If Real Aboriginal People Can't Recognise a 'Fake', How Can the Rest of Us?
Posted 24 Aug 2025
When the genealogists and researchers at Dark Emu Exposed began investigating ‘fakes’* - those Australians who were mistaken, for a variety of reasons, to believe that they were of Aboriginal descent - they began to see just how good the fakery really was.
For, it is one thing for a non-Aboriginal person to perhaps be unsure about the Aboriginal ancestry claims of a ‘fair-skinned Aboriginal person’ and consequently be reluctant to publicly question those claims. But how on earth were the ‘fakes’ so good that even real Aboriginal people were fooled?
Even real Aborigines from the same tribe, as the ‘fake’ pretended to be from, appear to have been routinely fooled. Stan Grant’s conversation with ‘fake’ Aboriginal Professor Lisa Jackson Pulver illustrates this exactly (See 5 below).
The following are just some of the examples of Aboriginal elites and intellectuals being fooled that we have uncovered.
1. Pat Eatock in 2011
Fake Aboriginal Woman Pat Eatock fooled most of Aboriginal Australia, the ABC and all of the ‘Best Minds’ down at the Federal Court.
The only people not fooled were her own, non-Aboriginal family.
2. Dr Gordon Reid MP - Federal Labor Member for Robertson
Dr Reid was perfectly accepted and endorsed by the Aboriginal Federal Minister, The Hon Linda Burney. She happily posed with Dr Reid and his claimed ‘Wiradjuri nan’ - Auntie Robyn Reid, who it has been shown is mistaken to believe that she is Aboriginal.
Dr Reid was also willingly accepted as an Aboriginal man into the festivities at the 2023 Garma Festival in the NT by the other Aboriginal participants.
Federal Labor MPs, Dr Gordon Reid and Minister Linda Burney with Dr Reid’s ‘Aboriginal’ nan, Robyn Reid.
3. The Hon Kyam Maher being Interviewed by NTIV Presenter Karla Grant.
Kyam Maher, claims to be “South Australia’s first Aboriginal Attorney-general”, however genealogical records indicate that he is mistaken to believe that he is of Aboriginal descent.
Nevertheless, surprisingly for an investigative journalist and presenter, and Aboriginal woman, Karla Grant recognised Maher as being Aboriginal.
4. Adjunct Professor and Photographer Wayne Quilliam.
It was a surprise that the perceptive and astute businessman and presenter, the Aboriginal man, Warren Mundine, recognised Quilliam’s claims that he was Aboriginal on:
“…my mother's side, we’re Aboriginal, and they showed us this old photo of our great, great, great grandmother [3Xgreat-] and they showed us a birth certificate and basically it was just married to an Aboriginal woman so that's our, that's all the information we've got.”
Wasn’t Warren at least a little suspicious of Quilliam’s claims given that they were solely based on an old photo and a vague birth certificate claim?
Yet, even the multi-million dollar investigative journalistic team of NTIV presenter, and Aboriginal woman, Karla Grant, were fooled into acknowledging Quilliam’s Aboriginal claims.
This was despite the fact that the genealogical records indicate that Quilliam is mistaken in his belief that his “great, great, great grandmother” was Aboriginal.
5. Award Winning Aboriginal Man Stan Grant of the ABC Was Fooled Too.
Stan Grant, a Wiradjuri Aboriginal man himself, opened up one episode of the ABC’s Q&A program by turning to Professor Lisa Jackson Pulver and referring to her as ‘‘an Indigenous person as well’.
Unfortunately for Stan, the genealogical records indicate that the professor is mistaken to believe that she is of Aboriginal descent.
So if even Stan Grant was fooled, what hope do the rest of have in spotting a fake?
6. Was Acclaimed Aboriginal Academic, Professor Marcia Langton AO Also Bewitched by Lisa Jackson Pulver?
During the run-up to the October 2023 Voice Referendum, Professor Langton openly endorsed Lisa Jackson Pulver as a ‘victimised’ Indigenous person whose Aboriginality had been questioned by the ‘Trump-like’ critics at Dark Emu Exposed.
Obviously Langton believes that Jackson Pulver is of Aboriginal descent, despite the genealogical records indicating that she has no Aboriginal ancestors at all. [In the following film clip, Langton claims that she has “never been a member of the communist party” - really, is that true? ]
7. The Mentoring of Claimed ‘Aboriginal’ man Bruce Pascoe at the University of Melbourne.
Professor Marcia Langton AO has been at the forefront of defending the Aboriginality claims of Dark Emu author, Bruce Pascoe.
In 2018 the University of Melbourne widely touted Pascoe’s qualifications as “a Bunurong, Yuin and Tasmanian man born in the Melbourne suburb of Richmond”. Yet by 2024 the university just had Pascoe listed on their Find an Expert webpage as “a writer and a farmer” with no mention of his Aboriginality. And by 2025, his profile had been removed all together. Had the Pascoe ‘hoax’ finally been exposed?
8. Even Aboriginal Politician and Minister for Indigenous Australians, the Hon Ken Wyatt vouched publicly for Bruce Pascoe’s claimed Aboriginality:
9. Professor Bronwyn Carlson of Macquarie University Fooled Them All
On winning the Stanner Award in 2013, open only to Indigenous scholars, Carlson received accolades from many Aboriginal intellectuals - they all believed that she was Aboriginal - but how wrong they all were.
10. Professor Jaky Troy of the University of Sydney
Jaky Troy is a regular commentator on the ABC/SBS/NITV network as an Aboriginal woman, for example when she appeared alongside other Aboriginal presenters and guests on NITV’s The Point.
Yet Jaky Troy too is mistaken to believe that she is Aboriginal, according to the genealogical records.
Definition of ‘Fakes’: I use the word ‘fake’ to describe Australians who claim to be of Aboriginal descent when in fact the genealogical records indicate that none of their ancestors were Aboriginal. Some are genuinely mistaken – they believed their family’s oral history without doing any further inquiry themselves. Others deluded themselves with a self-serving, and un-researched belief that they might be, and so most likely they are Aboriginal. And still others are out-and-out frauds; they know they are not Aboriginal but put on a well-crafted performance that includes Aboriginal-themed clothing, identity badges (such as face-paint, red headbands, possum cloaks, etc), coupled with a few words of a claimed Aboriginal language interspersed with modern iterations like “mob”, capital C “Country”, “Siss”, “Bro”, “Uncle” and “Auntie” which all serve to add cover to their hoax. Some of the men have even undergone painful, bloodletting ‘initiations’ as a way of mentally convincing themselves that they are ‘accepted’ as Aboriginal by the relevant tribe. From this foregoing group are explicitly excluded those people of non-Aboriginal ancestry who have been accepted into a traditionally-minded, non-city based Aboriginal community and who make no race-based claims on the tax-payer. This description should also be read in conjunction with the Disclaimer as below.
Explanation of Genealogical Research and a Disclaimer: Genealogical research is not an exact science. Existing records can contain errors and new records may come to light in the future that completely change the previous understandings. For these reasons, all the genealogical research and alleged Family Tree findings referred to in this chapter are subject to the following Disclaimer:
All genealogical work has been undertaken in good faith by professional genealogists and archival researchers and is based on publicly available records at the time of the research. It should be noted that with all genealogical research, family trees can change if new evidence comes to light. Similarly, this research cannot account for events which may result in Aboriginal ancestry entering into the family line such as via a private or unrecorded adoption of an Aboriginal child into the family, or a relationship out of wedlock between a family member and an Aboriginal person that produced a child of Aboriginal descent who was then incorporated into the family without record, or with a record that did not disclose the Aboriginality of that child.
