Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World

by Tyson Yunkaporta

This remarkable book is about everything from echidnas to evolution, cosmology to cooking, sex and science and spirits to Schrödinger’s cat.

In our traditional systems of Law we remember, however, that everyone is an idiot from time to time. Punishment is harsh and swift, but afterwards there is no criminal record, no grudge against the transgressor. Perpetrators are only criminals until they are punished, and then they may be respected again and begin afresh to make a positive contribution to the group.

people will not lie and shift blame or avoid punishment by twisting rules to escape accountability. They can look forward to a clean slate and therefore be willing and equal participants in their own punishment and transformation, which is a learning process more than anything else.

But that would be placing myself in a greater-than position, so I need to check myself and pay attention to them, remembering that there is always value in marginal viewpoints.

It’s a bit like touting the theory that an economy is thriving when the stock markets are doing well—the actual inhabitants of the economy say, sure, stock prices are spiking, but we’re still hungry!

‘People of colour’ in their struggle for economic equality join the rush to exploit Aboriginal land and resources, and are welcome at the boardroom table as long as they embrace settler values and identities. An Indian company undertakes a project to devastate Aboriginal lands and waters in Queensland with coal mining, and farmers formerly opposed to Native Title now stand beside Traditional Owners to protest the development.

We have to be careful of the metaphors we use to make meaning, because metaphors are the language of spirit and that’s how we operate in our fields of existence either to increase or decrease connectedness within creation.

I have been known to lose my head in fruit markets over labels that say things like ‘Grape’s’. Ooh, you bastards, I want to see the owner and unless his name is Grape I’m gunna get wild in here!

Kelly explains that Indigenous women are five times more likely to be victims of homicide than non-Indigenous women, and that they are thirty-five times more likely to be hospitalised due to family violence.

The Australian people would be able to move on from ‘sorry’ and start saying ‘thank you’ (and maybe, after a while, ‘please’).

Guilt is like any other energy: you can’t accumulate it or keep it because it makes you sick and disrupts the system you live in—you have to let it go. Face the truth, make amends and let it go.