Bruce Pascoe – Dark Emu

We are delighted that Bruce Pasco will be visiting St Michael’s to talk about his award-winning book Dark Emu. Bruce will be giving a 1-hour presentation with Q&A in the Waratah Room at 12pm.

Bruce Pascoe puts forward a compelling argument for a reconsideration of the hunter-gatherer label for pre-colonial Aboriginal Australians. The evidence insists that Aboriginal people right across the continent were using domesticated plants, sowing, harvesting, irrigating and storing-behaviours inconsistent with the hunter-gather tag. Dark Emu was short listed for 2014 Victorian Premier’s Indigenous Writer’s Award and the 2014 Queensland and Western Australia Literary awards.

‘If we look at the evidence presented to us by the explorers and explain to our children that Aboriginal people did build houses, did build dams, did sow, irrigate and till the land, did alter the course of rivers, did sew their clothes, and did construct a system of pan-continental government that generated peace and prosperity, then it is likely we will admire and love our land all the more.’ – Bruce Pascoe