Right Story, Wrong Story: How to Have Fearless Conversations in Hell

by Tyson Yunkaporta

The fourth category of violation involved the Indigenous protocol of ‘fair fight’. This is difficult to define but involves mutual consent, cohesion of intent for both combatants and onlookers, and a general adherence to most of the other protocols being measured. Fair fight is more than the sum of these parts, ensuring that all participants will derive some kind of benefit collectively and individually from the shared experience, not at the expense of victimising and alienating a participant. Combatants don’t need to be evenly matched, but there must be a reasonable chance of a fighter being able to give a good account of themselves. The relative size and skill of combatants can’t be too asymmetrical and there must be a sense that justice is being served. One-third of all the fights viewed were classified as fair fights. Although this vague protocol is more prone to confirmation bias, it should be noted that we were pleasantly surprised by how many of the fights were fair from our point of view, as we had extremely low expectations in this category and had to revise our assumptions about