Border Work | Tyson Yunkaporta
My guest on this episode is Tyson Yunkaporta, an Aboriginal Australian scholar and member of the Apalech Clan in far north Queensland. He founded the Indigenous Knowledge Systems Lab at Deakin University and wrote Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World, which examines how Aboriginal methods of inquiry address contemporary ecological and social challenges. In 2025, his second book, Right Story, Wrong Story: How To Have Fearless Conversations in Hell was released.
Tyson’s work brings Aboriginal ways of knowing into dialogue with complexity science, examining how Indigenous thought represents systems thinking developed over tens of thousands of years. His methodology honours Aboriginal traditions of knowledge creation through “yarning” - collaborative dialogue through stories and mutual respect - and “sand talk,” the practice of drawing symbols in earth to convey complex ideas.
Show Notes
- Magpie Migrations
- Making ceremony among tourists
- From sacred entities to souvenirs
- Lawful voyaging: the three pillars of ancestral travel
- Culture-bound syndrome / sorry rocks
- Telling story / experiencing the more-than-human
- Sex tourism: The twisted impulses of sexual energy
- If you don’t move with the land, the land will move you
- Men’s and women’s business
- Falling in love with travel
Homework
Transcript
The transcript is available via Chris's Substack page. You can sign up for free and read along here: https://chrischristou.substack.com/
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