Review: Dark Emu

It is an accepted truism that Australia draws its identity from ‘the land’ – the metaphysical substance which purports to imbue our nation with unity, meaning, and divine purpose. The truth—that this country is no more than a collection of federated settler colonies formed to benefit a once powerful European nation state—is part of the long-held narrative that Bruce Pascoe challenges in his 2014 novel, Dark Emu. Pascoe refutes the notion that, prior to settlement in 1788, Aboriginal peoples led a nomadic, primitive hunter-gatherer lifestyle, and thus could not be regarded as landowners under Australian law. On the contrary, Pascoe argues that Aboriginal peoples enjoyed a complex relationship with the land, and the notion that they were ‘mere’ hunter-gatherers was a colonial tool used to justify dispossession.

Scientists generally hypothesise that human engineering and agricultural experiments began around four thousand years ago, but there is evidence to suggest that experiments may have begun in Australia far earlier. The generally accepted figure for Aboriginal occupation of Australia is sixty to sixty-five thousand years, and during that time, Aboriginal peoples developed stable economic, agricultural, and aquacultural practices, integral to their sense of identity and ongoing survival.  

In this respect, Pascoe seeks to answer the question about the quality of the country (particularly the relationship between human and nature) in the pre-colonial era. Because of the oral method of relaying history that was (and is) prevalent in Aboriginal societies, many of these questions have typically been considered as outside the scope of history proper, instead perceived as belonging to archaeology or anthropology. One of the strengths of Dark Emu, then, is its ability to bridge archaeology, anthropology, and oral tradition, in order to demonstrate how they work in tandem.

Pascoe recognises that while it is not certain that all Aboriginal peoples were involved in agricultural practices, the testimonies of explorers and first witnesses indicates that most Aboriginal people were in the early stages of an agricultural society which was perhaps ahead of many other nations worldwide. Indeed, even a cursory examination of the past contradicts the pre-conceived notion that Indigenous Australians were passively adjusting to natural changes in the environment. Rather, they were actively participating in that environment, and directly affecting its production. 

If we are to understand these practices, says Pascoe, we have to begin with the cultural and spiritual relationship between Aboriginal peoples and their land. This is not to suggest that Aboriginal culture should be seen only through a prism of spirituality. According to Pascoe, too often researchers ascribe unnecessary “mystical wisdom” to their subjects. But without romanticising Aboriginal subjects and practices, it is important to understand that the economic, agricultural and land management foundations of traditional Indigenous society were informed by spiritual beliefs known as the Dreaming; a concept which is crucial to understanding Aboriginal laws of existence and connection to country.

For Aboriginal peoples, relationship to country does not precede perception but is a component of perception itself, as it is through living on and caring for country that country is experienced and knowledge is transmitted. Indeed, the land exists as a reference system “in which individual consciousness of the world and social identities are anchored.” Ultimately, then, Dark Emu laments a culture which was violently displaced, but also celebrates a culture which has endured, and the inherent resilience of Aboriginal peoples in surviving profound and ongoing adversity while retaining “a sense of integrity, commitment to family, humour, compassion and respect for humanity.”