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stui magpie
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005 Location: In flagrante delicto
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Pies4shaw
pies4shaw
Joined: 08 Oct 2007
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^ Hope you didn't pay for it. |
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stui magpie
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005 Location: In flagrante delicto
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I did pay for it,Dark Emu that is, full price not bargain bin, as I wanted to give it a fair chance. _________________ Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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roar
Joined: 01 Sep 2004
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Dark Emu got a lot of people discussing the topic so it's a good thing, in it's own way. Teaching it in schools, however,,,, _________________ kill for collingwood! |
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stui magpie
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005 Location: In flagrante delicto
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It did get people discussing it, but too many swallowed the rubbish hook line and sinker.
people still fall into the trap of thinking that the Indigenous population was homogenous when the truth is far from that.
They both adapted to the environment and adapted it.
They didn't wander randomly, their movements followed a strict pattern dictated by the seasons and the availability of food.
Some of the claims in Black Emu are fanciful rubbish that should not be taught to anyone let alone children. _________________ Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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David
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003 Location: Andromeda
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It was an interesting article, but I feel like I didn’t learn much … what is the consensus on the general claims of Pascoe’s book? All bunkum, or a bit of column A / a bit of column B? _________________ All watched over by machines of loving grace |
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stui magpie
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005 Location: In flagrante delicto
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My view is 80% bunkem, and I'm being kind. _________________ Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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David
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003 Location: Andromeda
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Interesting review of Sutton and Walshe’s critique of Dark Emu. This is the kind of discussion I’ve been looking for:
https://insidestory.org.au/the-teller-and-the-tale/
Quote: | In some respects, Pascoe and his two critics converge. To smash the orthodoxy (as he presents it) that Aboriginal people were nomadic, Pascoe describes them as “more or less sedentary” and as “sedentary or semi-sedentary.” Sutton embraces “semi-sedentary” (erroneously remarking that “semi-sedentary is not mentioned in Dark Emu”) and goes on to cite many instances of academic and popular works published since 1938 that characterise pre-colonial mobility in that way: people foraged within a range of intimately known country, sometimes stayed for long periods in one camp, and even built structures that they could leave and return to find intact.
What Sutton and Walshe question is whether this was an agricultural society. They chip away at so many parts of Pascoe’s thesis that it is, in my opinion, demolished. To give but one example, in his chapter “The Explorers’ Records” Sutton cites evidence that Pascoe could have mentioned but chose not to. He compares Pascoe’s quotations from the explorers’ records with his own, longer quotations — exposing Pascoe’s tendency to omit words that cast doubt on his view that explorers were reporting what they observed as agricultural practices.
The intellectual combat is not as straightforward as this in every chapter. Sometimes the reader must work harder and make choices. For example, Walshe, an archaeologist, devotes eleven pages to considering a small number of stone implements housed in Australian museums. They demand her consideration on the basis that, according to Pascoe, they are “crucial to our understanding of Aboriginal agricultural history.”
Inviting the reader to look “with an open mind” at these tools that he believes could have been hoes for tilling soil, Pascoe laments that they have been little studied. Walshe’s approach is not to say they have not been used as hoes but to ask why anyone should believe that they were. She begins by pointing out that these objects have been studied – as “picks” and “cylcons.” Documented Aboriginal testimony points to cylcons being used in ceremonies to maintain the land’s fecundity. Picks (studied since the 1940s) are likely to have been used when hafted — that is, as an axe-head — for breaking open timber. If such items are “crucial” evidence of agriculture, as Pascoe declares in Dark Emu, then Walshe has effectively questioned this particular “crux.”
For Pascoe and those devoted to his thesis, though, this might not be enough. His mind open to a new interpretation of the picks, Pascoe (teamed with historian Bill Gammage and Indigenous artist Jonathan Jones) hosted a museum exhibition, Bunha-bunhanga: Aboriginal Agriculture in the South-East, whose catalogue declares that the picks were “used to cultivate the murrnong [yam] fields” — speculation presented as fact.
Walshe’s eleven pages on cylcons and picks confront readers with a choice. Do we continue to warm to Pascoe’s speculation (ignoring the extant scientific literature as an artefact of benighted scholarship), or do we accept that we just don’t know how Aboriginal people used these objects? |
_________________ All watched over by machines of loving grace |
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stui magpie
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005 Location: In flagrante delicto
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That is a good review. They poke some serious holes in Pascoe's credibility on several levels.
I particularly like the points about why is European style agriculture considered superior to hunter gathering? _________________ Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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pietillidie
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
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stui magpie
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005 Location: In flagrante delicto
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think positive
Side By Side
Joined: 30 Jun 2005 Location: somewhere
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thats is cool _________________ You cant fix stupid, turns out you cant quarantine it either! |
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David
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003 Location: Andromeda
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Is there some way for her to come back solo and leave Bezos in orbit? _________________ All watched over by machines of loving grace |
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stui magpie
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005 Location: In flagrante delicto
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Might be difficult, trying to open a door to push him out may not have the desired consequences. _________________ Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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pietillidie
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
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