Dark Emu by Bruce Pascoe

I've recently been preparing for NAIDOC Week 2019 and watching the First Footprints DVD series. Dark Emu fitted well with both of these. The book attempts to debunk the myth that prior to colonisation, Aboriginal people were nomadic hunter-gatherers. This year's NAIDOC Week theme calls for truth about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander history. The TV series First Footprints was an attempt to reveal the phenomenal achievements of the world's oldest and most adaptable culture, this book is another.

Pascoe thoroughly and systematically explores the evidence (using mainly notebooks of colonists) that shows Aboriginal people grew and cultivated crops, used technology to manage drainage and fisheries, had their own system of leadership similar to democracy, and managed the environment using a sophisticated process of fire-stick farming. Far from taming the land, within a few years of settlers arriving, much of the land that had previously been like a lawned garden, became dense forest or wilderness.

Pascoe suggests that Australian's would benefit from reintroducing some of the food sources used by the First Australians. This includes promoting kangaroo meat over beef and lamb,  reintroducing yams (rather than potatoes) and reintroducing native grains that produce particularly sweet and light flour. The idea that Aboriginal Peoples mainly ate Witchetty grubs and other 'things that make you go eww' is another misnomer.

There is a children's version of the book being released shortly and I've pre-ordered my copy.