Bruce Pascoe
Few books have had as decisive an impact on the history of Indigenous Australian land management as Bruce Pascoe’s Dark Emu. And yet, as Peter Sutton and Keryn Walshe argue in Farmers or Hunter-gatherers?, the foundations upon which Pascoe builds his account of Indigenous agriculture may be shakier than first thought. In his review of Sutton and Walshe’s book, writer and anthropologist Stephen Bennetts assesses not only their criticisms of Pascoe’s claims, but also the surrounding controversy that has turned a scholarly debate into another theatre in a culture war. What this political furore threatens to obscure is the long tradition of Australian anthropological research that has been essential to the legal restoration of Indigenous land ownership.
... (read more)Mum and dad. I still need to talk to them. My kids, Marnie and Jack. Best meal was scallops and a few beers with my son at Huonville on a pontoon in the river.
... (read more)We came for a death,
climbed the highest mountain
cast ash
reclined on a granite slab,
our old faces tinted rose
pinked by a collapsing sun.
And for our mate, scattered about us,
grey wafers for our communion,
a slow recitation of the mountains spread,
James Griffin and John Wren
Dear Editor,
Some of your readers will be familiar with the problem. You set aside a few days to get to the National Library to pursue a research project. You obtain the manuscripts, order the material in the Petherick Room, and settle down to uninterrupted industry, when an avuncular bore with too much time on his hands buttonholes you and bangs on about his own project. You do not wish to appear uninterested, yet hope that the windbag will leave you alone and get back to his own table, perhaps even write the book that he rehearses so insistently as the precious minutes tick by.
... (read more)