Sand Talk Quotes

“If people are laughing, they are learning. True learning is a joy because it is an act of creation.”
― Tyson Yunkaporta, Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World

“an Indigenous person is a member of a community retaining memories of life lived sustainably on a land base, as part of that land base.”
― Tyson Yunkaporta, Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World

“You can't maintain a culture that is based on retarding the development of half the population, particularly the half that is responsible for creating life.”
― Tyson Yunkaporta, Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World

“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.”
― Tyson Yunkaporta, Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World

“After three of four years of schooling, the nucleus basalis, which forms sharp memories in the brain, falls into disuse and decays. This is the part of the brain that makes learning so effortless for small children, and it is always activated in undomesticated humans. But neuroplasticity research has shown that damage to the nucleus basalis can be reversed by reintroducing activities involving highly focused attention, which results in massive increases in production of acetylcholine and dopamine. Using new skills under conditions of intense focus rewires billions of neural connections and reactivates the nucleus basalis. Loss of function in this part of the brain is not a natural stage of development--we are supposed to retain and even increase it throughout our lives. Until very recently in human history, we did.”
― Tyson Yunkaporta, Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World

“Most of us have been displaced from those cultures of origin, a global diaspora of refugees severed not only from land, but from the sheer genius that comes from belonging in symbiotic relation to”
― Tyson Yunkaporta, Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World

“I’m not reporting on Indigenous Knowledge systems for a global audience’s perspective. I’m examining global systems from an Indigenous Knowledge perspective.”
― Tyson Yunkaporta, Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World

“Understanding your own culture and the ways it interacts with others, particularly the power dynamics of it, is far more appreciated. My reading of Germane Greer when I was a young lad was a lot more conducive to forming relationships with European females than my reading of Dante was--and that was more about my understanding of my male privilege and controlling its excess than being an export on women's literature or issues. This kind of cultural humility is a useful exercise in understanding your role as an agent of sustainability in a complex system. It is difficult to relinquish the illusions of power and delusions of exceptionalism that come with privilege. But it is strangely liberating to realise your true status as a node in a single network. There is honour to be found in this role, and a certain dignified agency. You won't be swallowed up by a hive mind or individuality--you will retain your autonomy while simultaneously being profoundly interdependent and connected.”
― Tyson Yunkaporta, Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World

“Maybe the reason all the powerful instruments pointed at the sky have not yet been able to detect high-tech alien civilizations is that these unsustainable societies don’t last long enough to leave a cosmic trace. An unsettling thought.”
― Tyson Yunkaporta, Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World

“These are connections between two points that were previously unconnected. Jokes are one of the most pure examples of this neural creation event; most humor is based on two ideas coming together in a new way: puns, rhymes, double meanings, unusual circumstances, accidents, exposed delusions, and contextually inappropriate content are examples of this. The chemical rush we get from sudden neural connections in jokes is so intense and pleasurable that we laugh out loud. This kind of humor and joy in learning is a huge part of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures. If people are laughing, they are learning. True learning is a joy because it is an act of creation.”
― Tyson Yunkaporta, Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World

“And that's how romance works. It exploits the Achilles' heel of exceptional women: their desire th think the best of men and stand by their side. Contrary to popular belief, men are not turned off by powerful women. Rather, they long for them, court them, wine and dine them, and ultimately either ruin them or lock them in their towers. It was the violence of romance that conquered women, more than witch pyres and swords and pillaging. Once trapped, the protection rackets run by their captors kept terrorized females dependent and compliant so as not to disturb the precarious and conditional security they were offered. They were then fattened up and put to work on their backs, either as breeders or playthings.”
― Tyson Yunkaporta, Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World

“The war between good and evil is in reality an imposition of stupidity and simplicity over wisdom and complexity.”
― Tyson Yunkaporta, Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World

“Maybe the reason all the powerful instruments pointed at the sky have not yet been able to detect high-tech alien civilisations is that these unsustainable societies don’t last long enough to leave a cosmic trace.”
― Tyson Yunkaporta, Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World

“than individual inventions or amendments. That is not to say that all demotic innovations are benevolent. But if you listen to many voices and stories and discern a deep and complex pattern emerging, you can usually determine what is real and what has been airbrushed for questionable agendas or corrupted by flash mobs of narcissists.”
― Tyson Yunkaporta, Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World

“Us-two, we still endure longer work hours than our roles require today, for reasons of social control rather than productivity. It’s difficult to find the mental space to question systems of power when we’re working eight hours, then trying to lift heavy weights that don’t need lifting or pedaling bikes that go nowhere for an hour so we don’t die of a heart attack from being stuck for a third of our lives in a physically restrictive workspace”
― Tyson Yunkaporta, Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World

“Engaging with them (malignant narcissists) alone is futile - never wrestle a pig, as the old saying goes; you both end up covered in shit, and the pig likes it. The fundamental rules of human interaction do not apply to them, although they weaponize those rules against everyone else.”
― Tyson Yunkaporta, Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World

“Juma Fejo tells me everything in creation has Dreaming, even windshield wipers and cell phones, so why must our knowledge of creation be frozen in time as an artifact?”
― Tyson Yunkaporta, Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World

“an Indigenous person is a member of a community retaining memories of life lived sustainably on a land base, as part of that land base. Indigenous Knowledge is any application of those memories as living knowledge to improve present and future circumstances.”
― Tyson Yunkaporta, Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World

“every three generations there is a reset in which your grandparents’ parents are classified as your children, an eternal cycle of renewal.”
― Tyson Yunkaporta, Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World

“In contemporary science and research, investigators have to make claims to objectivity, an impossible and godlike (greater-than) position that floats in empty space and observes the field while not being part of it. It is an illusion of omniscience that has hit some barriers in quantum physics. No matter how hard you may try to separate yourself from reality, there are always observer effects as the reality shifts in relation to your viewpoint. Scientists call this the uncertainty principle.”
― Tyson Yunkaporta, Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World

“If you want to know what’s in the box so bad, drink the poison yourself and climb in.”
― Tyson Yunkaporta, Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World

“Some people are just idiots—and everybody has a bit of idiot in them from time to time, coming from some deep place inside that whispers, “You are special. You are greater than other people and things. You are more important than everything and everyone. All things and all people exist to serve you.” This behavior needs massive checks and balances to contain the damage it can do.”
― Tyson Yunkaporta, Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World

“The basic protocols of Aboriginal society, like most societies, include respecting and hearing all points of view in a yarn. Narcissists demand this right, then refuse to allow other points of view on the grounds that any other opinion somehow infringes their freedom of speech or is offensive. They destroy the basic social contract of reciprocity (which allows people to build a reputation of generosity based on sharing to ensure ongoing connectedness and support), shattering this framework of harmony with a few words of nasty gossip. They apply double standards and break down systems of give-and-take until every member of a social group becomes isolated, lost in a Darwinian struggle for power and dwindling resources that destroys everything. Then they move on to another place, another group. Feel free to extrapolate this pattern globally and historically.”
― Tyson Yunkaporta, Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World

“All Law-breaking comes from that first evil thought, that original sin of placing yourself above the land or above other people.”
― Tyson Yunkaporta, Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World

“remittance economy—which is basically the money sent home by people who have migrated to first-world nations, and which rivals international aid in scope—did not crash during the last financial crisis.”
― Tyson Yunkaporta, Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World

“I thought it was an appropriate medium for exploring the different laws of time and space for First and Second Peoples.”
― Tyson Yunkaporta, Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World

“Every viewpoint is useful, and it takes a wide diversity of views for any group to navigate this universe, let alone to act as custodians for it.”
― Tyson Yunkaporta, Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World

“I stand in this gully and see the Rainbow Serpent in one place; you stand on the hill and see him in another, and he gives us different messages that we are supposed to share with one another.”
― Tyson Yunkaporta, Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World

“The arrow of time proposed by physicists works in lab experiments and is a real, observable phenomenon in closed systems. It is a true law. It’s just the wrong law to apply to beings living in open, interconnected systems. 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!”
― Tyson Yunkaporta, Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World

“The biota is stripped, then the topsoil goes, then the water. It is no accident that the ruins of the world’s oldest civilizations are mostly in deserts now. It wasn’t desert before that. A city tells itself it is a closed system that must decay in order for time to run straight, while simultaneously demanding eternal growth. This means it must outsource its decay for as long as possible.”
― Tyson Yunkaporta, Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World