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'In Ngarrindjeri Wurruwarrin, Diane Bell invites her readers into the complex and contested world of the cultural beliefs and practices of the Ngarrindjeri of South Australia; teases out the meanings and misreadings of the written sources; traces changes and continuities in oral accounts; challenges assumptions about what Ngarrindjeri women know, how they know it, and how outsiders may know what is to be known. Wurruwarrin: knowing and believing.'
'In 1995, a South Australian Royal Commission found Ngarrindjeri women to have “fabricated” their beliefs to stop the building of a bridge from Goolwa to Hindmarsh Island. By 2001, in federal court, the women were vindicated as truth-tellers. In 2009, the site was registered, but scars remain of that shameful moment.' (Source: Spinifex Press website)
Notes
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Dedication: For my friends and family for our good humour, good sense and trust
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
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The Tree and Its Voices : What the Casuarina Says
2011
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Australasian Journal of Ecocriticism and Cultural Ecology , Summer vol. 1 no. 2011; 'The tree known popularly and scientifically as the casuarina has been consistently noticed for the sounds made as wind passes through its unusual foliage of needles and leaf scales. The acoustic experience of the casuarina — with subspecies found throughout Australia — has been represented as 'haunted', 'grieving' and voicing the secret language of initiates. This essay traces intriguing conceptual and aesthetic representations of the 'voice' and its listeners found across both Aboriginal and white Australian cultures in traditional English verse, Aboriginal prose narrative, accounts of cultural practices, and hybrid blends of all three. The essay adopts the notion of 'listening to listening' to set out the many forms of story the tree's sounds generate their contribution to identifying places, and to suggest a specific Aboriginal song-line appears to underlie the divergent replications of tree-'voice' across southern Australia.' (Author's abstract)
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Ngarrindjeri Culture in the Spotlight
1998
single work
review
— Appears in: Koori Mail , 9 September no. 184 1998; (p. 44)
— Review of Ngarrindjeri Wurruwarrin : A World That Is, Was, And Will Be 1998 single work non-fiction oral history'Ngarrindjeri Wurruwarrin examines the culture, politics and history of the Ngarrindjeri people, as well as the burning issues of the women's business and the Hindmarsh Island case...'
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Ngarrindjeri Culture in the Spotlight
1998
single work
review
— Appears in: Koori Mail , 9 September no. 184 1998; (p. 44)
— Review of Ngarrindjeri Wurruwarrin : A World That Is, Was, And Will Be 1998 single work non-fiction oral history'Ngarrindjeri Wurruwarrin examines the culture, politics and history of the Ngarrindjeri people, as well as the burning issues of the women's business and the Hindmarsh Island case...'
-
The Tree and Its Voices : What the Casuarina Says
2011
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Australasian Journal of Ecocriticism and Cultural Ecology , Summer vol. 1 no. 2011; 'The tree known popularly and scientifically as the casuarina has been consistently noticed for the sounds made as wind passes through its unusual foliage of needles and leaf scales. The acoustic experience of the casuarina — with subspecies found throughout Australia — has been represented as 'haunted', 'grieving' and voicing the secret language of initiates. This essay traces intriguing conceptual and aesthetic representations of the 'voice' and its listeners found across both Aboriginal and white Australian cultures in traditional English verse, Aboriginal prose narrative, accounts of cultural practices, and hybrid blends of all three. The essay adopts the notion of 'listening to listening' to set out the many forms of story the tree's sounds generate their contribution to identifying places, and to suggest a specific Aboriginal song-line appears to underlie the divergent replications of tree-'voice' across southern Australia.' (Author's abstract)
- South Australia,
- Hindmarsh Island, Victor Harbor - Goolwa area, Fleurieu Peninsula - Lake Alexandrina, South Australia,
- Goolwa, Victor Harbor - Goolwa area, Fleurieu Peninsula - Lake Alexandrina, South Australia,
