#Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save The World

[eleanor-arroway]

“The job is the unquestioned goal for all free citizens of the world – the ultimate public good. It is the clearly stated exit goal of all education and the only sanctioned reason for acquiring knowledge. But if we think about it for a moment, jobs are not what we want. We want shelter, food, strong relationships, a livable habitat, stimulating learning activity, and time to perform valued tasks in which we excel. I don’t know of many jobs that will allow access to more than two or three of those things at a time, unless you have a particularly benevolent owner or employer.

I am often told that I should be grateful for the progress that Western civilization has brought to these shores. I am not. This life of work-or-die is not an improvement on preinvasion living, which involved only a few hours of work a day for shelter and sustenance, performing tasks that people do now for leisure activities on their yearly vacations: fishing, collecting plants, hunting, camping, and so forth. The rest of the day was for fun, strengthening relationships, ritual and ceremony, cultural expression, intellectual pursuits, and the expert crafting of exceptional objects. I know this is true because I have lived like this, even in this era where the land is only a pale shadow of the abundance that once was. We have been lied to about the “harsh survival” lifestyles of the past. There was nothing harsh about it. If it was so harsh – such a brutish, menial struggle for existence – then we would not have evolved to become the delicate, intelligent creatures that we are.”

- Tyson Yunkaporta, Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save The World

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

In Recife, Brazil :: Photo Art © ► @caso_fortuito

https://www.instagram.com/caso_fortuito/

* * * * *

“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

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

* * * *

The shadow spirit is that part of a person that collects attachments to things, sensations, places, and people. Some First Peoples in New South Wales call it yaawi, which early settlers adopted as a name for their bogeyman—yowie. It is all longing and illusion, the part of your spirit that carries the I-am-greater-than delusion. I am special, it screams and is drawn to its own name and image. This is why in Aboriginal cultures we often won’t say the names of the deceased, or any words that sound like their names, and will cover or hide any photos or images of that person. Our word for this spirit is often the same as the word for image. It thinks it will live forever, that its temporary persona represents full consciousness and being. It is pure narcissism.

* *

All around the world in the original cultures of humanity there are similar rites to assist this spirit to dissipate and fade. There are death wails as part of the grieving process, songs to sing, smoke to spread, and a sequence of mourning that should take place in stages over a year. But most people don’t have these things anymore, with new and vague stages of grieving laid out for us that contain unhelpful steps like Denial and Bargaining. There may be memorial shrines or web pages with photos of the deceased and much calling of their names. As a result, these shadow spirits linger years longer than they are supposed to, tormenting our nights with their whispered claims to exceptionalism. There are at least four parts to your spirit from an Aboriginal point of view, and this shadow is only one of them. Your higher self (maybe what they call the “superego” in psychology) is your big spirit, and it goes back to sky camp when you die. But sky country always reflects earth country, so there is another spirit, your ancestral spirit, that goes back to a place in the land. It is born again eternally from that place. There is at least one other part, your living spirit, which animates your body in life, flowing through you from the land around you like water fills a string bag in a running creek—never the same water in the bag from moment to moment. That water is only as good as what is in the creek. Therefore if the land is sick, your living spirit is sick as well. Your shadow spirit is that part of you that wants things you don’t need and makes you think you’re better than other people and above the land, and it takes all the other parts of your spirit to hold it in check. If the rest of your spirit is not clear and in balance, it gets away from you, causing conflict and destruction. You gossip behind people’s backs, spread uncertainty, deliver judgments, upset people, take more than you need, and accumulate goods without sharing. It makes you a competitor instead of a human being. But only when it is out of balance. If it is checked by the other parts of you, it becomes a stable ego that drives you to act upon the world in perfect ways.

Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World by Tyson Yunkaporta

[alive on all channels]

Charley Tawarra Tjungurrayi

[forbidden-sorcery]

I don’t think most people have the same definition of sustainability that I do. I hear them talking about sustainable exponential growth while ignoring the fact that most of the world’s topsoil is now at the bottom of the sea. It is difficult to talk to people about the impossible physics of civilisation, especially if you are Aboriginal: you perform and display the paint and feathers, the pretty bits of your culture, and talk about your unique connection to the land while people look through glass boxes at you, but you are not supposed to look back, or describe what you see. But that First Law is still there. We need to be brave enough to apply it to our reality of infinitely interconnected, self-organising, self-renewing systems. We are the custodians of this reality, and the arrow of time is not an appropriate model for a custodial species to operate from.

Tyson Yunkaporta - Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World

[theinquisitxor]

September Reading Wrap Up

I read six books in September, and managed to get through most of what I wanted to read. I read 3 fantasy, 1 sci-fi, 1 nonfiction, and 1 historical fiction. I feel like reading ~6 books per month might be my new normal. I used to read 8-9 books a month, but I don't really see that happening anymore unfortunately.

1.Before They Are Hanged (First Law #2) by Joe Abercrombie, 3/5 stars. I liked book 2 a little bit more than book 1, and felt like this book had a better plot and development than the first book. I still can't say that I really enjoy this series, but I'm committed to see how it ends. The Glokta chapters are really the only chapters I enjoy. Adult Fantasy.

2.A Desolation Called Peace (Texicalaan 2) by Arkady Martine, 5/5 stars. This is the sequel to A Memory Called Empire and while we follow the same characters from book 1, this is in a new setting. I think the duology is excellent, and this will probably be in my top books of the year. Science Fiction.

3.Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save The World by Tyson Yunkaporta. This was my nonfiction for the month, and I read it via audiobook. I enjoyed listening to it, and also enjoyed that that audiobook was narrated by the author.

4. Paladin's Strength (Saint of Steel 2) by T Kingfisher, 4/5 stars. I had a lot of fun with this book, and I think this series could be a new favorite. Paladin's Grace is still my favorite (I like the tropes better) but I'm looking forward to the rest of the series. Adult Fantasy

5. Ink Blood Sister Scribe by Emma Torzs, 4/5 stars. I was really impressed by the novel for being a debut. I was fully hooked on the story and really enjoyed this novel overall. I had a few issues with pacing and the one romance at the end, but I'll be interested in anything else Torzs writes. Fantasy

6. The Shadow Land by Elizabeth Kostova, 4/5 stars. This is a historical fiction set in Bulgaria, alternating between times/characters. I love how Kostova makes you feel so immersed and present in the setting. This book explores Bulgaria's history after ww2, through a violinist and his troubled past. This book has been on my tbr since 2018, so I was happy to finally read it. Historical Fiction.

Overall, I'm happy with what I read in September, and I'm looking forward to finishing/continuing some of the series I've been reading in October.

The October TBR:

The Last Argument of Kings (First Law 3) by Joe Abercrombie-- I just want to finish this one and wrap up the series

Son of the Shadows (sevenwaters 2) by Juliet Marillier-- I wanted to read this in Sept, but didn't get to it

Paladin's Hope (Saint of Steel 3) by T Kingfisher-- Excited for this one!

Witch Week (Chrestomanci 3) by Diana Wynne Jones-- this will be an audiobook for the month, and I think it will be a good Oct read

A Sorceress Comes to Call by T Kingfisher -- I want to read her newest release asap

The Wolf in the Whale by Jordanna Brodsky Smith-- This was my Random TBR Pick for the month, so I want to try and get to this

Other possibilites include: Echo North, I Who Have Never Known Men, The Swan Thieves

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

'Western cultures believe we must be alive for a purpose: to work to make money. Indigenous cultures believe we're alive just as nature is alive: to be here to be beautiful and strange. We don't need to achieve anything to be valid in our humanness."

[Melanie Italian Lau]

+

In Aboriginal worldviews, relationships are paramount in knowledge transmission. There can be no exchange or dialogue until the protocols of establishing relationships have taken place. Who are you? Where are you from? Where are you going? What is your true purpose here? Where does the knowledge you carry come from and who shared it with you? What are the applications and potential impacts of this knowledge on this place? What impacts has it had on other places? What other knowledge is it related to? Who are you to be saying these things?

In our world nothing can be known or even exist unless it is in relation to other things. Most importantly, those things that are connected are less important than the forces of connection between them. We exist to form these relationships, which make up the energy that holds creation together. When knowledge is patterned within these forces of connection it is sustainable over deep time. Tyson Yunkaporta, Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World

Petroglyph, about 5.000 BC. Khakassia

[my-so-called-euphoria]

End of Year Best of Lists for 2023

First year since I started tumblr I don’t have a top ten films. I have missed a lot, and expect the Holdovers, Past Lives, Poor Thing would’ve made the cut but I haven’t seen them yet.

Instead I’m just going to make a list of favourite first-time reads, views of 2023 (honestly, the year broke me of my usual list-making).

Books

Jane Roberts -Seth Speaks

Tyson Yunkaporta - Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking can Save the World

James Madden - Unidentified Flying Hyperobject: UFO’s, Philosophy, and the End of the World

Television

Succession

The Last of Us

Last Chance U (the basketball one, both seasons)

The Bear

Film

Leave the World Behind

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-verse

May December

Bottoms

No One Will Save You

Beau is Afraid

Saltburn

[eleanor-arroway]

“What we found was a broad, common description of Indigenous ways of valuing, ways of being, ways of knowing, and ways of doing. These things had a widespread order, a sequence in all cultural activities in which people were sharing or producing knowledge on Country. We had our own personal metaphors for describing this process of induction. I referred to it as spirit, head, heart, and hands. Mumma Doris knew it as Respect, Connect, Reflect, Direct. She insisted on this order. She also noted that non-Aboriginal people seemed to work through the same steps but in reverse.

Mumma Doris has observed interventions and programs imposed on her community for over half a century, noticing that they always begin with the last step, Direct. Government agents come into the community with a plan for change, and they direct activities toward this change immediately. When it all fails, they go backward to the next step. Reflect. They gather data and measure outcomes and try to figure out what went wrong. Then they realize they didn’t form relationships with the community, so belatedly they go to the next step, Connect. Through these relationships they discover the final step (which should have been the first), finding a profound respect for members of the community they ruined. They cry as they say farewell and return to the city, calling, “Thank you! I have learned so much from you!”

Invert that process and you’ll have something approximating an appropriate way of coming to Indigenous Knowledge and working toward sustainable solutions. The first step of Respect is aligned with values and protocols of introduction, setting rules and boundaries. This is the work of your spirit, your gut. The second step, Connect, is about establishing strong relationships and routines of exchange that are equal for all involved. Your way of being is your way of relating, because all things only exist in relationship to other things. This is the work of your heart. The third step, Reflect, is about thinking as part of the group and collectively establishing a shared body of knowledge to inform what you will do. This is the work of the head. The final step, Direct, is about acting on that shared knowledge in ways that are negotiated by all. This is the work of the hands.

Respect, Connect, Reflect, Direct – in that order. Everything in creation is sentient and carries knowledge, therefore everything is deserving of our respect.”

- Tyson Yunkaporta, Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save The World

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Janet Golder Kngwarreye b.1973 Australian First Nations (Anmatyerre) Artist "Women's Dreaming" Acrylic on canvas 200 x 130 cm

* * * * “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

[astranemus]

Sometimes it is hard to write in English when you’ve been talking to your great-grandmother on the phone but she is also your niece, and in her language there are no separate words for time and space. In her kinship system every three generations there is a reset in which your grandparents’ parents are classified as your children, an eternal cycle of renewal. In her traditional language she asks you something that translates directly into English as ‘what place’ but actually means ‘what time’, and you reluctantly shift yourself into that paradigm, because you know it will be hard as hell to shift back out of it again when you go back to work. Kinship moves in cycles, the land moves in seasonal cycles, the sky moves in stellar cycles and time is so bound up in those things that it is not even a separate concept from space. We experience time in a very different way from people immersed in flat schedules and story-less surfaces. In our spheres of existence, time does not go in a straight line, and it is as tangible as the ground we stand on.

Tyson Yunkaporta, Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World

[forbidden-sorcery]

From an Aboriginal cosmological point of view, the uncertainty problem is resolved when you admit you are part of the field and accept your subjectivity. If you want to know what’s in the box so bad, drink the poison yourself and climb in. After my yarns with Percy, I begin to see the uncertainty principle not as a law but as an expression of frustration about the impossibility of achieving godlike scientific objectivity. Scientists currently have to remove all traces of themselves from experiments, otherwise their data is considered to be contaminated. Contaminated with what? With the filthy reality of belongingness? The toxic realisation that if we can’t stand outside of a field we can’t own it? I don’t see science embracing Indigenous methods of inquiry any time soon, as Indigenous Knowledge is not wanted at the level of how, only at the level of what, a resource to be plundered rather than a source of knowledge processes. ‘Show me where some plants are so I can synthesise a compound and make drugs out of it!’

Tyson Yunkaporta - Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World

[theinquisitxor]

I always like seeing what people pick!

[freckles-and-books]

Finished Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear: Poems from Gaza and Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World. Now to really dive into The Parisian.

Weekend reading

[bookclub4m]

20 Philosophy books by BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, & People of Colour) Authors

Every month Book Club for Masochists: A Readers’ Advisory Podcasts chooses a genre at random and we read and discuss books from that genre. We also put together book lists for each episode/genre that feature works by BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, & People of Colour) authors to help our listeners diversify their readers’ advisory. All of the lists can be found here.

The Promise of Happiness by Sarah Ahmed

Tsawalk: A Nuu-chah-nulth Worldview by Umeek / E Richard Atleo

The Location of Culture by Homi K. Bhabha

Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds by Adrienne Maree Brown

Are Prisons Obsolete? by Angela Y. Davis

The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon

Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire

Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center by bell hooks

The God Equation: The Quest for a Theory of Everything by Michio Kaku

Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches by Audre Lorde

Memory Serves: Oratories by Lee Maracle

Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity by José Esteban Muñoz

Everyday Ubuntu: Living Better Together, the African Way by Mungi Ngomane

Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o

Mexican Philosophy in the 20th Century: Essential Readings edited by Carlos Alberto Sánchez & Robert Eli Sanchez Jr.

As We Have Always Done: Indigenous Freedom through Radical Resistance by  Leanne Betasamosake Simpson

Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity by C. Riley Snorton

Mathematics for Human Flourishing by Francis Su

Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind: Informal Talks on Zen Meditation and Practice by Shunryu Suzuki

Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World by Tyson Yunkaporta

[ontologicalnightmare]

“Everything is creation and there are always patterns to perceive. If wombats are on the move, the sap is running in the gum trees and it’s time to cut bark. If the tea trees are flowering, lychees and cherries will be available at the supermarket, where ‘Jingle Bell Rock’ will be playing in an interminable loop. Controls preventing capital flight are announced in one country, so in another country the real estate market will plummet and interest rates will come down in response to rising unemployment. Loans will be taken out to fund infrastructure projects that will buoy up the construction industry, the biggest employer. Later, there will be cuts made to social programs when those loans need to be repaid. And then there is the weather.

In the US a couple hires a weather modification company to prevent it from raining on their wedding day and there is a forest fire in their district two weeks later. Elsewhere, iron filings are dumped in the ocean to create algal blooms for carbon capture experiments in climate engineering. Silver oxide is sprayed in the sky to seed clouds for rain, temporarily clearing the pollution from a city that is hosting a sporting event. Thailand innovates a cloud-seeding technique that makes it a world leader in the field, while online companies advertise their weather control expertise to governments all over the world.

I see on the website for Weather Modification Incorporated that an Australian state government agency has procured equipment, pilots and training for an extensive cloud-seeding project involving the spraying of toxic elements in the sky. I write to the agency asking for any research they have done on the environmental and human health effects of this program, and they respond with links to web pages showing research into the levels of rainfall produced by the project. I ask again for health and environmental impact studies and receive no reply. Weeks later I return to those web pages to find they have been removed.

If land and people are not even considered as variables in these weather experiments, then it is certain all the interrelated elements of dynamic weather systems and the knock-on effects of geo-engineering are not informing these activities either. The people conducting them are like children doing a rain dance. Future survival of all life on this planet will be dependent on humans being able to perceive and be custodians of the patterns of creation again, which in turn requires a completely different way of living in relation to the land.”

Tyson Yunkaporta, Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World

[kiunlo]

boy this shit took me hours to write.

anyways what i was gonna rant about before i forgot what i was meant to be doing (lmao) was a specific popular superbat fic which I think I've talked about before, but only spoke about some aspects of it before in another post about white authors writing shit that tips off indigenous people of their ideas about us, but that others are not tipped off by (because they are white or just not indigenous). the examples i wrote about before were specifically where an author wrote about bruce owning a fucking house in Hawaiʻi, and then a different fic about bruce having climbed Uluru. both these things being things that of course are perfectly in align with what stupid white billionaires do, but which when written as being a thing that bruce does without even thinking about the repercussions of such an action (out of character if you go with the version of bruce wayne that actually cares about social issues and uses his money for bettering gotham city and the world, especially bettering groups of people who are minorities and/or of a much lower class than him), it completely and utterly breaks the immersion for anyone who is either indigenous (me) or who understands these issues well (allies to indigenous people).

but i never really went into a huge amount of detail of that specific fic where bruce offhandedly remarks to clark and his parents about him having climbed Uluru and shit, because at the time. well. it was just an offhanded remark among many other things bruce was bragging about. the fic wasn't about that. but it's the thing that as an Australian Aboriginal person that stuck with me. everything else about that fic? couldn't fucking tell you what it was about. can't remember the premise/plot. can't remember the fic name or the fic author. only knew that some people did fucking…concept art for it. it was a one shot i think. and it was popular. but i remember in vivid detail the internal monologue of bruce climbing Uluru cuz his dumb white ass got bitten by a snake and for some completely and entirely unknown reason, his anti-venom would be found at the top of Uluru. And I have major fucking issues with it. Because it's an offhanded remark to bruce, to clark, to clarks parents, and sub-sequentially, the author. but it's not offhanded to me. it's legit all i remember about that fic as an Aboriginal person. so i'm gonna treat it with the importance that i think it deserves.

in case it's not completely fucking obvious, climbing Uluru is a Big Fat Fucking Bad Idea. Australian Aboriginal people have been saying for much longer than the people who are reading this have been alive for to Not Fucking Climb Uluru You Stupid Cunt. Why? It is sacred to the local Aboriginal people who live near Uluru. Don't give a shit about sacred sites of indigenous people? It's also physically dangerous. people have died on Uluru. YES DIED!!! You endanger yourself and others by climbing it. Because if you die there, somebody else has to risk their health and wellbeing and potentially their life to drag your stupid fucking corpse back down from Uluru. It is an inherently fucking selfish and self-important thing to do, which is why you shouldn't be doing it.

But also. I know a lot of (white) people don't put a whole lot of stock into indigenous religion or spirituality, but I'm going to be putting a quote here by Dr. Tyson Yunkaporta, an Aboriginal man from the Apalech Clan, from his book "Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World" which explains another aspect of the issues with in general disturbing the areas and landmarks sacred to Australian Aboriginal people.

"Max suggests that in recent decades people have been becoming aware of rock spirit, reminding me of what has been going on at Uluru. There is a shed there full of rocks. For a long time, tourists took stones away from that sacred site as souvenirs, then a few decades ago something strange began to happen. The tourists started mailing the rocks back with panicked reports of weird happenings, disturbed sleep, bad luck, ghostly visitations and terrible accidents. Somehow they knew it was because of the rocks, and were sending them back with desperate apologies. So many were returned that they had to build a big storage shed to house them. In our Law we know that rocks are sentient and contain spirit. You can’t just pick one up and carry it home, as you will disturb its spirit and it will disturb you in turn. If you sit at any campfire for a yarn with Aboriginal people anywhere on this continent, you will be sure to hear a cautionary tale about a relative who was silly enough to pick up a rock and take it home, who then got sick or was haunted or killed or went crazy. A lot of rocks are benevolent and enjoy being used and traded, but you have to follow the guidance of the old people to know which ones you can use. Rocks are to be respected."

You may think your white ass is safe from all of this, but really you're not. My own (white) mum tells me a story from when I was a lot younger, when my mum ended up finding an old spearhead which clearly must have been used by an Aboriginal person a long time ago. She'd dug it up, near a local park. It had looked quite old when she'd found it. She took it home with her. Immediately started experiencing a lot of negative shit going on in her life. She couldn't sleep. She'd been seeing things, hearing voices. One voice told her very loudly and very abruptly to put the spearhead back where she found it. She did. Everything that had been going on immediately stopped. She learned to never mess with Aboriginal people's shit again, and to treat such things with utmost respect.

That is to say that no matter what race or ethnicity you are or what religion you believe in, screwing around with Aboriginal people's business gets you into trouble, whether you believe the trouble will come for you or not. No matter how superstitious you are or not. No matter how sceptical you are or not. These things will come to bite you back in the ass no matter what. And to think that a stupid ass white fella like Bruce Wayne would ever climb Uluru without some sort of terrible thing happening to him is quite silly.

Also, on the pure like…animal biology side of things? If you're out near Uluru, the snakes you're gonna potentially get bit by are so supremely venomous that you're dead in THIRTY MINUTES without treatment!!! and also…how'd he get bit anyways? You know most people get bit by snakes in Australia because they PURPOSEFULLY MESSED AROUND with the snake in the first place, yeah? Not only should bruce be fucking dead as a doorknob, but how is climbing Uluru gonna get him the anti-venom anyways? Do you even know how anti-venom is even made? They inject small little amounts of venom into HORSES until they're literally immune to it, and it's the ANTI-BODIES OF THE HORSE that are injected into you!!! Unless there are fucking snake-venom-immune horses on top of Uluru, he's not finding shit up there. He's gonna go up there and fucking die just like every other dumbass whitefella who went up there and got unlucky.

It's just. People say a whole lot of fucking shit about fanfic authors going above and beyond to get things right in their fics by doing hours of research to make sure that if an expert in some sort of field ends up reading their stupid fic that they won't find issues with it, or at the very least just minor issues. And people also say a lot of shit like this for stuff that's meant to be just a few lines here and there. But like. it's either the biggest lie people have ever told about fanfic, or they do it for OTHER stuff, but not for indigenous things. not for outback australia things. again, as i said in another post, you write shit about outback australia or about Aboriginal people? we'll fucking see it mate. trust me. i just wish people would actually care more about the things they write and not get shit like this so wildly fucking wrong. Because your fucking readers do read that shit and go "oohhh wow cool bruce climbed Uluru how epic and cool of him" and it's um. not actually cool at all. and i know for a fact if i found that fic again and said i was Aboriginal and they were wrong to put that in their story and showed all the reasons why, their white ass would be fucking mad at me for daring to challenge them. for daring to say "hey you got this shit wrong man please remove that from your fic please." because white people can never just go "oh okay yeah sure i didn't know that sorry." because even when a whitefella stands up for us, not even they are listened to.

case in point, someone (a white australian) already made a long ass comment on that persons fic about everything i mentioned. every other comment was replied to except for that one. and to this day that "offhanded remark" that bruce makes is still there. lmao. lmao. lmao.

about to rant about at superbat fanfic i saw a long while ago that's still got me pissed lmao