Honestly I don't know, I'm at the beginning of my journey too, having been overseas for the last 15 years and learning every body else's history instead. For Dark Emu, I don't say it is wrong just the evidence for its assertions is rather weak. The criticism of it seems to have a ring of truth. Bruce Pascoe asserts that Aborigines were less nomadic hunter gatherers and more settled farmers like Europeans. This seems to apply a 'higher level of civilization'. Critics argue that for the land and time, being a hunter gatherer who wandered with the seasons and sources of food was natural, logical and that we shouldn't judge 'civilization' through a Western lense. They argue it is even racist to project our concepts of what makes a civilization onto Aborigines. That, to me, seems valid criticism.
For me, my focus has been on Aboriginal lore and legends and particularly those of Torres Strait islanders due to my family connection. Presently I am writing a sci-fi series in space that has a half Kuku-Yalanji and half Thursday Island protagonist which discusses religion and spirituality in that context. And it portrays a more tolerant future Australia with treaties in place and indigenous Australians uplifted. You can't imagine the tightrope I have to walk as I write all that.
Books will only get you so far and tend to be dry academic tomes. Most of what I have learnt is from encounters and asking what Mob people are from and they often spring to life to tell their family history. I am fortunate as my cousins are Lui of Torres Strait, as far as they are concerned I am a Lui too. I'm not but there idea of family, tribe and Mob is different to western ideas and, to them, I can't be related to a Lui and not be a Lui. And because Torres Strait islanders mixed with Cairns region Aborigines, the Kuku-Yalanji see me as one of them too. Way down here now in Brisbane if I meet local Aborigines, they also see me as one of them due to this affiliation and I think that's beautiful. The Voice was a low bar, the lowest minimum bar, scraps on the table compared to New Zealand or Canada. Yet we failed to take up the mantle but one day we might just get it right. But it won't be this generation.
