The author is a aboriginal /white man born in Melbourne (a city area) who i feel wants to rewrite history to look more western. The aboriginal people of australia were a bueatiful culture with amazing spirtual, hunting techniques, and oral culture. I was waiting for the part in which he said they were first to create a aircraft. I find it funny how he spend most his time saying how the aboriginal people where the first to do everything and so peaceful, but the fact is they're actually like any other human had horrible wars and injustices. A more balanced and nuanced view would have been appreciated. We have a lot to learn from the first Australians about managing the land, but this book often uncritically places them on a pedestal, and seems to think they are exempted from the sorts of psychological flaws that characterise the rest of our species territoriality, aggression, dominance hierarchies and leader worship. The chapter somewhat redeems itself with its environmental message at the end. The final chapter begins with an anti-European screed - wondering aloud whether China would have been a better colonial power (the actions of modern China to its neighbours puts the lie to this) and implies at multiple points that Aboriginal people should have more rights than other Australians to 'make up for dispossession'. This sort of Rousseauian fantasizing persists throughout the book. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. For instance, he cites the lack of archaeological evidence of large scale warfare as showing that aboriginal people never engaged in group-on-group conflict.

However, the author stretches the evidence further than is warranted in many places. It's safe to say that many aboriginal groups cannot accurately be described as solely hunter gatherers.

Pascoe dark emu