Red Dust Healing – Book Review

Imagine you are sitting in a yarning circle¹, a fire blazing in the middle. Maybe you are outside sitting around a fire in a desert in Western Australia. Uncle Tom Powell is telling stories. Uncle Tom’s stories have power – power to heal.

This imaginative fire and yarning circle is what it is like to read through Red Dust Healing: the One Day Workshop.² Tom Powell has been running Red Dust Healing workshops, seminars, and story-telling for more than twenty years. This delightful short book is a transcription of one of his one-day workshops.

Tom is a Warramunga man from the Wiradjuri Nation³ and brings 60,000+ years of accumulated knowledge and wisdom of his people into his workshops. He uses various tools, images, and metaphors to help workshop participants to heal their pains, traumas, abuses, and other forms of suffering.

The healing offered by Tom can be applied at personal, family, and collective levels. As Tom is wont to say, ‘It’s not your fault.’ Recognising that pain and suffering may have arisen in an abusive childhood, or from years of colonisation that Australian first-nations people have suffered, the tools for healing can be learnt and applied by anyone, including the descendants of colonisers.

Many of Tom’s tools and metaphors come from the natural world. Trees, fish, birds, kangaroos, and feathers are all offered as means towards remembering the lessons in his stories. It has always been this way – nature is our healer.

Tom is also known for his paradoxical one-liners, which he uses to further reinforce the lessons contained within his stories. Many of his one-liners are scattered throughout the book. A particularly poignant one-liner of Tom’s is, ‘Follow me, I’m right behind you.’ Tom states this with humility and graciousness. As he writes on the final page:

‘What I teach in Red Dust Healing is everything I’ve learned from my Mum and Dad. Everything I’ve learned from our Old People; everything I've learned I’ve learned from you. I get my strength from you. It’s true. I mean it and I wouldn’t tell you if it wasn’t true.’

Even the way the book acknowledges his authorship recognises this teamwork. The cover of the book does not state by Tom Powell; rather it states, with Tom Powell – you, me, and all those who participate are co-authors.

Tom’s sense of collaboration comes through in every page of the book, yet he always acknowledges the uniqueness of every participant in his workshops. Another of his one-liners summarises this well; ‘Scatter out and stick together.’

Tom relates stories in a kind, compelling, and humorous manner. This book captures that story-telling style well.

The book is only 80 pages long and includes many diagrams and graphics, making it very easy to read in one sitting, although you will most likely want to dip into it many times to connect with the tools and metaphors within.

Red Dust Healing is only available through the Red Dust website (https://thereddust.com/) It is available for A$50 plus postage. A phone number is provided to order a copy. For those outside of Australia, there is a ‘Contact’ form. I’m sure that if you contact Tom through this means he will be willing to let you know the cost of postage to wherever you are.

Notes:

1. A yarning circle is a process that comes from Aboriginal culture. It is where people learn, share, pass on knowledge, and build respectful relationships through a narrative format.

2. Tom Powell (with), Red Dust Healing: the One Day Workshop, Red Dust Healing Pty Ltd., 2025

3. The Wiradjuri Nation occupy land to the west of Sydney, Australia.