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

by Tyson Yunkaporta

of settler violence. Dignity was the fifth category, a protocol ensuring the autonomy, reputation and spirit of all participants (including onlookers) is not damaged by the violation of social norms or the loss of control and integrity. There is a sense in this protocol of a person retaining their self-determination and awareness while also fully expressing their passions. Sixty-eight per cent of the fights contained violations of the dignity protocol, with participants compromising their own dignity or diminishing the dignity of another. This figure would have been higher if our ethical protocols had not prevented us from including videos depicting shamefully excessive levels of indignity. We were careful to show respect to the fighters in this way, and immediately stopped viewing any fight that resulted in degrading conditions such as involuntary nudity—a sample selection criterion we called the butt-crack rule. The sixth protocol of responsibility and coexistence was measurably present if participants demonstrated a sense of belonging within a culture or community and adherence to the values of their culture, specifically that participants were ‘fighting for’ the maintenance of their collective value system rather than simply ‘fighting against’ individuals in response to personal slights, or attempting to avoid responsibility for a transgression by ‘kicking up the dust’ through the unnecessary escalation of a conflict. This protocol was demonstrably absent in fifty-eigh...