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

by Tyson Yunkaporta

LOCATEDNESS: In Indigenous culture, no information can exist unless it is located. The knower is always located within a map of knowledge and story that is profoundly place-based and corresponds with real landscapes. The paths and habitual routes throughout the knower’s landscape are storied and visualised from a bird’s-eye view perspective. Each point of interest on a path of travel represents part of a story and a repository for knowledge. As Aunty Mary says, ‘I am located, therefore I am.’ RELATEDNESS: In Indigenous culture, no information can exist unless it is in relation to places, entities, people and phenomena in the landscape. Knowledge is held in the relational space between yourself and others, including non-human others. The aunties remind us that our relationships with non-human others in the land form the totemic basis for all our connections in neurology and spirit, which are essential for lasting thought and memory. Information is held in pairs, groups and communities. Knowledge is produced, transmitted and stored within relationships. EMBODIMENT: In Indigenous culture, knowledge is tangible and embodied in physical reality. Landscapes, the night sky, objects, bodies—all act as mnemonic devices, not just in the abstract but in the sense that information is ritually encoded in these things and can be ‘read’ from them.