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Storymen, Hannah's 2010 Publication

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.

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

More about Storymen

 

Hannah Rachel Bell at Fremantle, Western Australia, 2010

Thank you for visiting!

- HRB

As Special Adviser to the WA Minister for the North West (Pilbara) 1976 – 1979 Hannah advised government on the difficulties experienced by women living in the new, remote mining towns without their extended families and friends. Here she met enlightened visionary, Kimberley Ngarinyin lawman David Mowaljarlai who remained her close friend until his death in 1997.