Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World
This means tapping into ancestral knowing that is intuitive and inherent, stored in the body and the land and in spirit, accessed through a peak mental state that allows new knowledge to be absorbed at a phenomenal rate. Ancestor-mind can be achieved through cultural activity like carving, painting, weaving, dancing, and any preparations for ritual
... See moreTyson Yunkaporta • Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World
Aboriginal cooking is not about using native ingredients—it is about using what is available and optimally nutritious at different times of the year and employing cooking techniques that produce the same effect as cooking on hot coals or slowly in the ground.
Tyson Yunkaporta • Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World
This is what happens when worlds collide and then mingle over time. Living cultures and languages evolve and transform. Thought experiment: people still say ‘Pick up!’ when calling a busy person’s mobile, even though nobody really uses landlines that require picking up anymore. What might future evolutions of that utterance involve? Maybe one day,
... See moreTyson Yunkaporta • Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World
In a lifeworld where your great-grandchildren become your parents, you have a vested interest in making sure you’re co-creating a stable system for them to operate in and also ensuring a bit of intergenerational equity.
Tyson Yunkaporta • Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World
Punishment is harsh and swift, but afterwards there is no criminal record, no grudge against the transgressor.
Tyson Yunkaporta • Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World
Only women’s weapons have been linguistically domesticated in this way.
Tyson Yunkaporta • Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World
many would rather not be captured in print and pinned down to a particular moment of thought, preferring to dwell privately in the generative cultural practice of yarning.
Tyson Yunkaporta • Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World
yarned with Elders and Percy Paul about these things (along with a bunch of old dead white guys),
Tyson Yunkaporta • Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World
Our family stories will outlast the stories of this civilisation, but at the moment they are almost invisible in the shadow of monolithic grand narratives like ‘progress’. The narrative of progress is grounded in the myth of primitivism—the widely held assumption that life before the industrial era was brief, brutish, savage and simple.