Anthropologist and archaeologist say Dark Emu was littered with weak evidence and unsourced claims

Professor Pascoe’s work has previously attracted criticism by conservative commentators and in 2019 his own Aboriginal heritage was the subject of a bitter public dispute. Then Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton referred to the Australian Federal Police fraud allegations against Mr Pascoe raised by a prominent Aboriginal businesswoman, Josephine Cashman. The AFP found Mr Pascoe had no case to answer.

Professor Sutton told Good Weekend he believed reading and accepting Dark Emu had become a search for “moral recovery” for some white Australians of good will. Professor Sutton and Dr Walshe, a long-time archaeologist at the South Australia Museum, also question why no one asked Aboriginal people still connected to traditional practices, or anthropologists, whether Mr Pascoe was right.

“As far as we can tell, no journalist or book reviewer covering the Dark Emu story has interviewed senior Aboriginal people from remote communities where knowledge of the old economy is retained at least by some, and practised in an adapted way by many,” they write.

In a foreword to the new book, Wiradjuri archaeologist Kellie Pollard, from Charles Darwin University, writes that the authors “show that Pascoe tried, and failed, to overturn over a century of anthropological and archaeological study, analysis and documentation, in addition to Aboriginal oral testimony, of the ways of life, governance, socioeconomic behaviour, material, technological and spiritual accomplishments and preferences of Aboriginal people in classical society and on the cusp of colonisation.”

Mr Pascoe said Dark Emu had encouraged many Australians to recognise the ingenuity and sophistication of the many Aboriginal cultures, societies and land-management practices, which had not previously been brought to mainstream attention.