This remarkable book is about everything from echidnas to evolution, cosmology to cooking, sex and science and spirits to Schrödinger’s cat.
Tyson Yunkaporta looks at global systems from an Indigenous perspective. He asks how contemporary life diverges from the pattern of creation. How does this affect us? How can we do things differently?
Sand Talk provides a template for living. It’s about how lines and symbols and shapes can help us make sense of the world. It’s about how we learn and how we remember. It’s about talking to everybody and listening carefully. It’s about finding different ways to look at things.
Most of all it’s about Indigenous thinking, and how it can save the world.
INTERVIEWS and REVIEWS
3RRR: The Mission
ABC Central Victoria: Breakfast (3:27:00)
ABC Melbourne: Mornings
ABC Radio: Myf Warhurst
ABC Radio National: All in the Mind
ABC Radio National: Bookshelf
ABC Radio National: The Bookshelf
ABC Radio National: Late Night Live
Adelaide Advertiser ($)
Antithesis Journal
Australian (op-ed) ($)
Beyond Crisis: Tyson Yunkaporta, David Suzuki and Helena Norberg-Hodge (YouTube)
Blind Insights
Booktopia blog: Q & A
Chat 10 Looks 3
Conversation (extract)
Deakin University: Disruptr
Dr Karl: Shirtloads of Science podcast
Fest
Fifth Estate
Griffith Review: All our landscapes are broken (op ed)
Inspirational Insights podcast
Jim Rutt Show
The Latch: 12 Must-Read Books From First Nations Authors
Limelight: From the Heart: The Voice, the Arts and Australian Identity (op-ed)
New York Times
Off the Leash
Political Hope podcast
Publishing Perspectives
Readings
Readings: Explore nonfiction from First Nation Australians
Rebel Wisdom (video)
Surf Coast Times
Sydney Morning Herald
Talking Words podcast
Team Human podcast
The Multiverse According to Ben podcast
The State of Us podcast
WBAA
Wheeler Centre podcast
Wild with Sarah Wilson podcast
Word for Word festival: key note
Writers Voice podcast
‘An extraordinary invitation into the world of the Dreaming… Unheralded.’
‘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.’
‘Radical ideas, bursting with reason.’
‘After two hundred years, Indigenous thinkers are claiming the right to interpret Aboriginal Australia. It is a revolutionary change: here, in this compelling book, are its first fruits.’
‘An exhilarating meditation on different ways of knowing and being. Sand Talk is playful, profound and fiercely original.’
‘A familiar Indigenous sense of humour and generosity of sharing knowledge makes this book enjoyable to read…Like Dark Emu, Yunkaporta’s book will have people talking.’
‘Tyson Yunkaporta’s Sand Talk is an extraordinary reading experience. It’s both philosophical and practical, and underpinned by a compassionate yet realistic humanity.’
‘Asks the reader to emotionally connect to with not only the text, but connect to the author through the text.’
‘Clever, funny, thought provoking, sensible and generous all at the same time. A must read!’
‘Readable, digestible and quite frankly exciting.’
‘Thought-provoking.’
‘Sand Talk is an important book. Tyson Yunkaporta an important and original thinker and writer. The book unpacks for us something originally genius about Indigenous thought, which has for too long been dismissed as archaic folk knowledge from old oral cultures of interest only to academics and fetishists. This book shows how vital and alive and essential Indigenous ways of being and thinking are. Yunkaporta is so smart, funny, and accessible. Everyone needs to read this.’
‘Challenges us to think differently – and change the world… It is a timely and insightful read.’
‘Perhaps the most unusual science book of the year…It’s a dramatically new (to some) and absorbing way of engaging with the world, and stops just short of exasperation with self-important “western science”.’ Guardian
‘A bold voice among a growing field of Australian Indigenous writing that challenged a lot of my assumptions.’