Storymen

Storymen explores the converging world views of senior Ngarinyin lawman Bungal (David) Mowaljarlai and acclaimed author Tim Winton.

Hannah Rachel Bell (Author)

9780521759960, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 4 November 2009

262 pages
24 x 18.2 x 1.8 cm, 0.78 kg

'David Mowaljalai embodied 60,000 years of culture that is of this country where we try to make our home. He was a bridge. He always knew this, and always treated black and white the same. One day he will be seen as the man who carried Aboriginal wisdom into the Australia of the future, the Elder of us all. Tim Winton listened to this voice. Hannah Rachel Bell knew it needed to be written down, and shared. Storymen is a heck of a book.' Steve Biddulph, leading psychologist and best-selling author of titles including Raising Boys and Manhood

What do the artistic works of acclaimed author Tim Winton and eminent Ngarinyin lawman Bungal (David) Mowaljarlai have in common? According to Hannah Rachel Bell they both reflect sacred relationship with the natural world, the biological imperative of a male rite of passage, an emergent urban tribalism, and the fundamental role of story in the transmission of cultural knowledge. In Bell's four decade friendship with Mowaljarlai, she had to confront the cultural assumptions that sculpted her way of seeing. The journey was life-changing. When she returned to teaching in 2001 Tim Winton's novels featured in the curriculum. She recognised an eerie familiarity and thought Winton must have been influenced by traditional elders to express such an 'indigenous' perspective. She wrote to him. This resulted in 4 years of correspondence and an excavation of converging world views - exposed through personal memoir, letters, paintings and conversations and culminating in Storymen.

List of illustrations and photographs
Glossary
Acknowledgements
Prologue
Characters and country
Story
Law in nature
Male rite of passage
Urban tribalism
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Social & cultural anthropology, ethnography [JHMC], Anthropology [JHM], Cultural studies [JFC]