Bruce Pascoe: our pre-colonial human and nature interface
Over the coming weeks, we will share with you some of the writings and insights of both Bruce Pascoe and Marie Munkara in preparation for our upcoming Berry Conversation on 7th April, 2019.
As Tony Hughes-D’Aeth, Associate Professor, English and Cultural Studies, University of Western Australia argues in his The Conversation essay, Australia’s romantic attitude to farming has done untold damage to the land, especially in regards to the dispute between the notions of colonist farming and the precepts of a hunter-gatherer society.
Hughes-D’Aeth continues that while Australia is overwhelmingly urban in its modern history, we still draw identity disproportionately from ‘the land’, pointing to the interface between humans and nature in the pre-colonial epoch. Here, he argues that the hunter-gatherer attribution to our Indigenous Australians ‘…is based on a radical, and frankly self-serving, misunderstanding…’ as demonstrated in Bruce Pascoe’s book, Dark Emu. Following is the final paragraph from this text:
The start of that journey is to allow the knowledge that Aboriginals did build houses, did cultivate and irrigate crops, did sew clothes and were not hapless wanderers across the soil, mere hunter-gatherers. Aboriginals were intervening in the productivity of the country and what they learned during that process over many thousands of years will be useful for us today. To deny Aboriginal agricultural and spiritual achievement is the single greatest impediment to intercultural understanding and, perhaps, Australian moral and economic prosperity.
Berry Conversations with Bruce Pascoe and Marie Munkara
We are delighted to announce that Bruce Pascoe, prize-winning author of Dark Emu: Aboriginal Agriculture and the Birth of Australia will be in conversation with Marie Munkara, award-winning author of Every Secret Thing and Of Ashes and Rivers That Run to the Sea:
on Sunday, April 7th, 3-5pm
At the Berry Public School Hall
Tickets, costing $30, will be on sale from February 1st at the Berry Music Centre on Queen Street and at www.trybooking.com
Bruce Pascoe is a Bunurong, Yuin and Tasmanian man born in the Melbourne suburb of Richmond. He is a member of the Wathaurong Aboriginal Co-operative of southern Victoria and has been the director of the Australian Studies Project for the Commonwealth Schools Commission. Currently Professor at the Jumbunna Institute for Indigenous Education & Research at the University of Technology Sydney, he has had a varied career as a teacher, farmer, fisherman, barman, fencing contractor, lecturer, Aboriginal language researcher, archaeological site worker and editor. His book Fog a Dox won the Young Adult category of the 2013 Prime Minister’s Literary Awards. His most recent book is Dark Emu: Aboriginal Agriculture and the Birth of Australia which won the NSW Premier’s Book of the Year Award in 2016.
Of Rembarranga and Tiwi descent, Marie Munkara was delivered on the banks of the Mainoru River in Arnhemland by her two grandmothers and spent her early years on Bathurst Island. Her first novel, Every Secret Thing, won the David Unaipon Award in 2008 and the Northern Territory Book of the Year in 2010. She has written two children’s books, Rusty Brown and Rusty and Jojo, and another novel, A Most Peculiar Act. Her most recent book is a memoir, Of Ashes and Rivers that Run to the Sea. Marie is presently working on the TV mini-series for Every Secret Thing and her next novel.
A message from the organising committee
As 2018 draws to a close we wish to thank our friends, supporters, volunteers, and enthusiastic audience members for their continuing involvement with Berry Conversations.
This year we heard two remarkable discussions—the first, in March, between Charlotte Wood and Susan Wyndham; the second, in August, between Kerry O’Brien and Helen Caldicott. To see a gallery of images from this latter event, please follow this link.
We can promise you two equally compelling Conversations in 2019.
Our commitment to sharing our proceeds after expenses with the community has seen our 2018 year-end donations going to:
- The Berry Public School
- The Havenlee School, North Nowra
- Waminda Waminda: South Coast Women’s Health and Welfare Aboriginal Corporation
- Salt Ministries, Inc
- The Nowra East Public School
- SAHASSI Nowra (Supported Accomodation and Homelessness Services)
With warm wishes for the holidays and the new year,
Trevor Barker, Mary Cunnane, Wendy Firth, Colleen Fry, Heather Macdonald, Cherrie McDonald, Bill Pigott, Leslie Pigott