Diane Bell – December 5 2021

Diane has been honoured as a writer, academic, and social justice advocate and is a pioneering feminist anthropologist. She holds a BA Hons in Anthropology from Monash University and a PhD from the Australian National University based on field work with Aboriginal women in central Australia. In 2021 she was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia for her service to literature. Diane has been a teacher, consultant to Indigenous organisations and governmental entities, and has held senior positions in higher education in Australia and the USA. Originally from Melbourne, after 17 years in the USA, Diane retired as Professor Emerita of Anthropology, The George Washington University, and returned to live in South Australia, in Ngarrindjeri country where she furthered her creative writing as Writer and Editor in Residence at Flinders University and taught at the University of Adelaide. Diane is the author/editor of ten books, including several significant monographs on Australian Aboriginal culture and numerous articles and book chapters dealing with religion, land rights, law reform, art, history and social change. Aside from her numerous academic works, she has written a collection of poetry, Reflections of Grace, a short story, Blenders, and a play, Weaving and Whispers.

Evil: a novel
Spinifex Press, 2005; ISBN 9881876756550
Newly appointed professor, Dee P. Scrutari, turns her anthropological gaze on the tribe of “non-reproducing males” who dominate the Catholic college. Evil is in the air. Something is awry. What happened to the previous occupant of her newly-painted office? Her fieldwork begins. Her notebooks fill. And the mystery mounts: disturbing odours that no air cleanser will disperse, turbulent faculty meetings, tenure politics, intrigue around women’s bodies, and a strange ginger cat. With a team of marginalised colleagues, Prof Scrutari attempts to solve a number of campus mysteries. Adapted as a play by Leslie Jacobson, Evil addresses secrets within the churches in a funny, witty and provocative style, full of affection for the academic world so lovingly described, and concerned to nurture against the darker forces she seeks to identify and expose.

Daughters of the Dreaming
3rd edn: Spinifex Press 2002; ISBN 9781876756154
Women are rarely mentioned as owners of country in their own right or as decision-making individuals; they appear as wives and mothers, their relationship to the jukurrpa always mediated through another. Yet Diane believes women enjoyed direct access to the jukurrpa from which flowed into rights and responsibilities in land, a power base as independent economic producers and a high degree of control over their own lives in marriage, residence, economic production, reproduction and sexuality. Living in the community, developing friendships that have spanned decades, Diane shines a light on the importance of women’s role in Australian Aboriginal desert culture. As maintainers of land, ritual and culture, Indigenous women of central Australia share the patterns of their lives in this remarkable and enduring book.