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
Australian Financial Review: Conspiracy theories are derailing the Yes vote (op-ed) ($)
The Garret podcast (CW: suicide and mental ill-health)
Political Hope podcast
Readings
Storymakers Institute
Wild with Sarah Wilson 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.’
‘Clever, funny, thought provoking, sensible and generous all at the same time. A must read!’
‘Thought-provoking.’
‘Yunkaporta’s writing style is disarming in the best way possible, never speaking to the reader with anything except earnest camaraderie and effortlessly weaving between corny jokes, mythological allusion, and rigorous cultural theory…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.’