Thursday 20 July at 12.30pm, Emerita Professor Diane Bell will speak on ‘Post-factual scholarship: Lessons on lying, Hindmarsh Island, and “secret women’s business”’. This will be held in the Conference Room of the NLA. In these so-called post-factual times, whither scholarship? By way of exploring the proposition that ‘facts matter’ and that our responsibility as scholars is to speak out, I trace the narrative of accusations that Ngarrindjeri women deliberately fabricated a sacred story, one restricted to certain women, to thwart development on Hindmarsh Island in South Australia. That was 1995. The women have been vindicated, the state has apologised, the site is registered and Ngarrindjeri Native Title is set to be handed over in September. It has taken decades, dedication, and determination of many to get this far but the damage that has flowed from the liar label is immense. The legacy lingers for Ngarrindjeri and expert advocates of an unpalatable truth: women have knowledge that is restricted by considerations of age, kinship, ceremony and aptitude. The label ‘secret women’s business’ has a genealogy and I’ll offer comparative material from my work in the central desert in the 1970s and 80s. It’s a long game. The stakes are high. But I know scholarship can and is shifting the narrative. Emerita Professor Bell is a feminist anthropologist who has worked with the Ngarrindjeri for over two decades. In the foreword to the second edition of her award-winning monograph, Ngarrindjeri Wurruwarrin: A world that is, was, and will be, she traces the consolidation of the Ngarrindjeri nation in the post-Hindmarsh era. Bell’s publications include Daughters of the Dreaming (1983 1993 2002), Generations: Grandmother, mothers and daughters (1997), Evil: A novel (2005) and numerous articles on Aboriginal land rights, law reform, human rights, environmental politics, feminist theory and practice. Bell has held senior positions in universities in Australia and USA. Now resident in Canberra, she reviews for Honest History. Visitors are very welcome. .