“I would prefer to be on the side of truth and what I am really pleased about (is that) this hasn’t denigrated into a race, us against them, debate,” she said. Ms Cashman told Bolt she felt vindicated. Speaking on Sky News, Bolt criticised Mr Wyatt for sacking Aboriginal businesswoman Josephine Cashman from a government advisory role after she joined the campaign to discredit Pascoe last year. Sky News host Andrew Bolt, who has been an outspoken critic of Dark Emu for years and has questioned Pascoe’s claims of Aboriginal ancestry, this week called on Mr Wyatt to apologise for “his part” in promoting the book, saying the Minister had praised it, advocated for it to be taught in schools, and dismissed questions about Pascoe’s Indigenous identity.īruce Pascoe reads Young Dark Emu to students. Indigenous Australians Minister Ken Wyatt has broken his silence on the Dark Emu controversy, a week after fresh questions were raised about the accuracy of the influential Aboriginal history book.Ī number of experts now say Bruce Pascoe’s 2014 bestseller – which claimed that Indigenous Australians prior to colonisation were not just hunter-gatherers but engaged in agriculture, irrigation and construction – has been all but “demolished” by a scholarly rebuttal by two respected academics, anthropologist Peter Sutton and archaeologist Keryn Walshe.įarmers or Hunter-Gatherers? The Dark Emu Debate, published by Melbourne University Press this week, argues while Dark Emu “purports to be factual” it is “littered with unsourced material, is poorly researched, distorts and exaggerates many points, selectively emphasises evidence to suit those opinions, and ignores large bodies of information that do not support the author’s opinions”.

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