Yunkaporta, Tyson. _Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World_. First edition. New York, New York: HarperOne, an imprint of HarperCollins Publications, 2020. # Progressive Summary # Key Points # Resonances # Oppositions # Questions / Comments '' # Quotes ## The Porcupine, the Paleo-mind, and the Grand Design > “There is a pattern to the universe and everything in it, and there are knowledge systems and traditions that follow this pattern to maintain balance, to keep the temptations of narcissism in check. But recent traditions have emerged that break down creation systems like a virus, infecting complex patterns with artificial simplicity, exercising a civilizing control over what some see as chaos. The Sumerians started it. The Romans perfected it. The Anglosphere inherited it. The world is now mired in it.” > > “The war between good and evil is in reality an imposition of stupidity and simplicity over wisdom and complexity.” > “Our knowledge endures because everybody carries a part of it, no matter how fragmentary. If you want to see the pattern of creation, you talk to everybody and listen carefully. Authentic knowledge processes are easy to verify if you are familiar with that pattern—each part reflects the design of the whole system. If the pattern is present, the knowledge is true, whether the speaker is wearing a grass skirt or a business suit or a school uniform.” > “We’ve spent a lot of time sparring in a traditional style that was once done with stone knives. The rules of engagement are that you can only cut your opponent on the arms, shoulders, or back (extremely difficult to do) and—here’s the kicker—at the end of the fight the winner must get cut up the same as the loser, so that nobody can walk away with a grudge. It’s hard enough to cut somebody on the back with a stone knife when they’re trying to do the same to you, but it’s even harder when you know that every time you cut them you’re really just cutting yourself. In our yarns following these sessions we decided this kind of combat forces you to see your enemy’s point of view, and by the end of it you can no longer be opponents because you’re connected by mutual respect and understanding." > “Stone teaches us that we should be strong no matter what tries to crack us or wear us down, keeping an unbreakable core through your culture and your beliefs. The majority of this earth is rock, and while water and plants make up its surface, the body of the earth, the part that keeps it all together, is rock. You can have life and creation, but it will all crumble without a solid base. Same with society, companies, relationships, identities, knowledge—almost anything both tangible and intangible. Like those forests and trees sitting as a skin over the rocks of the earth: without that strength inside, without that stone, it would crumble.” > “But who is Indigenous? For the purposes of the thought experiments on sustainability in this book, an Indigenous person is a member of a community retaining memories of life lived sustainably on a land base, as part of that land base. Indigenous Knowledge is any application of those memories as living knowledge to improve present and future circumstances.”