Mr Pascoe's Cultural Appropriation — Dark Emu Exposed - And the Assault on Australian History

Jun 10

Jun 10 Mr Pascoe's Cultural Appropriation

Giving a lecture at the event ‘Spot Fire 1’ on 'Aboriginal Agriculture', Mr Pascoe commits we believe ‘Cultural Appropriation’ by claiming this picture of a “Dome house “ and a “Dome frame”, is Aboriginal and even hints that his own great, great grandfather, may have used one while he was in the Lockhart River region of Queensland.

Mr Pascoe's Lecture

During his talk, Mr Pascoe states, at about 30.25:

“This [pointing to the dome houses] is from Lockhart River” [Nth Queensland].

No it’s not. Even the caption on Mr Pascoe’s own slide does not mention Lockhart River, but instead states that these huts are made by the Meriam people of eastern Torres Strait Islands (See original pages below). They are not Aboriginal at all, but are Torres Strait Islander with Melanesian and Polynesian influences. Mr Pascoe is just making it up as he goes along.

Is he reluctant to admit the fact that the Australian Aborigines mainly just built a house with, in his own words, “a stick with a piece of bark” ? Note, these are his words not ours, but looking at the pictures from Mr Pascoe’s own reference source, Paul Memmott’s excellent Gunyah Goondie + Wurley, from the section entitled “Bark Architecture” on pages 152-3, we tend to agree that they just look like a few sticks propping up some bark.

So, it looks like ‘Cultural Appropriation’ to us.

We tend to agree with Mr Pascoe when he says it is commonly believed that his people lived out in the open, or under “a stick with a piece of bark.” We tend to agree when looking at these pictures from Mr Pascoe’s own reference source, Paul Memmott’… — We tend to agree with Mr Pascoe when he says it is commonly believed that his people lived out in the open, or under “a stick with a piece of bark.” We tend to agree when looking at these pictures from Mr Pascoe’s own reference source, Paul Memmott’s excellent *Gunyah Goondie + Wurley*, QUP, 2009, from the section entitled “Bark Architecture” on pages 152-3.

Excerpts and photographs reproduced here for review and critique purposes only - Fair use claims are made for text and images sourced from Queensland Museum, Memmott P., Gunyah Goondie + Wurley, QUP, 2009.