Bruce Pascoe’s Dark Family Secret

Why do some Australians feel so affronted by pale-skinned Aboriginal people?  
                                                 — Bruce Pascoe in Black Duck

I’ve been reading Black Duck, A Year at Yumburra ($24), Bruce Pascoe’s latest. Pink-cheeked Bruce, in his persona as a First Nations Elder, gives me two main takeaways.

The first is what to do if your SUV skittles an echidna. He advises how to pluck the quills, prepare and cook the carcase, and enjoy flame-grilled butterflied marsupial roadkill. He doesn’t suggest the best wine to complement the dish — perhaps a Jacobs Creek cab-sav (4 litre Stanleys cask, $18).

Bruce assures us that echidna is scrumptious, akin to his delicious Aboriginal loaves made from kangaroo-grass flour, after thrifty 50 per cent dilution with baking flour ($1.55 per kg) from your IGA supermarket.[1]

The second Black Duck revelation involves Bruce’s seduction and betrayal by SBS and NITV (National Indigenous TV) on their joint and scurrilous “Insight” panel show, 20 October 2022. The producer included Professor Bruce – I hope not ironically – in the Q&A compered by Karla Grant [2] about today’s plethora of fake Aborigines. He’s still spitting chips over his authenticity being disrespected. He vows never again to cross the treacherous portals of SBS/NITV.

So, Take-away One — echidna roadkill:

A few weeks back the fellas found a freshly run over echidna on their way to work and as we had a burn pile going we threw the animal on to the flames after removing forty or so quills to use in our artwork. They are a really fatty animal which helps them cook moistly and the flesh really is delicious. It has the texture and taste of pork but I think it is sweeter. Waste not, want not. (p268).

Another time, Bruce and partner Lyn picked up a dead bandicoot from the road, “and Lyn was entranced by its sharp little teeth and soft ears.” (p192). He doesn’t say whether they made a meal of it.

So, Take-Away 2 — treachery at SBS/NTIV:

I was asked to do a program for SBS on identity but Blackfellas warned me against it. They suspected a contest between dark and pale Blackfellas. But I thought that it was a chance to set the record straight. I spent about four hours talking through my family history with SBS researchers. They seemed genuinely interested so I sent photos and documents and felt that nothing could go wrong. Off I went to Sydney, but SBS used none of what I gave them, instead preferring the rumour and assumption of the right-wing press. I was really devastated and disappointed that with all the work that needs to be done in our communities we would waste our time on this trivia. I felt sorry for some of the other participants who also thought it was a chance to have their say.

How wrong we were. The ‘real’ blacks were on one side of the room and we were on the other. I wonder if I have ever been more disillusioned. I gave really precise information about my family, so proud am I of their survival, but sadly they used none of that. I also calculated the percentage of blood in my family [isn’t that a ‘no-no’?] and the difficulty this raises in community.

These are important points to consider because as more and more Australians find black relatives these issues have to be considered before we become a bunch of wannabes, but no, SBS chose a sensationalist and divisive path. Trumpist.

Definitions of Aboriginality need to be understood by everyone. I don’t believe in self-identification, I think people ought to be able to provide some documentary evidence of their identity…

All of these issues could have built a really constructive documentary, could have drawn people toward an understanding of identity, not urged them toward scorn and contempt.

And what will happen to Aboriginal people who are made afraid to identify, will we lose their contribution to the Aboriginal family? I feel the same way about non-Aboriginal people; they are not going away so they have to be encouraged to identify with the land or otherwise how can they care for her? They will be restless spirits forever feeling at a distance from their home. I knew the show’s director, so was doubly broken by the way an important opportunity was lost. Never again.

There are people who reckon we should sue when this sort of thing happens. What, and spend the rest of our lives in court to change nothing? The tethered bear being drained of bile to please a conspiracy myth! No thanks. (p251-3).

As the academics say, there is a lot to unpack here. First, if Bruce views the issue of his Aboriginality as “trivia”, why do he, the ABC, SBS, the Australian Academy of Science, our prestigious universities, Melbourne’s Labor-endowed Wheeler Centre, and Bruce’s every sponsor for speaking gigs, books, directorships and exclusive awards for high achieving First Nationals, trumpet him as a bona fide Yuin, Bunurong and Tasmanian Aborigine?

Second, what about those claimed documents of his proving Aboriginal ancestry? I remember how Professor Marcia Langton sponsored him qua Aboriginal into Melbourne University’s top ranks four years ago to become Enterprise Professor in Indigenous Agriculture. She vouched for his Aboriginality because he’d told her he had “documents”: (video at 40secs). She hadn’t seen them but who at Australia’s top university would run due diligence on Bruce’s identity?

We finally learn from Bruce’s new book that his Enterprise Professor gig (circa $200,000 full-time, plus perks) is just one day per week (p254). Bruce says ag-science students hang on his every word about (supposed) pre-colonial Aboriginal farmers.[3]

Bruce’s genealogical documents seem a bit like Lasseter’s Lost Reef — existence rumoured but never confirmed. On the other hand, sleuth Roger Karge demonstrates on his Dark Emu Exposed website that the line of all of Bruce’s forebears originated from England. Karge has asked Bruce to correct the website genealogy if necessary: Bruce hasn’t responded. Melbourne University itself has stopped calling Bruce “indigenous”: it now bills him officially just as “writer and farmer”.

Bruce has been earnestly trawling to locate his apical (oldest) black ancestor for nigh on 40 years — for no visible public success – and he must have enough documents to fill the woodshed at his hobby farm[4] near Mallacoota, Vic. His donor and grant-funded charity called Black Duck Foods has ploughed $2.2m into the little paddocks, and incidentally paid him $140,000 rent for 2021-22.[5]

Time now to see what got Bruce hopping mad about Karla Grant’s line of inquiry at that Insight special on fake Aborigines. Bruce got only a total three minutes airtime in three segments during the 52-minute show. It must have been a let-down as he’s so used to stardom as the Left’s premier Aboriginal. Instead Karla threw the switch to a line-up of genuine Aboriginal heavies including Dr Stephen Hagan, Suzanne Ingram and her cousin Yvonne Weldon. After the show Ingram commented brutally,

If the census trajectory continues unabated, it is reasonable to expect that box-tickers [race shifters] will statistically outnumber Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in 15 years or three censuses…If you live somewhere along the Australian eastern seaboard, there’s a greater than one-in-10 chance that the next “proud elder” you encounter, perhaps doing a Welcome to Country or insisting that you please call them “Aunty”, is someone you recently knew to be white. The recording of the Insight program was a unique opportunity for me to observe box-tickers in collective formation. As individuals, they crave a sense of belonging. But they do not let go of their sense of entitlement. 

Stephen Hagan told the show of growing up in a community that had no taps but the nearby cemetery for whites had three. He witnessed his mother and aunty furtively rolling a 44 gallon drum to the cemetery taps.

I know what it was like to be an Aboriginal. I became a diplomat, a PhD, I’ve published six books but I know what marginalisation is like… (16.00) It’s not just the adults claiming to be First Nations, it’s their children. We have to be careful that the 27,081 registered Aboriginal organisations are not overrun by a sudden influx of First Nations claimants who don’t have connections to Country… Some of these organisations have only 40-50 people. These people can tick a box and get rubber-stamped, they can take them over. It’s a $40b industry and people are being remunerated very handsomely to hold positions… (34.20) Until the government reviews [toughens] those three categories for Aboriginality[6], things won’t be recognisable in another generation.

Karla: What about people who can’t identify their apical ancestor but are self-identifying?

Hagan: They can just sign a stat dec and they are “in”, they can take on a $200,000 job anywhere they want.

Karla: Why would people lie? – Oh, financial gain of course. People are growing rich on our misery.

Yvonne Weldon (31.50): Aboriginal” companies are created, when you look at who they employ, it’s people who have ticked that box. They [race shifters] are not going back to mob, but to suburbia to continue to benefit from the [bad] experiences of some of our people. Do not please abuse that experience of my people for the benefit of yourselves at the expense of my people.

Karla, to Suzanne Ingram: Are you concerned about people self-identifying?

Susan: It’s been taken out of [our] hands. Universities are not qualified to recognise Aboriginals as opposed to box tickers. It gets in the way, it’s all this performance [art]. The performance is very seductive, interesting and persuasive, you have costuming[7], language learning, it’s all persuasive to someone who is not Aboriginal. We are seeing the result of these distortions now. If we look at the census numbers they’re projecting 800,000 [Aboriginals]. If there was an actual audit, I would suggest, based on data, it’s probably 300,000 less. Those 300,000 people count themselves amongst us. [Without correction] this is going to erase   Aboriginal persons.

None of these leaders showed Bruce the slightest deference. If anything, their body language implied polite boredom (at best). Karla Grant’s treatment of Bruce’s claims seemed like passive-aggression. Just when I expected her to lunge for the kill and request Bruce’s ancestor’s name, the camera cut away letting him off the hook. Even so, Bruce is used to the ABC and allied sycophants throwing him under-arm softballs, hence his rage at Karla’s highlighting of the fake-Aborigine circus.

Here’s the Bruce bits:

Karla [deadpan, laying the trap at 11.40]: Bruce, you wrote best-seller Dark Emu, how do you identify?

Bruce: I identify as Yuin, Bunurong and Tasmanian. We can trace my family back to those regions [it’s not to ‘regions’, Bruce, it’s to people[8]. I didn’t grow up as Aboriginal, my family didn’t talk about it. An uncle and aunt took me under their wing and began talking about these things, which I found incredible. [Eh? Did they claim Aboriginality themselves?] That uncle was very important as he was able to gradually introduce me to other people I needed to know in our family [So what? Have these ‘other people’ named your Aboriginal ancestor?]

Karla [being naughty]: When you say you are Tasmanian, which nation?

Bruce [airily]: We come from the north coast of Tasmania, following that family line [who?] we are connected to both Melbourne and Adelaide. We have got people who identify as our cousins in both places. It is, um, very controversial in Tasmania, but that is just how it is [I’ll say! Tasmanian Land Council chair Michael Mansell says you’re not a Tasmanian Aboriginal].

Karla [throwing a hand grenade]: Do other members of your family agree you have Aboriginal heritage?

Bruce: Some do, many don’t. [What? Even most of your own family say you’re making stuff up? First time I’ve heard you admit that]

Karla: What sparked your curiosity to look closely?

Bruce: My uncle, the photographs and constant talk. He was a bit of a ratbag but a good person. He got me working on it, I thought I’d better have a look at those photos again. I realised you could pull them out. On the back my father had written the names.

That’s where Karla’s show inexplicably does a jump-cut and she starts talking to someone else. One hypothesis doing the rounds is that Karla’s bosses wanted Bruce protected and Karla had to toe the official line. Bruce, if you’re reading this as a Quadrant subscriber, put us all out of our misery and add in Comments below who in your father’s photo album is that elusive black ancestor?

Karla at 30.20 [lobbing another grenade]: Now Bruce, some Aboriginal people have rejected your claim to be indigenous. What do you make of that?

A simple rejoinder would be, “I’ve told my critics who my ancestor was and that ought to shut the bastards up!” Instead, Bruce waffles away:

Bruce: The thing these people have in common is they have never talked to me about it. I am really always keen to talk about my family, although it is no more interesting than anyone else’s. This is a really important conversation Australia has to have.

Karla by-passes Pascoe for a while, then circles back (43.00) with a Dorothy Dixer, “Bruce what is the impact on you of people questioning your family?” This is the progressive media’s standard pivot to preserve Bruce’s cred and invite him to tell his sob-story of injured innocence. Compare that with how they go for the jugular when interviewing conservatives like Minister Christian Porter or gadfly Pauline Hanson.

Bruce [happily off the hook]: It has been very upsetting for my family [but not for the apparent majority who disbelieve his Aboriginality?] We have always been a close family [apart from that split?]. My children were hurt by that [like Pascoe pere, some now claim Aboriginality themselves]. I said, ‘You are part of the community now so nothing changes if the government rejects you. You have lost nothing because you are not getting anything anyway [Bruce himself qua Aboriginal author and farmer has got fame, royalties, prizes, honours and $2m-plus donations and grants for his Black Duck Foods charity which rents his farm and has bought his used farm gear]. But hold your culture! That is what we have always been told by the people who helped me. Hold your lore, hold your culture! And just be part of the community, don’t try to be a boss, just because you have got a degree or whatever it is.’

For decades Pascoe pinned his hopes for Aboriginality on his maternal great-grandmother Sarah Matthews – even if true, this would be a ridiculously remote claim. In 1993 he wrongly put her birthplace around 1848 as Dudley, South Gippsland, when her actual birthplace was Dudley, Worcester in England. He also wrote that he believed she’d been on a sealing vessel — implying that sealers took her from her Aboriginal community. Three years later his story changed to her living on Aboriginal missions and losing a daughter as a Stolen Generation victim. She had striven to appear white and “merge with the master class,” he told the Age in 2007. In 2008 Pascoe shifted goalposts again and claimed his great-grandmother was Aboriginal from a tribe bordering the Wathaurong of Geelong and Colac (presumably the Bunurong).

Roger Karge’s genealogist Jan Holland actually tracked her arrival in Australia at Fremantle in 1863 from England on the ship Burlington, which was certainly not a sealing vessel. Pascoe finally admitted that the woman (presumably Sarah) he thought was his Aboriginal ancestor was in fact English-born.[9] But by 2014 he was claiming to have found Aboriginal relatives “all over the country”. He’s claimed to have birth certificates proving his claims – including links to at least six tribes in five States – but declined to let Karge see them.

In 2016 he described his relatives from the Lockhart River, Qld as white and then in the same year, black. In the Black Duck book, they’re white again (p91). He has even described his own pink face as “black”. Re one Invasion Day, writing of course for the ABC, “On January 26 this year (2017) I stood in Victoria Park in Sydney as people protesting about the naming of the day marched past all us surprised black faces for an hour.” He added, “Everywhere you look in our family there is the black trace”. Odd given his family tree reaches only to England.

He also felt akin to the “stolen generation”, despite having grown up happily with his white family in Tasmania and inner Melbourne, and not having canvassed his supposed Aboriginality until he was nearing 40. But for the ABC he explained

I am one of the lost. We weren’t stolen. We hid. You can’t blame anyone. It was a survival impulse. I am surrounded by families who did the same…It fills me with sadness that they choose to ignore the heroes in their families. They are not cowards, not malicious, someone in the past decided they were white enough to get away with it, so they hid…

In the same piece, the ABC described him only as “a Bunurong man”, he must have become a Yuin and Tasmanian man later.

Keeping track of Bruce’s claims to Aboriginality is like riding a bull in a rodeo (not that I’ve ever tried that). For example, he quotes his mother saying the family’s Ur-Aborigine was on his father’s side,[10] but in the new book he writes,

That old man gave me crucial information about my mother’s family. Details and contacts; it was such a wonderful gift. And he did that at risk of exposing himself to the baying hounds of the right-wing journalists who purport to know everything about the family of a man they have never met. (p81).

There is much, much more to unpack from Pascoe’s latest book, which I might get around to one day.

Tony Thomas’s new book from Connor Court is Anthem of the Unwoke – Yep! The other lot’s gone bonkers. $34.95 from Connor Court here

[1] Pascoe re native bread: “Anyway, the recipe is not complicated. We combine about 50 per cent baking flour with 50 per cent of our own flour, either Kangaroo and Spear, or Mitchell and Button. Chris adds yeast and salt while Lyn uses her sourdough starter. We have a breadmaker but often cook it in a camp oven or straight on the coals. The aroma is a revelation. We sell our flour on our Black Duck website or at the farm gate.” (p276).

[2] Incidentally, Karla is ex-spouse of quick-fire job-swapper Stan Grant, ex-ABC and ex-Monash Uni celebrity (for six months) leading its “Constructive Institute Asia Pacific” devoted to media integrity.

[3] Bruce: ” Once I got back to the farm I spent days doing interviews with earnest university students wanting to talk permaculture, Aboriginal sovereignty, agricultural sustainability and climate change.” (p254)

[4] “I can’t see that we will ever make much money from our growing but we will be introducing new foods to the market.” (p268).

[5] Incidentally, the 2021-22 financial accounts for Black Duck Foods has disappeared from the ACNC register. The $140,000 rent can still be seen in the 2022-23 accounts at p5.

[6] Descent, self-identification and peer community acceptance

[7] Referring to possum skin cloaks, Pascoe says some wearers are worthy “but sometimes I see people posture in them and it turns my stomach. The garment has huge spiritual significance and needs to be respected. It is not to be used as a political tool like a prime minister donning a hard hat and high vis vest to demonstrate his allegiance to the working class.” (p252). His own family gave him a possum skin rug and he doesn’t use it as a cloak.

[8] I can trace my mother’s family back to Kendenup, WA, which is Noongar territory, but that doesn’t make me an Aborigine.

[9] “My cousin had discovered the woman we thought was our Aboriginal ancestor was, in fact, born in England.”

[10] “Mum was convinced of a Tasmanian connection on Dad’s side to and we are searching that line at the moment.”