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Ngarrindjeri Wurruwarrin: A World That Is, Was and Will Be

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Ngarrindjeri Wurruwarrin takes us to a remote land, appropriately named Hindmarsh Island, below the southern edge of Australia. It informs us about the religious beliefs, customs and practices of the Ngarrindjerri tribe that is preserving its identity, in spite of the onslaught of civilization that threatens it with extinction of its culture. What is most refreshing about Diane Bell's book is the combination of oral reports, first person narratives and her own observations throughout the chapters that gives it an authenticity, an immediacy of appeal. We learn about ancient customs, practices and cultural values that are becoming evanescent in this modern world. These beliefs are recorded in detail by tribal folks and preserved intact in her book. Especially fascinating is the story told by Neville Golan of an aboriginal woman named Rosie, who died soon after her ngatji, or guardian spirit, a blue crane was shot. We are surprised to learn that even the weaving of rush baskets is as complicated as the Japanese tea drinking ceremony. There are photographs that give us an idea of the brilliant coloring, intricate designs and whole narrative patterns that go into the making of these baskets, bags and mats. While the women weave, they hand down stories to the next generation and thus preserve their ancient legacy. What one also likes about the book is the entire section devoted to women's beliefs, bodies and practices; it describes for us the rites of passage from childhood to girlhood, the attending ceremonies and rituals. The accounts of tattooing, seclusion of women during menstruation and various rites observed during childbirth, give women prominence in Australian Aboriginal Studies, that is still a small field, according to the author. The description of women's rites of passage in the closing section of the book make it very interesting reading for feminists; it opens up for them other worlds, revealing the multiplicity of feminism as a discipline. The book would be informative and readable for anyone who is not familiar with the land down under. The style, clear and free of jargon, would appeal to the general reader as well specialists on the subject.

This work of scholarship by Diane Bell is a world away from technicist anthropology meant to be read only by specialists: it engages in a highly controversial contemporary landrights issue in a way which demonstrates the profound importance of the act of documenting culture in as polyvalent and multivocal a way as possible. She is also candid about the voices she would like to have represented and could not, those of the dissident women. For me the most valuable section of the book was its re-reading of early anthropology with an eye to the muted women's voice in it. This section demonstrates the systematic bias against recording the rich women's culture, which in the late twentieth century is the powerhouse of cultural reclamation and renovation in many Aboriginal communities. Without engaging in postmodern jargon, this book demonstrates a fine postcolonial and poststructuralist understanding of the complexities of symbolic analysis and the conditions of transmission of epistemologies, both by the Ngarrindjeri and white anthropologists. What the book demonstrates very powerfully is the gender-blind ethnocentrism of the discipline of anthropology, and its tendency to read Aboriginality through patriarchalised eyes.In particular, its assumption that men are the 'natural' makers and controllers of culture. It's a very westernised notion of power relations between the sexes, and one born of at least five millennia of patriarchy. It's a tragedy that 'women's business' as a lens for understanding the role of women in Aboriginal communities was employed in Australia as late as 1941, as by then much dominant-culture contamination and destruction of Aboriginal culture had occurred. It's surely time to pay more attention, as this book does, to the quiet but rich understandings of land and story and people that is vested in women's business. This book will inevitably create controversy because of the financial and deep political investments in the Hindmarsh Island affair, and the appalling bureaucratic fumbles and lack of respect which have marked the public utterances about it. To hear the proponent women's stories, in all their variety, is to be taken into a parallel and very moving universe of discourse, of which we need to learn the subtleties. This book is a great teacher of those. Frances Devlin Glass, School of Literary and Communication Studies, Deakin University

"Ngarrindjeri Wurruwarrin: A world that is, was, and will be" was the winner of the 1999 NSW Premier's Literary Award in the category of literary and cultural criticism. It was also short listed for the "Age Book of the Year" Award and the "Queensland Premier's History" Award.

Ngarrindjeri Wurruwarrin is about big issues like the quality of justice enjoyed by Indigenous peoples and what sort of society we want to be. It is about the particulars of Hindmarsh Island and the writing of ethnography in the southeast. It is about anthropologists and anthropology. It is about the politics of knowledge in an oral culture and those of a print-oriented one. It is about women who insist on being authors of their own lives. And it is about belief, dissent, story-telling and story tellers.

"[A] formidable collection...It leaves the reader wondering whether the outcome would have been different had the contents of the book been known at the time of the events it describes." John Toohey, former High Court Judge and former Aboriginal Land Commissioner

Just to let your readers know that Ngarrindjeri Wurruwarrin won the NSW Premier's Award for cultural and literary criticism in 1999 and was short listed for the Age Book of the Year and for the Queensland History Award in Australia.

"[A] compelling account that demands to be read... a meticulous piece of scholarship but very readable and accessible." Prof. Fay Gale, President

"Ngarrindjeri Wurruwarrin falls into the category of books which are likely to be valuable to almost all sectors of the reading public, and at the same time, to be criticised by almost all sectors of the reading public." Deborah Bird Rose

"Professor Diane Bell, the latest defender of "women's business" and its fabricators, is almost as brazen as her informants... Bell's version of feminist anthropology is like "Creationist Science". Christopher Pearson The Australian Financial Review

"...those confused by Hindmarsh, or just fascinated by the power plays of knowledge control should read this book. It makes the royal commission report look like... well, a fabrication" Debra Jopson Senior Journalist Sydney Morning Herald