Bruce Pascoe – May 29 2016

National Reconciliation Week – May 27 – June 3 2016

National Reconciliation Week (NRW) is celebrated across Australia each year between May 27 and June 3. The dates commemorate two significant milestones in the reconciliation journey — the anniversaries of the successful 1967 referendum and the High Court Mabo decision.

Bruce is a writer, editor and anthologist. He has worked as a teacher, farmer, fisherman, lecturer, Aboriginal language researcher and archeological site worker. A Bunurong man, Bruce has appeared in the SBS TV program, First Australians. He runs Pascoe Publishing and Seaglass Books with his wife, Lyn Harwood. Bruce’s other children’s books include Foxies in a Firehose, illustrated by Brenda Marshall, and The Chainsaw File, part of the Yarning Strong series. His other non-fiction works include The Little Red, Yellow Black Book, Convincing Ground: Learning to fall in love with your country, Dictionary of Wathawoorroong with linguist Sharnthi Krishna-Pillay, Wathaurong The People Who Said No, Wathaurong Too Bloody Strong and Cape Otway: Coast of secrets. Bruce has also written two short story collections, Night Animals and Nightjar: Stories of the Australian night as well as novels inlcuding Fox, Ruby-Eyed Coucal, Ribcage, Shark, Earth and Ocean.

Fog a Dox
Magabala Books, 2012; ISBN: 9781921248559
Reader age: Young adult
Albert Cutts is a tree feller. Fog is a fox cub raised by a dingo, called a dox because people are suspicious of foxes and Albert Cutts owns the dingo and now the dox. Albert lives a remote life surrounded by animals and birds. All goes well until he has an accident …. This is a story of courage, acceptance and respect, reminiscent of the gentle story-telling style of Alan Marshall (I Can Jump Puddles). The dialogue is finely crafted and Indigenous cultural knowledge and awareness are seamlessly integrated into the story, with an inclusivity brilliantly expressed in the bushman’s encounter with a young girl suffering from leukaemia.

Dark Emu: Black Seeds : Agriculture Or Accident?
Magabala Books, 2014; ISBN 9781922142436
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 comes from the records and diaries of the Australian explorers, impeccable sources.