Review: Dark Emu — How do we reckon with Australia’s timeless history?

There is an almost insurmountable chasm that Bruce Pascoe’s Dark Emu seeks to fill. How do we reckon with the history of Australia that extends unimaginably beyond the known history of European settlement when we barely acknowledge that such history exists?

How do we now appreciate over 60,000 years of history of people on a continent when so much of their evidence was destroyed by settlers that were blind to its value when imposing ideals and practises imported from half-way across the world?

In Dark Emu, Pascoe has provided just an entrée to a trove of the history and understanding of pre-colonial Australia and of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people that thrived in its landscape.

It is unfortunate that so much of this evidence is captured only in the records of colonial settlers in Australia. As much of the physical and historical evidence of pre-colonial Australia was destroyed during British settlement, we are forced to rely on records that are filtered through the viewpoint of these same settlers.

Pascoe highlights the work necessary to properly contextualise the records of pre and post-colonial records of Aboriginal Australia as recorded by European colonialists. Even those who provide more favourable assessments of aboriginal…