Right Story, Wrong Story: Adventures in Indigenous Thinking
Tyson Yunkaporta
Sand Talk, Tyson Yunkaporta’s bestselling debut, cast an Indigenous lens on contemporary society. It was, said Melissa Lucashenko, ‘an extraordinary invitation into the world of the Dreaming’.
Right Story, Wrong Story extends Yunkaporta’s explorations of how we can learn from Indigenous thinking. Along the way, he talks to a range of people including liberal economists, memorisation experts, Frisian ecologists, and Elders who are wood carvers, mathematicians and storytellers.
Right Story, Wrong Story describes how our relationship with land is inseparable from how we relate to each other. This book is a sequence of thought experiments, which are, as Yunkaporta writes, ‘crowd-sourced narratives where everybody’s contribution to the story, no matter how contradictory, is honoured and included…the closest thing I can find in the world to the Aboriginal collective process of what we call “yarning”.’
And, as he argues, story is at the heart of everything. But what is right or wrong story? This exhilarating book is an attempt to answer that question. Right Story, Wrong Story is a formidably original essay about how we teach and learn, and how we can talk to each other to shape forms of collective thinking that are aligned with land and creation.
INTERVIEWS and REVIEWS
ABC Listen: Soul Search
Age
Australian Financial Review: Conspiracy theories are derailing the Yes vote (op-ed) ($)
Emergence magazine
LitHub
The Garret podcast (CW: suicide and mental ill-health)
Political Hope podcast
Readings
Readings: Best nonfiction of 2023
SBS: The Cook Up
Storymakers Institute
Wild with Sarah Wilson podcast
andRight Story, Wrong Story
‘Bristles with revelation…vigorous brilliance…both sensible and subversive.’
‘Right Story, Wrong Story, at its core, is an invitation to sit, listen and share space in your head with another human being for a while. It’s compelling, it’s refreshing and it’s something I would recommend to anyone disillusioned with modernity and looking for a new perspective.’
‘The scope of his intellect is breathtaking…Each chapter requires careful reading, then a pause to reflect and digest the ideas and information. ★★★★★’
‘There is so much to learn about Indigenous thinking and Yunkaporta is determined to make sure all of that knowledge is shared with the world. Right Story, Wrong Story, is the perfect gift for the insatiable knowledge seeker in your life.’
‘Engaging and generous…An ideal gift for anyone feeling disillusioned by the state of the world.’
‘It will take many re-readings to understand everything Yunkaporta is trying to say in this amazing essay, but it is a journey I am more than willing to join him on.’
‘It was certainty that drove a bulldozer through the oldest and deepest philosophic statement on earth at Burrup Peninsula. Sand Talk offers no certainties and Tyson Yunkaporta is not a bulldozer driver. This is a book of cultural and philosophic intrigue. Read it.’
‘An extraordinary invitation into the world of the Dreaming…Unheralded.’
