WINNER - 2016 Indigenous Writer’s Prize in the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards

WINNER - 2016 Book of the Year in the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards

SHORTLISTED - 2014 History Book Award in the Queensland Literary Awards

SHORTLISTED - 2014 Victorian Premier’s Award for Indigenous Writing

Dark Emu puts forward an argument for a reconsideration of the hunter-gatherer tag for pre-colonial Aboriginal Australians. The evidence insists that Aboriginal people right across the continent were using domesticated plants, sowing, harvesting, irrigating, and storing - behaviours inconsistent with the hunter-gatherer tag.

Gerritsen and Gammage in their latest books support this premise but Pascoe takes this further and challenges the hunter-gatherer tag as a convenient lie. Almost all the evidence in Dark Emu comes from the records and diaries of the Australian explorers, impeccable sources.