Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World
Great Dividing Range, which is the body of the Rainbow Serpent. It divides nothing, by the way, but connects systems along a massive songline. Parallel is the Great Barrier Reef, another serpent in carpet snake form, which is a barrier to nothing, by the way, but another infinitely connective story.
Tyson Yunkaporta • Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World
I’m supposed to be a role model, telling them they can achieve anything if they work hard and show up and smile a lot.
Tyson Yunkaporta • Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World
jobs are not what we want. We want shelter, food, strong relationships, a livable habitat, stimulating learning activity and time to perform valued tasks in which we excel.
Tyson Yunkaporta • Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World
There are a thousand interconnected threads like this in the oral culture text I made in the creation of those boomerangs and I can access them any time I want to pick them up, sit for a bit and start downloading.
Tyson Yunkaporta • Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World
what has been going on at Uluru. There is a shed there full of rocks. For a long time, tourists took stones away from that sacred site as souvenirs, then a few decades ago something strange began to happen. The tourists started mailing the rocks back with panicked reports of weird happenings, disturbed sleep, bad luck, ghostly visitations and terri
... See moreTyson Yunkaporta • Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World
This kind of haptic knowledge is also encoded in relationships, which is why kinship systems are so central to our cultures. If you learn something with somebody, you might have trouble remembering it on your own but recall it in vivid detail when you are with them again, or if you think of them or call out their name.
Tyson Yunkaporta • Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World
Perpetrators are only criminals until they are punished, and then they may be respected again and begin afresh to make a positive contribution to the group.
Tyson Yunkaporta • Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World
Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Ah, but somewhere in between action and reaction there is an interaction, and that’s where all the magic and fun lies.
Tyson Yunkaporta • Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World
There is a balance between self-definition and group identity. These two are not contradictory but entwined, and there are names for all of the roles you occupy as an agent of complexity in Aboriginal society.
Tyson Yunkaporta • Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World
You have to grow it from a lived cultural framework embedded in the landscape and the patterns of creation you follow there.