Like I said – it wouldn’t surprise me if the book is riddled with factual errors and Pascoe has no Aboriginal ancestry.

You have completely missed the point. I’m not defending Pascoe. I’m defending our right to determine who belongs to our communities and the right to tell our own stories in our own way. That includes suburban communities.

Fact is – it’s almost impossible to prove someone is NOT Aboriginal. This is the direct result of the lack of political settlements. This identity gap was never seen as a major issue until the government started going down a treaty path rather than symbolic assimilation/recognition. For a political settlement to fix Australia’s legitimacy – the Aboriginal polity needs to be clearly demarcated. There’s a wider strategy here, I see the big picture. You see an identity fraud trying to scam book grants.

If Pascoe is not Aboriginal, why did Marcia Langton and other left-leaning chosen-ones not contest the awards and grants he was getting? If the book is not factual – why do they talk it up? Langton is an anthropologist herself. They risk their own professional reputations. You think they didn’t know about the questions swirling around him?

OK – maybe you are not in cohorts, but simply taken the Sky News bait.

You have taken the lazy way out. You should have at least read Dark Emu before you went on the attack. You should also have taken the time to do some research, in order to make yourself look a bit less ignorant and stupid.

Your theories are wrong. Dark Emu is the core reason why people have a problem with Pascoe. He is a good story teller, but he is not an historian. He is also a self confessed, compulsive liar. Ironically, anybody who willingly admits to being a shameless liar, has to be believed as being a shameless liar. And he is. (https://walleahpress.com.au/FR42Pascoe.html).

Unlike you, our researchers have all taken the time to read Dark Emu. Every edition of it, including Young Dark Emu, the “Truer History” version. The first time I read Dark Emu, I noticed facts that were attributed to Ernest Giles, which I knew were not true. This made me curious. Others had also noticed similar “mistakes”, so a group of enthusiastic armchair historians had a closer look at it. We studied all editions comprehensively, and compared them with his quoted sources. We found that his quotes from the explorers’ journals, were not what the journals stated at all. It wasn’t just Giles that was misreported, it was everybody. His so called evidence had been blatantly and deliberately manipulated to support his theories. He was lying, again.

Liars usually get caught out by their own lies, which is what happened with Pascoe. He could never remember who his Aboriginal ancestor was, or which side of the family that ancestor came from. He changed his story constantly. Anybody who is proud of their ancestor, as Pascoe claimed to be, and should have been, does not forget who that ancestor is. Which is why I (the creepy Jan Holland) took an interest in his family tree. It’s not creepy for Genealogists. It’s what we do. My work was peer reviewed, and I was also assisted by a close Pascoe relative, who shared the same ancestors as Bruce, and who happened to have had a DNA test. Those results were happily shared with me. Bruce Pascoe is not a light skinned Aboriginal. He is a white skinned, red haired, white man with only English ancestry. As for random weirdos going through family trees, this can’t be done to just anybody. Privacy Acts make it way too difficult. It can only be done if the person involved gives out private family details, as Bruce did. He constantly named family members. He wrote a book about his mother. He threw in lots of red herrings, about family members who didn’t exist (usually claiming they had told him about his Aboriginal family), but even his red herrings were amateurish and easily dismissed. He was the person who made it very easy to trace his ancestry. As for your invented claim that Pascoe didn’t know that his genealogy was being done, you are wrong again. He did know. One of our research group (Rob) contacted Pascoe, as a courtesy, and told him we were doing his family tree. Pascoe’s response was that he wasn’t worried by a few amateurs on social media, which was a really strange response from a man if he really did have Aboriginal ancestry. Pascoe and Rob exchanged a few emails about the possibility of meeting up, and Rob later offered to fund a DNA test for Pascoe, who declined the offer. Not surprisingly.

What you say is quite contradictory. You claim that even though you are Aboriginal, you are not in a position to know what every “nation” practiced. Exactly. So how does a white man, who claims to be Aboriginal, know more about your culture than you do? How can somebody who was raised as an educated white man, in suburbia, and who didn’t decide to be Aboriginal until he was middle aged, possibly know more about culture than those who were born and raised on country, in a traditional lifestyle? You also say you will leave it up to the various “nations” that he writes about to make the necessary corrections. He doesn’t differentiate between the different “nations”. All are lumped in together. If you had read the book, you would have known that. Those people who live on country know he is a liar, but it is virtually impossible for the people to “make the necessary corrections” due to pressures within the community. If you knew anything about how Aboriginal communities work, you would know that too.

You say If all members of a “nation” decide to adopt a person into their “nation”, that is their prerogative. However, the problem arises when only a couple of people within that “nation” want to adopt the person, and the rest do not want him there. Pascoe’s couple of mates at the top say yes, the rest say no, and they are then bullied in an attempt to silence them and force them to accept the newcomer. This has caused enormous problems within communities. You apparently haven’t thought of that though. Interestingly, the Bunurong and the Tasmanian Aboriginal Corporation refused outright to accept Pascoe as one of them. They knew he was not one of them, and they said so.

Our research group being in cohorts with anybody is a wild and unfounded claim Jessica. That is your conspiracy theory, but it has nothing to do with fact. We are a group of mostly older people with a passion for history, truth, and a love of Australia. We didn’t like Dark Emu masquerading as truth, but we got really concerned when Young Dark Emu was introduced into primary schools to indoctrinate young impressionable minds in primary schools. Why were our children being taught fake history? Why were our hunter gatherer Aborigines having their culture taken away from them by a white man pretending to be an Aboriginal man?

Pascoe used his claims to Aboriginality to promote the book; to give him credibility; to get cheap printing at a subsidised non-profit Aboriginal only printing company; to take prizes, funding and grants intended for real disadvantaged Aboriginal people; and to get his books into schools. He is a liar, a cheat, a fraud, and a hoaxer. We simply used his lies to expose him, and many Aboriginal people are extremely grateful to us for doing so. They now want us to expose other faux Aborigines. The fact is though, it should never have been left to a small group of dedicated volunteer researchers to have had to expose him in the first place. People in authority who knew the truth about him should have spoken out, but they were too concerned with protecting their incomes and positions.

Do yourself a favour Jessica. Get a copy of Dark Emu, and check his sources. See for yourself if his claims match what the journals actually say. Find out where Giles found and stole the silo full of flour and grain. Find the part where Sturt described villages of a thousand people. Find where the thousand people saved Sturt’s life. Once you have done that, and are less ignorant and more informed, then come back and comment some more.