AUSTRALIANA ABORIGINAL –

“Bitter harvest is a comprehensive appraisal of Bruce Pascoe’s book Dark emu. Pascoe postulates that, rather than being a nomadic hunter-gatherer society, Australian Aborigines were actually sedentary agriculturalists with ‘skills superior to those of the white colonisers who took their land and despoiled it’. Dark emu has enjoyed extraordinary public and critical acclaim, winning Premier’s literary awards in New South Wales and Victoria. Professor Marcia Langton called it ‘the most important book on Australia’. Its ideas have already been taken up in school texts. But nothing in Dark emu justifies its success. Bitter harvest is a forensic but highly readable examination which reveals that Bruce Pascoe omits, distorts or mischaracterises important information to such an extent that, as purported history, Dark emu is worthless. Even worse, it promotes a divisive, victim-based agenda that pits one Australian against another. In short, it is a shameful, politically-biased work of fiction.”

• 251 pages : illustrations (black & white) ; 22 cm
• Second Revised Edition #060126

• Full contents:
  • • Agriculture
    • Aquaculture
    • Population and housing
    • Storage and preservation
    • The Heavens, language and the law
    • Accepting history and creating the future
    • Young dark emu : a truer history?
    • Summary and conclusion
    • Appendix: extracts from explorers’ journals.

Notes:Includes bibliographical references (pages 241-247) and index.Subject:

• • Pascoe, Bruce, 1947-. Dark emu
  • Pascoe, Bruce, 1947-
  • Aboriginal Australians — Agriculture
  • Aboriginal Australians — Antiquities
  • Aboriginal Australians — Social life and customs
  • Hunting and gathering societies
  • Land use, Rural
  • Land use, Rural — Australia
  • Hunting and gathering societies — Australia