Australia

Dark Emu, non-history and truth-telling: problematics of Indigenous Reconciliation

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David Gulpilil

Pilate, a man who would otherwise have been forgotten comprehensively by history, left us one resonant phrase: ‘What is truth?’

There is much emphasis today on ‘truth-telling’ in relation to aboriginal history. And certainly, any history that is actually history is truth-telling. It is based first and foremost on verifiable facts, citing sources and quoting them frankly and fully. It incorporates opposing viewpoints and inconvenient truths. It makes clear distinctions between historical fact and interpretation, and interpretation and speculation. A historian may speculate, but they make it plain that that is what they are doing.

Some of the opposition to Bruce Pascoe’s book has been bedevilled by generalised rants against supposedly ‘left-wing’ commentators and agendas. This simply clouds the issue. While it might be true that generally, those advocating for Reconciliation, an aboriginal Voice to Parliament, etc, are on the left politically, there is nothing particularly left-wing about Pascoe’s book, or right-wing about opposition to it, despite right-wing journals such as Quadrant excoriating it.

The politics of right and left have no bearing on the recent repudiation of Dark Emu’s agenda by two academics, anthropologist Peter Sutton and archaeologist Keryn Walshe, who are highly experienced and qualified in aboriginal history and culture. They work through the book and Pascoe’s theory in detail and systematically, showing over and over again that his proposition is not supported by the evidence, which in fact contradicts it. The theory that the aboriginal peoples pre-settlement were nomadic hunter-gatherers is not, in fact, some random idea generated by white oppressors: it is the conclusion arrived at by examining the data.

Dark Emu set out to show that, far from being nomadic hunter-gatherers, indigenous Australians pre-settlement were sophisticated farmers who built stone houses, lived in permanent settlements and farmed the land and rivers. This theory is seen by Pascoe to raise the status of the aboriginal peoples in some way. One of the most problematic aspects of this is that Pascoe applies what he conceives to be European values to aboriginal culture in order to validate it. This seems totally contradictory to any project of validating aboriginal culture in its own terms. To exacerbate this, he uses as sources the accounts of European settlers and explorers, not of the aboriginal peoples themselves. Sutton and Walshe point out that the most authentic accounts of aboriginal life pre-settlement are given by aboriginal elders living in remote communities, who remember traditional practices and continue them, even in adapted form. Sutton relies heavily on such sources; Pascoe ignores them.

When Pascoe’s book first emerged, one of the most puzzling questions was this: if the aboriginal peoples were sedentary farmers who built stone houses, planted and harvested crops and built fish and eel traps, why did they cease these traditional activities immediately Europeans arrived? After all, it was decades before Europeans fanned out into larger territories than the tiny enclaves they occupied on the coasts, encountered new tribes, and had any impact on their ways of life. As recently as a hundred years ago, even in the 1950s, there were still aboriginals in the remote areas, who had had very little contact with Europeans, living life the way their forebears had done. Why were they not building stone houses and harvesting crops?

Farmers or Hunter-Gatherers? is by no means the first attack on the veracity and reliability of Pascoe’s vision of pre-settlement life, but it is highly credible and comprehensive. Pascoe has said that he welcomes debate. But as Sutton, Walshe and others point out, there is in fact little room for debate. There are facts, and there are non-facts, history and non-history. Palatable to some agendas or not, non-history must not be allowed to replace, or be confused with, actual history. Dark Emu is not history. And its author knows it is non-history: ‘Pascoe is not some misguided amateur scholar, whose heart is in the right place and who can be forgiven, maybe, for a few transgressions or misinterpretations in the use of his sources. He is a serious and serial charlatan who has defrauded a generation. He is a propagandist whose narrative suits the extreme Aboriginal sovereignty agenda.’ (Peter O’Brien, author of Bitter Harvest)

O’Brien has his own axe to grind, but he is correct, if hyperbolic. The most alarming aspect of Dark Emu is the way it has been taken as gospel by a large number of people, to the extent of being taught in schools. This is seriously wrong. What is taught in schools should be serious, well-credentialled, factual history, even if it is replete with ideological inconvenience. Ideology must never be presented as fact. And what makes this worse is that many factual accounts are readily available as teaching resources, but have clearly been rejected in favour of a tome which produces a more likeable version of events.

It may be argued that aboriginal history and the impact of European settlement on indigenous culture is a fraught, emotive, political and highly-contested area. That is precisely why what is put forward, published and taught about it must be scrupulously factual and free from bias. Exactly the reason such accounts as Dark Emu have no place in schools, or serious discourse. It is non-history.

The path to Reconciliation is littered with non-facts and bias. That is perhaps inevitable to some extent. But they are not helping. ‘Truth-Telling’ is of critical importance. It is to be hoped that the proposed Commission will make a real difference. But to do so, realistically, it must tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Among the issues it should beware of are:

  • the myth of the ‘Noble Savage’, which permeates almost all discourse, whether coming from indigenous people themselves or from European Australians;
  • the related myth of the pre-settlement idyllic, pastoral life of the indigenous peoples of Australia
  • the myth of European settlement as a brutal military ‘invasion’, designed specifically to exterminate the indigenous peoples;
  • the myth that James Cook was responsible for British settlement;
  • the myth that if it had not been for Cook, the British government and the First Fleet, the aboriginal peoples would be continuing to enjoy undisputed possession of the continent;
  • the myth of indigenous ‘sovereignty’ propagated by Pascoe and his ilk. ‘Sovereignty’ means exerting supreme control over a country or nation. There was no moment in aboriginal history when the hundreds of scattered, nomadic tribes, often at war with each other, exercised supreme control over the country. Individual groups may temporarily have exerted control over small areas of territory, but none of this could be described as sovereignty;

– because all these are, in fact, myths.

The Commission is an excellent opportunity to air and set straight the record on numerous like topics. If the truth is to be told, let it be told in full. And that should include an assessment of the extent to which European settlement has advantaged the aboriginal peoples, not simply catalogue the numerous and very real disadvantages they have experienced.

While post-settlement Australia has been responsible for many crimes and atrocities against the aboriginal peoples, it has also brought many advantages. To be fair and truthful these, too, should be thrown into the balance. While nothing can compensate the people for being obliged to share the land which was once entirely theirs alone, with unwanted incomers from elsewhere, if progress is ever to be made, it must be accepted that, desirable or not, and regardless of the actions of any one individual or government, their historic isolation could not continue into the modern era.

Indigenous culture pre-settlement and since is unique, fascinating and complex. It deserves serious attention and to be far better known and understood. Many scholars, such as Professor Sutton, have spent a lifetime exploring it. One of the barriers to such exploration is cultural embargoes or reluctance to share information with outsiders. This is understandable in cultural terms, but it is an impediment to better understanding of indigenous culture. It is to be hoped that more indigenous historians and scholars will be able to shed more light on some of these fields of study in the future.

It is clearly right that aboriginal people should have the greatest degree of autonomy possible in governing their own affairs, and that they should have a say in legislation that affects them. But in any country, there can only be one sovereign power, and that power in Australia is the Federal and State governments. Sovereign power cannot be shared. Any Voice to Parliament can only be advisory, or exercise power delegated to it by the Government. And to be effective in any way, it must be recognised and its authority accepted by all the aboriginal peoples of Australia. To date, no single committee or organisation has had that status in Australia. That has hindered Governments in their efforts to mitigate some of the appalling conditions aboriginal Australians have experienced and continue to suffer. The single most constructive act the aboriginal people could undertake to improve their conditions and power, would be to agree on such a universally accepted body to represent them. That will not be easy, but it is essential.

What activists like Pascoe have failed to grasp is that in the end, the reason the aborigines of Australia should have better treatment and greater autonomy is not because they previously had sovereignty over the land, or because they were done a great wrong in outsiders coming to live here, or because their culture was somehow idyllic or equal or superior to European culture, or because wrongs have been done to them. The reason is that they are people, and the long-time sole inhabitants of this land, and have a great and unique culture, which does not require special manipulation to validate.

Those reasons are enough. Fictional or mythic arguments are not required and are bound to fail. The aborigines are here; they have been here for millennia; they are human beings. The truth must be enough, and it is enough.

Should statues of flawed heroes be removed?

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In July 2020, Bristol residents were treated to the sight of Edward Colston’s statue being dragged from its plinth and pitched into the Avon. For long regarded as one of the fathers of the city and a major philanthropist, his activities in the slave trade had made him persona non grata with anti-racism activists.

A plaque detailing his life was produced in 2019 in an effort to balance the record, but never installed. The statue was often covered in graffiti and became the focus of protests in the Black Lives Matter movement. A year later it was gone. At the same time, following similar complaints, the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, called for London statues and street names with links to slavery to be removed or renamed.

In Australia, statues of Captain James Cook, the navigator who charted the east coast and claimed possession for Great Britain of parts of New South Wales, are also subject to vandalism by Indigenous activists who regard him as having initiated the European settlement of Australia. There have been calls for his statues in both Australia and the UK, especially that in Sydney’s Domain, to be removed, and for his name to be erased from various streets and parks.

Calls for statues to be removed have become popular, with increasing fervour. But should public monuments be taken down at the behest of any group, or for any reason? These two cases – Colston and Cook – are examples for debate here.

Colston was a major philanthropist. His money came from the slave trade. The proposed plaque summarised his life:
“Edward Colston (1636–1721), MP for Bristol (1710–1713), was one of this city’s greatest benefactors. He supported and endowed schools, almshouses, hospitals and churches in Bristol, London and elsewhere. Many of his charitable foundations continue. This statue was erected in 1895 to commemorate his philanthropy. A significant proportion of Colston’s wealth came from investments in slave trading, sugar and other slave-produced goods. As an official of the Royal African Company from 1680 to 1692, he was also involved in the transportation of approximately 84,000 enslaved African men, women and young children, of whom 19,000 died on voyages from West Africa to the Caribbean and the Americas.”

When the statue was erected in 1895, his philanthropy was the emphasis. The weight has now shifted to where his money came from. There is no doubt at all that he made the money that endowed his numerous charities from the ‘vile trade’. Surely it is obvious that such a man should not be so conspicuously memorialised? What can they have been thinking, in 1895? Or should his philanthropy outweigh, as some would argue, his involvement in producing massive human suffering?

Perhaps. It certainly should not, as again, some would argue, be totally discounted in forming an assessment of Colston’s worthiness. We live in a judgemental era, ever willing to efface the good in a person or institution if they have committed some crime. On that basis, Colston should definitely go.

There is also the argument that in destroying or removing such statues, we are effectively re-writing the past. There is considerable substance in that. By banishing Colston, aren’t we virtually erasing signs of that terrible trade and era? Painting over crimes? The past of any country is chequered with good and bad, glory and horror. Shouldn’t British or Australian history, for instance, be seen in all its colours, not whitewashed into a spurious purity?

But there is another factor that is rarely raised, and which, when considered, makes these protests seem like hypocrisy. Colston was not alone. In fact, the entire city of Bristol was built on the slave trade, almost more than any other city in Britain. It was one of the chief ports internationally that profited from the trade in lives. Slaves were not bought and sold in Bristol; the city grew and made its wealth from building and equipping ships to sail the triangular route from Britain, loaded with trade goods, to Africa, where they were exchanged for men, women and children, who were transported to the Americas, where they were sold to plantation owners, and with the purchase money, rum, sugar, tobacco and cotton were loaded into the now-empty holds to be sold at a profit back home. It was not necessary to captain a slave ship, or own one, to profit: the corner greengrocer could buy a £10 share in a slave ship, while Bristol’s factories were fully occupied with turning out trade goods for Africa, and its warehouses, now fashionable wine bars, were stocked with the cotton and sugar off the returning ships, ready to flood the English market. Every citizen who bought this sugar, cotton or tobacco was a beneficiary of the slave trade, a fact pointed out by the abolitionists. The charming Georgian suburb of Clifton is testament to the money to be made from the Triangle Trade, as are its delightful streets and parks. The city of Bristol, unlike some others with a similar history, has done very little to acknowledge this fact. A tiny plaque on a warehouse acknowledges the grim past. It was installed not by the city, but by the novelist Phillippa Gregory. That is almost all there is. In the end, then, why pick on Colston, when those same activists who threw his effigy into the dock enjoy the facilities he endowed, as do all Bristolians? It is particularisation. Let one man carry the sins of a whole city, or people, and drive him out into the wilderness, and then the rest of us will be clean.

In Australia, James Cook was a naval Lieutenant commissioned by the Admiralty to map parts of the South Seas. He was a man of humble origins who became one of the greatest navigators in the world, responsible for huge additions to the world’s cartographic knowledge, sailing the Pacific on several voyages in his small refurbished collier. In 1770 he mapped the east coast of Australia, penetrating for the first time the Great Barrier Reef and landing in the region of present-day Sydney. Following his voyages, the British government determined to formally colonise the country and from 1788 sent out fleets of ships bearing convicts, militia, livestock, seeds and plants and later, free settlers. This development meant that the land previously occupied for millennia solely by the Aboriginal peoples was progressively taken up by European settlers, with inevitable clashes and massacres of groups of dispossessed locals. The subsequent history included extensive disadvantage of the Indigenous peoples that continues today, although some historic wrongs have been more recently addressed.

This is a very different story from that of Colston. Cook himself spent only a few days in the country, had very little contact with the native inhabitants, and committed no atrocities. His actions were at the behest of his masters and brought him little personal advantage. Why should the statues which recognise the achievements of this naval officer of low status, be the subject of vandalism? Should they, as activists demand, be removed, and all public places named after him re-named? It seems largely symbolic. The real progenitors of the dispossession and distress of the Aboriginal peoples were the British government, led by a series of Prime Minsters. The names of some of these, such as Lord North, whose government sent Cook out in 1770, the Earl of Ripon or Lord Liverpool, are unknown in Australia today. There are few statues to them. Their names are not taught in school history lessons. They are not the subject of the opprobrium which attaches to James Cook. It seems a clear case of shooting the messenger, and again, of particularisation, or, as it would have been called at the time, scapegoating. Perhaps it is symbolic. One man stands for the whole of the colonial project. But in view of the unfairness, in this case, of the selection of one of the greatest navigators of his time, a man who was acting not for his own benefit but on the instructions of his employers, it seems wrong to remove James Cook from his plinth. And, as in Bristol, those who cry for Cook to be pulled down in protest against the European colonisation of Australia enjoy the benefits of that colonisation – the schools and hospitals, roads and trains, the technology and science, in fact the entire panoply of Western civilisation. Can anyone legitimately protest against colonisation while enjoying its fruits?

There is another factor, too, often argued: that the continued public acknowledgement of these reminders of a past whose events now pain us, is a reminder that we are less than perfect, that we get things wrong, that great people have their failings, and people who do dreadful things may also give fortunes to charity. ‘Amazing Grace’ was written by a slave-ship captain who was converted. Today it is one of the most popular of hymns, even among the non-religious. If Colston is to be toppled and Cook erased, shouldn’t this hymn disappear from the song sheets? Don’t we partly love it because of its witness to human frailty and achievement?

It is interesting that those who object to Colston and Cook on their plinths almost universally see destruction or erasure as the answer. A few make an alternative, more creative proposition: that near each of the statues that commemorate someone whose actions led to human suffering, a companion statue could be placed. Next to Colston, a group of Africans in chains; by Cook, an Aboriginal family, gazing out across the land that once was theirs. An educational opportunity for passers-by and a permanent reminder of the costs of trade and exploration, not a vacant plinth that speaks only of destruction and revenge.