Take a deep breath before starting to read this innovative author’s most recent book and be prepared to sit around a metaphorical fire and enjoy a yarn or two.

Yunkaporta established a reputation with his first book, Sand Talk, for using indigenous methods of inquiry to resolve complex issues and explore global crises. He is an Aboriginal academic and scholar who founded the Indigenous Knowledge Systems Lab at Deakin University.

But first, to that title. Right story, he writes, is not about objective truth, but the metaphors, relations and narratives of interconnected communities, living in complex contexts of knowledge and economy, aligned with the patterns of land and creation. So right story comes from groups living in right relation with each other and the land. While wrong story means unilateral or unbalanced ritual, word or thought.

To tell wrong story in his book, he shares some stories or propaganda made by individuals or corrupt groups (Indigenous and non-Indigenous people), separated from land and spirit.

The scope of his intellect is breathtaking, and he carves tools and weapons for each chapter before he even writes it. These chapters not only deal with Indigenous thinking in Australia by academics and scientists, but also indigenous leaders from many lands.

From Denmark, Canada, and the US to a Frisian ecologist in the Netherlands, information is exchanged and sometimes brings surprising common knowledge, such as firestick land management of Netherlands heather country for thousands of years.

Women’s wisdom is revealed in yarns with two academics, Indigenous elders and keepers of knowledge. They advocate legal pluralism, with indigenous law and settler legal systems integrated.

Each chapter in Right Story, Wrong Story requires careful reading, then a pause to reflect and digest the ideas and information. Yunkaporta warns against self-proclaimed shamans, and claims there is no such thing as one truth, as for every right story there are 100 other right stories to contradict it, and all need to be comfortable with that.

In one yarn, he asked the land for the answer to the current developmental model. His version of earth’s answer is, ‘Slow down. Calm down. Scale down. Step down’.

Reviewed by Jennifer Somerville

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Tyson Yunkaporta is an academic, an arts critic, and a researcher who belongs to the Apalech Clan in far north Queensland.

He carves traditional tools and weapons and also works as a senior lecturer in Indigenous Knowledges at Deakin University in Melbourne.

His book Sand Talk, is a book about Indigenous thinking and how it can save the world.

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.