Bruce Pascoe is

not "aboriginal". There are enough very public records to show he is not what he claims to be at all. He still manages to hold the position of Enterprise Professor of Indigenous Agriculture but an internet search shows there are increasing doubts about not just his claim to be "aboriginal" but the claims he makes about "indigenous agriculture".

Still, he has had a lot of people fooled for a lot of the time...except those who perhaps matter the most. My friend M... (who is very, very clearly aboriginal) has gone "up north" to an event. A good many of his more distant relatives are also at the same event. Known as "Garma" it is a four day event which runs over the weekend and ends today. 

There has been the usual, as M...puts it, "politicking" at this event but for him it is a chance to catch up with distant relatives, check on a few of his former clients and listen to what people are saying. M... finds the claims of Bruce Pascoe and some others more than irritating. He sees these claims as doing nothing to advance the interests of his "mob".

"What they need most is education...and they are not going to get it while we insist on going about it in the way they are currently going about it," he has said more than once. M...., who does know something about these things, considers many of Pascoe's claims to be "absolute nonsense for which there is no evidence at all".  I suspect he is right.

I will be interested to hear what M... has to say when he gets back. He was strongly opposed to the proposed Voice to Parliament. He campaigned against that. It surprised many people. Wasn't he in favour which would give "his people" a say in their own affairs? His response was "they have a say. It's called a vote. They need to be educated about that." His ideas about "equality" align more with those of "white" people even while he does take great pride in his heritage. It is why he gets so angry when people like Bruce Pascoe try to take over and say how things were done and how things should be done in the future.

I know M...'s family is exceptional. It has been for many years. From all accounts his grandparents were exceptional people. His mother most definitely was and his father was too. Education was important to everyone in his family.  It is people like M... who need to be heard, not people with an agenda based on ideas of separation and difference.  Garma needs to be seen as a gathering of the clans, not as a place to impose policies of separation on people.