Message us (inc. if it's ok to share on the pod)

Tyson Yunkaporta is the author of award-winning book, Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World, and a Senior Lecturer in Indigenous Knowledges at Deakin University in Melbourne. He’s also a poet and artist carving traditional tools and weapons, processes that were central to writing the book. Tyson belongs to the Apalech Clan from Western Cape York in far north Queensland, with community/cultural ties all over Australia.

Fellow Indigenous writer, last year’s Miles Franklin Award winner Melissa Lucashenko, called Sand Talk ‘An extraordinary invitation into the world of the Dreaming’. Tommy Orange, best-selling author of ‘There There’, said ‘This book shows how vital and alive and essential Indigenous ways of being and thinking are.’

Tyson’s Australian publisher Text describes the book as looking at global systems from an Indigenous perspective, asking how contemporary life diverges from the pattern of creation, and how we can do things differently. A few months ago, Sand Talk was published internationally by Harper Collins, with this statement: A paradigm-shifting book in the vein of Sapiens that brings a crucial Indigenous perspective to historical and cultural issues of history, education, money, power, and sustainability—and offers a new template for living.

Well, it’ll be wonderfully new to many, and of course profoundly old to others. Either way, it’s rich and essential terrain to be travelling together. Especially with the spirit of generosity and trust that Tyson embodies here. I’m still feeling deeply moved by this one. And frankly, changed again.

This conversation was recorded Thursday 13 August.

Title slide: Tyson Yunkaporta from Australian publisher Text’s promotional video for the book.

Music:
Stones & Bones, by Owls of the Swamp.

Find more:
You can hear more of my conversation with Tyson in the extra to this episode, This Galactic Executive Function.

Original Australian version of ‘Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World’, published by Text.

International version of the book, published by Harper Collins.

Support the show

The RegenNarration is independent, ad-free and freely available, thanks to the generous support of listeners like you. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber, gain access to a great community and some exclusive benefits, and help keep the show going - on Patreon or Substack (where you'll find writing too).

You can also donate directly via the website (avoiding fees) or PayPal.

I hope to see you at an event too, even the shop. Thanks for your support!