Bruce Pascoe always knew his book Dark Emu would be controversial.

He says just researching it, speaking to academics and archaeologists about the topics he was exploring, had "been controversial enough".

"I knew that the whole area was volatile," he says, "and that asking people about Aboriginal accomplishment came with a lot of set reactions".

In the book, which was published in 2014, Pascoe claims pre-colonial First Nations people were not only hunter-gatherers but also farmers, practising agriculture, building houses and settling in villages.

Dark Emu went on to become a best-seller and Pascoe became a household name. It also ignited a culture war that became extremely personal, with questions raised over Pascoe's Indigenous heritage.

The pressure contributed to his separation from his wife.

The Dark Emu Story, a new documentary airing on the ABC tonight, examines the controversy around the book and the personal toll it took.

In the film, Pascoe says Australia is going through great change at the moment and he got caught up in the fight. He also says it would be nice if someone else had written Dark Emu.

Does he regret writing it?

"Of course not, because Australia needed to have this conversation and we're having it," he tells the ABC.

"If someone else had written it I would have been quite happy, but it always seemed clear to me that it wasn't going to be written quickly by anyone else."

Given the controversy, the film's director, Allan Clarke, was "hesitant at first" to get involved with the documentary.

"I just remember the intense culture wars happening around Dark Emu a few years back, particularly the very nasty debate around Bruce's Aboriginality," Clarke says.

"I knew if I was going to direct this film there was going to be a lot of heat around it.

"In the end, I decided to say yes, because for me the most important thing was to actually give agency and a platform to Aboriginal people to tell their own stories of how their ancestors have not only survived but thrived in one of the harshest continents in the world."

'It was very stressful'

Pascoe says the media commentary around his heritage was "pretty unpleasant but also pretty unnecessary".

"I had been stating publicly where that identity was and what a small percentage of my blood it was as well," he says.

He'd always been a very private person, he says, "so to suddenly be the centre of media attention, after writing for 50 years, was disconcerting".

The storm over Dark Emu had a big impact on him and his family, and Pascoe and his wife separated for four years. They're now back together.

Asked how he coped, Pascoe says: "It was very stressful, but simply because of where I live [in Mallacoota, Victoria], I always had recourse to country."

"Country has been my solace right through my life. And my mother taught me that, and my grandmother taught her that, and we've always returned to country in times of need."

'It's not about labels'

The documentary also looks at the 2021 book, Farmers or Hunter-Gatherers? by anthropologist Peter Sutton and archaeologist Keryn Walshe, who question Pascoe's claims.

Sutton and Walshe do not believe First Nations people practised agriculture and they argue that being hunter-gatherers should be celebrated.

One of the most memorable scenes in the film features Pascoe and Sutton meeting to discuss their differences.

Pascoe told the ABC he found Sutton and Walshe's book "really disappointing".

"It was like we were agreeing on 90 per cent of the material and disagreeing on the label," he says.

But Walshe told the ABC she "can't even agree on 90 per cent of that comment".

"It's not about labels," she says. "It's about a whole way of living that we are not agreeing on, and the complexities and intricacies of that way of living are massive.

"Hunter-gatherer life was just incredible, I think, particularly in this country, where it wasn't so straightforward or simple. And yet Aboriginal people managed that for so many thousands of years excellently.

"They didn't need to introduce another aspect to their way of living because they really just had it down pat.

"So I get really confused about why is there a need to take Aboriginal people into the realm of being an agriculturalist, a farmer? Why? I just don't understand that at all."

'Edited out of our textbooks'

The documentary features the spectacular Brewarrina fish traps in New South Wales. It's unclear how old the structures are: in Dark Emu, Pascoe says some estimates put them at a couple of thousand years, and others suggest 40,000 years.

Director Allan Clarke says it's a shame more Australians aren't aware of the site.

"Sadly, people just have been denied that knowledge, that history. Aboriginal people have always known. We've been telling everyone since day dot what our ancestors did at the sites like the Brewarrina fish traps," he says.

"Sadly, a lot of that history has been edited out of our textbooks.

"I think now there is a renaissance in people trying to find out more information. I think Dark Emu is a perfect example of that."

The Dark Emu Story airs Tuesday July 18 at 8.30pm on ABC TV and ABC iview.