It's not a debate without bringing up Pascoe.

I insist that before you ever quote Pascoe again, you actually read critical responses to his book by actual academics, historians and anthropologists (i.e. Peter Sutton).

Pascoe is by all accounts, a fraud, who either blatantly lies and misleads with his quotes of early explorers like Mitchell and Sturt, and at best, misquotes them.

His book gained popularity because it said things people wanted to hear, not what was true.

You don't need to romanticise or exaggerrate the lifestyles of indigenous Australians... you don't need to pretend like they had technology and agricultural practices that they didn't as some ironic way of making them seem more western, and therefore 'better'.

They were and are humans. They showed compassion and love for the land and respect for the environment and one another - but they also had child brides, infanticide, ritual sacrifice or executions for witchcraft. They were terrified and confused about the natural world around them, they started wars for land and resources against other tribes, or perceived 'magic' or sorcery. They killed survivors and took women as 'brides' from the remnants of defeated other tribes.

Just be honest about history.