Return of the Black Cockatoo - a reprise of my Peter Latz documentary

Writing in The Conversation, the ANU’s Christine Judith Nicholls says:

Eminent Australian anthropologist Peter Sutton and respected field archaeologist Keryn Walshe have co-authored a meticulously researched new book, Farmers or Hunter-gatherers? The Dark Emu Debate. It’s set to become the definitive critique of Bruce Pascoe’s Dark Emu: Black Seeds — Agriculture or Accident?

First published in 2014, Pascoe’s Dark Emu has spawned numerous derivatives. Pascoe contends that in pre-contact times, Australian Aboriginal people weren’t “mere” hunter-gatherers, but agriculturalists. Descriptors like “simple” or “mere” are anathema to people like me who’ve lived long-term with hunter-gatherers.

This radio work which I made for ABC Radio National is all about fire and the bush. The Return of the Black Cockatoo features the botanist, Peter Latz, who grew up in the Hermannsburg Mission in Central Australia, the son of Lutheran Missionaries. He is the author of many scientific papers on the botany of arid zone Australia, especially the way “bush tucker” and “bush medicine” have been used by Indigenous people and on the use of fire. He is the author of “Bushfires and bushtucker: Aboriginal plant use in Central Australia”.