Awards
2016 Book of the Year Award and the Indigenous Writer's Prize winner in the New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards.
Synopses & Reviews
Contradicts the conventional wisdom that native peoples were primitive hunter-gatherers.
History has portrayed Australia's First Peoples, the Aboriginals, as
hunter-gatherers who lived on an empty, uncultivated land. History is
wrong.
In this seminal book, Bruce Pascoe uncovers evidence that long before
the arrival of white men, Aboriginal people across the continent were
building dams and wells; planting, irrigating, and harvesting seeds, and
then preserving the surplus and storing it in houses, sheds, or secure
vessels; and creating elaborate cemeteries and manipulating the
landscape. All of these behaviors were inconsistent with the
hunter-gatherer tag, which turns out have been a convenient lie that
worked to justify dispossession.
Using compelling evidence from the records and diaries of early
Australian explorers and colonists, he reveals that Aboriginal systems
of food production and land management have been blatantly understated
in modern retellings of early Aboriginal history, and that a new look at
Australia's past is required--for the benefit of all Australians.
Review
"[A] brisk and lucidly written account.... This is an important and deeply researched reinterpretation of Australian history and a stark warning about the danger of accepting received wisdom at face value." Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)
Review
"The truth-telling must go on." Stephen Fitzpatrick, The Australian
Review
"[A]n important book that
advances a powerful argument for re-evaluating the sophistication of
Aboriginal peoples' economic and socio-political livelihoods, and calls
for Australia to embrace the complexity, sophistication and innovative
skills of Indigenous people into its concept of itself as a nation." Aboriginal History
About the Author
Bruce Pascoe lives in Australia and has a Bunurong, Tasmanian, and Yuin heritage. Bruce is currently working on two films for ABC TV and a novel.