Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World

by Tyson Yunkaporta

This limiting range of governance paradigms denies the existence of a myriad of forms of human society developed over eons of existence. These new paradigms ignore the fact that it really is not possible to maintain massive nations and cities in any sustainable form. Civilizations over the last few millennia have done unspeakable damage to the systems necessary for existence, but this is nothing compared to what has happened in the last century or so with the emergence of a global system of great industrial nations. I won’t insult you with endless statistics about extinction rates and topsoil loss and climate change and toxicity levels in every breath of air and every drop of water on the planet, statistics that will be out-of-date a few months after I write them as these disasters continue to multiply. Suffice to say that from my birth up until this point, well over half of the vertebrate species on the planet have become extinct. The 20 percent of the planet that has been left as habitat for the remaining species has been reduced to a series of isolated systems that are unable to exchange uncontaminated matter and energy to maintain complexity.

Don't agree re: cities but do agree re: threat we pose to the planet's maintenance of complexity.