‘A must-read book for those concerned with evidence-based truth-telling, which in this book has been shown to discredit the Pascoe thesis of social evolutionism as the “true” basis of Aboriginal economy before and after European colonisation.

Sutton and Walshe show that Pascoe tried, and failed, to overturn over a century of anthropological and archaeological study, analysis and documentation, in addition to Aboriginal oral testimony, of the ways of life, governance, socioeconomic behaviour, material, technological and spiritual accomplishments and preferences of Aboriginal people in classical society and on the cusp of colonisation.

This corpus of research overwhelmingly suggests that ancestors of Aboriginal people before and after European colonisation were predominantly hunters-gatherers-fishers, not agriculturalists. As Sutton points out, the Old People were proud but humble about economic practices of the ancestors, and the Old People still are.

That should give every young Aboriginal person in Australia a reason to also be proud of ancestors as hunters-gatherers-fishers.’

Dr Kellie Pollard, Wiradjuri archaeologist, lecturer and researcher, Charles Darwin University

‘I welcome this deeply thoughtful and scholarly response to Dark Emu. Peter Sutton and Keryn Walshe pay Bruce Pascoe’s work the respect of a forensic analysis. This richly satisfying study draws on generations of research and cross-cultural dialogues on Country to offer a complex portrait of First Nations cultures, economies and spirituality. Farmers or Hunter-gatherers? is infused with a profound esteem for the unique achievements of humanity on this continent over millennia.’

Emeritus Professor Tom Griffiths, Australian National University

‘This book is a much needed and important corrective to Pascoe’s Dark Emu. It is an important work because its target has been well received by governments and the public. Dark Emu has been widely read but is misleading as to the character of precolonial (and in remote areas, more recent) Aboriginal economies. This formidably well researched volume provides an extended, scholarly and readable critique.’

Dr Ian Keen, Australian National University

‘This book takes Pascoe’s Dark Emu to a higher level of constructive debate, providing a win-win for traditional Aboriginal knowledges and for those who seek to explore them. Peter Sutton draws from his Aboriginal mentors of 50 years, many of whom were amongst the last of the Old Peoples to have lived off the land. In putting forward the combination of their vast ecological knowledge and their spiritual propagation knowledge, a most impressive harvest of the ethnographic sources occurs, resulting in a more complex and balanced understanding of the hunter-gatherer-fisher economies that brilliantly sustained one of the oldest living cultures on the planet.’

Professor Paul Memmott, University of Queensland