Ngarrindjeri Wurruwarrin: A World That Is, Was, And Will Be
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.
In the Preface to the New Edition, Diane Bell looks to the world that “will be”, where talented, committed Ngarrindjeri leaders are building the infrastructure for future generations of the Ngarrindjeri nation and challenging the very foundation of the State of South Australia.
The Apology to the Stolen Generations in 2008 and its evocation of an inclusive “us” has propelled the Ngarrindjeri on the path to “practical reconciliation”. But progress has been uneven. Petty politics, procrastinations and prevarications stand in the way of its realisation.
Diane Bell writes as an insider who is clear about the bases of her engagement with her Ngarrindjeri friends and colleagues. The story will continue to unfold and Diane Bell will be there. There is unfinished business.
Awards
Winner, NSW Premier’s Gleebook Award for Cultural and Literary Criticism
Finalist, The Age Book of the Year
Finalist, Queensland Premier’s History Award
Finalist, Gold Medal of the Australian Literary Society
Finalist, Kiriyama Award
2014 | 9781742199184 | Paperback | 234 x 152 mm | 730 pp
OUT OF STOCK | Available as an ebook
Table of Contents
PART TWO: THE POLITICS OF KNOWLEDGE
7. Respecting the Rules: Oral and Written Cultures 361
Whose Knowledge? Whose Rules? 361
A Two-Way Dialogue 366
Side-bar Dialogues 371
Respecting the Rules 376
With Respect to Gender 385
Taking Time and Talking in Riddles 392
The Trouble with Books 395
Staying Silent: Speaking Out 398
A Community of Belief and a Culture of Dissent 405
8. Sorting the Sources: Writing about the Lower Murray 419
Who has Fabricated the Ngarrindjeri? 419
First Sightings: Writing the Ngarrindjeri into Existence 425
A Dying Race: Recording Nineteenth-Century Ngarrindjeri 431
Museums and Memory Culture: Tindale, Berndt et al. 439
Recording the Word: From Passive to Active Voice 448
On Silences, Assumptions and Censorship 452
On Women, Feminists and Ethnography 459
Of Courts, Consultants and Armchairs 471
Finding Meaning in a Changing World: A Constant 474
9. Women’s Beliefs, Bodies and Practices 483
Gendered Work: Gendered Analyses 483
Sacred Moments: Sacred Relationships 490
Born of Woman 500
Rites of Passage: Coming of Age for Ngarrindjeri Girls 507
Women’s Bodies: The Subject of Inquiry 520
“Women’s Business”: What is It? 528
What Do we “Know” About Women and their Business? 534
Closing the Circle 542
10. Sacred Orders: A Weave of the Clans, Stories and Sanctions 545
Kumarangk: “Not Just Any Island” 545
Hindmarsh Island: A Complex of Clans 549
Goolwa: A Complex of Activities 554
Mulyewongk: Cautionary Tales and Deeper Meanings 558
The Meeting of the Waters: Home for Ngatji 562
Ngurunderi and Jekejeri at Goolwa 570
The Pleiades: Stories of Sisters, the Seasons and Survival 573
Mantjingga: A Ngarrindjeri Dreaming 584
Sacred Orders: Everything in its Place 587
Weaving it Together: One Whole World 591
Epilogue: Whither? 595
Endnotes 605
Chronology 637
Bibliography 647
Permissions 673
Index 675
Acknowledgements 691
Some Ngarrindjeri Terms ix
Maps xii
Preface to New Edition xiii
Prologue 1
PART ONE: NGARRINDJERI: A DISTINCTIVE WEAVE
1. Weaving the World of Ngarrindjeri 43
Weaving Women 43
Sustaining Stories 48
The Respect System 61
Making Baskets: Making Family 65
Feather Flowers: The Land of Pelicans 73
Weaving the Past 78
Weaving New Worlds 84
2. Shared Designs: Different Strands 91
Ngurunderi: Landscape and Culture; United and Divided 91
Life on the Mission: From Taplin’s Time On 104
Religion: On and Off the Mission 109
Life on Farms and in Fringe Camps:
Learning by Word of Mouth 116
Life in the Home: Being Taken Away 120
Ngarrindjeri of High Literary Degree 125
Wururi: Many Dialects, One Body 136
The Circle of Language 140
3. Singing: “Pakari Nganawi Ruwi” 145
Pinkie Mack: Singing of Welcome and War 145
Many Meanings: Few Recordings 155
Songs of the Southeast 166
Songs and Ceremonies of Yore 171
Gospel, Glee Clubs and Guitars 182
Pakari Songs: Twentieth-Century Dreaming 188
4. Family, Friends and Other Relations 199
Ngatji: “Friend, countryman, protector” 199
Ngatji: Accommodating Change 208
Ngatji Stories: Krowali, Krayi and Others 212
Miwi : Feeling and Knowing 218
Ngia-ngiampe : Birth Relations 225
The Power of Naming 228
Genealogies: Families First 231
Whose Genealogy? 237
Family Connections: Something Old, Something New 244
5. A Land Alive: Embodying and Knowing the Country 249
A Living, Changing Land 249
Ruwi and Ruwar: Land and Body 262
A Gendered, Embodied Land 269
A Restricted Body: Narambi—Dangerous and Forbidden 278
Burials: Ensuring a Safe Place, Coming Home 286
Changing Practice: Persistent Values 303
6. Signs and Sorcery: Finding Meaning in a Changing World 309
Reading the Signs 309
The Mingka Bird 312
The Return of the Whales 318
Signs from the Past and Present 322
Powerful Presences 326
Putari Practice 337
The Mulyewongk: A Story for All Ages 344
Fear of Foreigners, Small People and the Dark 353
Reviews
It leaves the reader wondering whether the outcome would have been different had the contents of this book been known at the time of the events it describes.
—John Toohey, Canberra Times
Bell’s greatest achievement in Ngarrindjeri Wurruwarrin lies in her truthful rendering of the complexities and internal contradictions of the current Ngarrindjeri position, without underplaying the hard questions ... magisterial work.
—Christine Nicholls, Times Higher Education
I hope that lawyers and others who are interested in the law will take a hard look at this study and consider what happens to the lives and words of people when they are subjected to intense and hostile scrutiny.
—Deborah Bird Rose, Indigenous Law Bulletin
… a monumental work.
—Ian McIntosh, Cultural Survival