–171.

→https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=15026219263049647383

A short review by Ray Kerkhove – historian, University of Queensland (PhD) (Aboriginal Environments Research Centre)

Google Scholar:→https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=mM6IYhoAAAAJ

Uni Qld Academia:→https://uniqld.academia.edu/raykerkhove

– more to come, all the best. 137.219.139.101 (talk) 04:21, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 21 March 2022

Insert the following after sentence ending '...the boundary between foraging and farming is a fuzzy one" and before sentence starting 'Historians Lynette Russell and Billy Griffiths wrote...'

"By contrast, anthropologist Richard Davis argues that in the years prior to the publication of Dark Emu, there exists enough independent research to support another look at Pascoe's arguments. Davis also contends that much of the emotive backlash against Dark Emu is linked to longstanding disagreements stemming from the earliest years of British settlement, over whether Aboriginal people can and should be recognised as landowners in Australia."

The reference for the Davis article is: Davis, Richard. 2020. 'Black Agriculture, White Anger: arguments over Aboriginal land use in Bruce Pascoe's Dark Emu', in Borderlands, 1, 1, pp. 57-70.

The weblinkto the article is: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/344225214_Black_Agriculture_White_Anger_arguments_over_Aboriginal_land_use_in_Bruce_Pascoe's_Dark_Emu OffshoreOnshore (talk) 05:40, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

 Not done for now: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the {{edit extended-protected}} template. It does not appear there is consensus for this addition. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 14:35, 29 April 2022 (UTC)

Contents

Hello all

I have expanded this section slightly to give a better overview of the contents of the book and Pascoe’s argument. I have cut some tangential information which isn’t in the book and have rationalised the citations, removing those which don’t support the statements. I have also corrected a few errors. Happy to discuss. Aemilius Adolphin (talk) 03:31, 10 August 2022 (UTC)