Things are heating up for Bruce Pascoe, the alleged fauxborigine and author of the most ludicrously fanciful book on Aboriginal Australia since a Kansas New Age guru who claimed to be a wandering desert Aborigine made up her Mutant Message Down Under.
The Australian Federal Police is assessing an allegation that celebrated author and historian Bruce Pascoe has benefited financially from wrongly claiming to be indigenous.
One of Professor Pascoe’s most vocal critics, Aboriginal entrepreneur Josephine Cashman, asked Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton for an investigation of Professor Pascoe for alleged “dishonesty offences” on December 11. Mr Dutton has since referred the matter to the AFP for an assessment, which was underway on Friday.
Perhaps sensing a political firestorm, the AFP carefully declined to take the investigation, claiming that there was no evidence that Pascoe had benefited financially. Which seems to be ignoring quite a lot of financial benefits he has accrued.
Professor Pascoe was joint winner of the $30,000 inaugural Indigenous Writers’ Prize in the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards in 2016 for Dark Emu…The award, which Professor Pascoe shared with Ellen van Neerven for her book Heat and Light, was established to acknowledge the contribution to Australian literary culture by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander writers…
In recent years Professor Pascoe worked as a UTS professor at the Jumbunna Institute for Indigenous Education and Research.
So, that’s quite a lot of money and career advancement, all of it meant to be reserved for Aboriginal Australians.
Ms Cashman’s email to Mr Dutton disputed Professor Pascoe’s past statements that he was of Bunurong and Yuin descent.
Ms Cashman, whose son is Yuin, alleged a genealogy search did not show Professor Pascoe had Aboriginal forebears.
theaustralian.com.au/nation/bruce-pascoe-should-stop-claiming-indigenous-ancestry/
The research Cashman refers to showed that apparently every single one of Pascoe’s forebears for over four generations was an English immigrant or their Anglo-Australian descendants. Now, more people are starting to challenge the extremely white Pascoe’s claim to be Aboriginal.
The Aboriginal Land Council of Tasmania has intervened in the debate over author Bruce Pascoe, saying it does not believe he has indigenous ancestry and should stop claiming he does.
ALCT chairman Michael Mansell told The Australian that Professor Pascoe’s claims to indigenous heritage had been rejected by Aboriginal people in three states and he had failed to demonstrate any First Nation ancestry […] Mr Mansell said there was no evidence to support Professor Pascoe’s claim to Tasmanian Aboriginal heritage, while his claims to Boonwurrung (often written as Bunurong) and Yuin heritage had been rejected by some Yuin and by the Boonwurrung Land and Sea Council.
Mansell also, rightly, rejects the fatuous argument that the campaign to expose Pascoe as an alleged fraud is some kind of right-wing conspiracy.
The veteran Tasmanian Aboriginal activist earlier on Wednesday issued a three-page statement on the issue, accusing “journalists of the left” of failing to see past the role of right-wingers, such as Mr Dutton and journalist Andrew Bolt, in raising questions about Professor Pascoe’s Aboriginality.
“To imply that we are motivated to fall in line with a right-wing political attack is a disgraceful attempt to undermine our integrity as responsible representatives of our people,” Mr Mansell said.
theaustralian.com.au/nation/indigenous/afp-eyes-case-of-author-bruce-pascoes-indigenous-identity/
Bruce Pascoe’s book, Dark Emu, is being increasingly exposed as a load of tendentious, ignorant hooey. But, if nothing else, his weird tissue of confabulation is serving to highlight the asinine leftist obsession with racial quanta.
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