Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World
Our knowledge endures because everybody carries a part of it, no matter how fragmentary. If you want to see the pattern of creation, you talk to everybody and listen carefully.
Tyson Yunkaporta • Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World
Story Places or sacred sites are places of overlap between the two worlds, which is why people need protection when entering these places—calling
Tyson Yunkaporta • Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World
I write to provoke thought rather than represent fact, in a kind of dialogical and reflective process with the reader.
Tyson Yunkaporta • Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World
They show me that you have to move and adapt within a system that is in a constant state of movement and adaptation. By extension, this is also how us-two might influence the system in sustainable ways—any attempt to control the system from a fixed viewpoint outside is a misaligned intervention that will fail.
Tyson Yunkaporta • Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World
The Romans did it with Christianity—an ideology of the poor and enslaved that threatened the foundations of empire. When torture and murder became ineffective as deterrents, they simply embraced the idea and made it the state religion, rewriting the holy texts to suit their needs and rebranding it as a new system of control.
Tyson Yunkaporta • Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World
the basic social contract of reciprocity (which allows people to build a reputation of generosity based on sharing to ensure ongoing connectedness and support), shattering this framework of harmony with a few words of nasty gossip.
Tyson Yunkaporta • Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World
Containing the excesses of malignant narcissists is a team effort. The combination of social fragmentation and lightning-fast communication today, however, means we have to deal with these crazy people alone, as individuals butting heads with narcissists in a lawless void, and they are thriving unchecked in this environment. Engaging with them
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To understand the crisis of civilization in this way, we first need to define what civilization is from the standpoint of First Peoples’ Law.
Tyson Yunkaporta • Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World
Oldman Juma says all this has happened over and over again and will continue to happen as the universe breathes in and out. You can live with it, but you need to adapt and change every aspect of your society and culture when transitioning from one era to the next.