The Conversation Factory Book Club: Sand Talk by Tyson Yunkaporta

The Conversation Factory book club is an experiment I’ve been running for a few months now. I’m experimenting with deeper conversations and collaborations with the subscribers of the Conversation Factory Insiders group as well as working to go deeper with some of the ideas that have been shared on the Podcast.

This is the first prototype, that I ran a few months back with two Alums of the Facilitation Masterclass, Meredith England and Jenn Hayslett. I won’t say more about them - they introduce themselves at the *end* of the episode... I like the idea of them just being trusted friends to you, because they are trusted friends to me!

If you haven’t listened to the episode where I interview Tyson Yunkaporta, the author of Sand Talk, about how Indigenous thinking can (and will) save the world, I think you can still enjoy this episode...even if you haven’t read the book...although I think you should!

As Tyson says in his book:

“There are a lot of opportunities for sustainable innovation through the dialogue of Indigenous and non-Indigenous ways of living...the problem with this communication so far has been asymmetry - when power relations are so skewed that most communication is one way, there is not much opportunity for the brackish waters of hybridity to stew up something exciting.”

This is a powerful image, to have a real, two-way conversation, as equals, between modern and indigenous ways of thinking, and to allow something new to emerge from the turbid, brackish waters…This conversation is hopefully another positive step in that direction.

This conversation is a Yarn, in the Aboriginal sense of the word. As Tyson taught me, Yarning is the sharing of anecdotes, stories, and experiences from the lived reality of the participants. It’s the way that Aboriginal communities connect, learn and decide together.

And actual Sand Talk is a part of Yarning. Sand Talk, the book, is grounded in a series of drawings, drawn, literally, on the ground, in the Sand.

Sand Talk, in another, more literal interpretation, is visual thinking as a grounding for a conversation. This kind of talk is something that I think is missing in nearly every kind of meeting...saying, "Can I draw this for you? This is what I am seeing. This is the way I am seeing what you are talking about right now.” ...and looking at those pictures of the world, together.

Most meetings are just a bunch of air talk instead of Sand Talk, and I would literally love more Sand Talk in more meetings.

That’s my rant for now. I hope you enjoy this conversation.

If you're interested in supporting the podcast and potentially joining us for one of these book club conversations, subscribe to the Conversation Factory insider! In September we’re gathering to read and connect with past podcast guest Adam Kahane, to talk about his new book, Facilitating Breakthrough. It’s going to be awesome.

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LINKS, QUOTES, NOTES, AND RESOURCES

Sand Talk, by Tyson Yunkaporta

Tyson Yunkaporta on The Conversation Factory

Jenn's Quotes from Sand Talk:

"In her kinship system every three generations there is a reset in which your grandparents’ parents are classified as your children, an eternal cycle of renewal." (p. 38)

"Perhaps the desire to create closed systems and keep time going in a straight line is the reason for Second Peoples’ obsession with creating fences, walls, borders, great divides, and great barriers." (p 46)

"The end point of a yarn is a set of understandings, values, and directions shared by all members of the group in a loose consensus that is inclusive of diverse points of view." (P. 115)

Daniel's Quotes from Sand Talk:

“You can’t push people to share knowledge...you just accept what they think you’re ready for…” P. 41

“There are a lot of opportunities for sustainable innovation through the dialogue of Indiginous and non-Indiginous ways of living...the problem with this communication so far has been asymmetry - when power relations are so skewed that most communication is one way, there is not much opportunity for the brackish waters of hybridity to stew up something exciting.”

"...human cognition is rooted in navigation, spatial thinking and relatedness...all bound up in a place and a story."

Minute 2

"If people are laughing, they are learning. True learning is a joy because it is an act of creation." I sat with that for a long time. And I also really felt moved and a lot of questioning came up for me in terms of his writing about public education as indoctrination, as how to... The historical chapter, really looking at how public education is meant to create sameness and homogeneity and looking at it as this Germanic, oppressive structure. So a lot of questioning around that that I'm really sitting with. I think that's enough for now.

Minute 4

So, probably an important thing that I feel like I need to say about myself is I'm Australian, and so reading Tyson's book feels, that kind of deeply connecting for me to where I live and to my place, but also there's so much pain and horror and disconnection around how indigenous people have been treated for hundreds of years here in Australia, and so just letting that be the backdrop to my reading. And I guess, and just really bringing a desire, just at a really personal level, for I guess what a friend of mine invited me into years ago where he was like, "Oh. You white people think that you can't experience being on country." He's like, "Of course you can experience being on country. Why would you stay disconnected to that?" Yeah. So it felt like a real invitation for me for this book.

Minute 6

Something that I keep, keep coming back to is the way he talks about, I guess, the qualities or the features of an agent of sustainability is what he talks about. So he paints this picture of a person who needs to be, the connectedness, the diversify, interact, and adapt. And they're those four words, people give you four words, four questions and it's like, "Oh, great. That's easy." But I've just been really mulling over that over the last couple of days about, what does that... How can I take on those qualities? How can I bring those ways of being into the systems that I'm working in? And specifically because I work in sustainability and so I'm just really interested in that thread that he's bringing through this about what's our role in the world.

Minute 11

Daniel Stillman:

Embodied cognition is something that we've been doing for as long as we are people, just being notched on a bone to count higher than we can count with our brains, we put half of our brain into the objects that we use. And so I feel like Tyson's book really helped me, it was very reassuring to see, I think sometimes we think traditional thinking is very woo-woo, pseudo-spiritual. And he talks about this as just performative. Blowing on a didgeridoo and doing a dance and making textiles, as if that's being indigenous. And he's like, "No, it's thinking deeply, it's connecting, it's dealing with complexity, it's thinking about where we've come from and where we're going, it's being a steward of the land."

Minute 15

And then there's this great bit where he says, "I use many terms that I don't particularly like, such as the dreaming," just because basically it helps people understand because you're reading it in English. And he says, "Because in any case, it's almost impossible to speak in English without them, unless you want to say, super rational, inter-dimensional ontology, endogenous, custodial, ritual complexes." I was like, okay so that's the beginning of the idea of what the dreaming is.

Minute 26

The kinship mind is a way of looking, it's not the only way, and certainly "Western thinking" is not cyclical, it is 100% linear, and the dialogue between cyclical and linear is, and this is one of the things that I think I took from Tyson's book as well is, there hasn't been a true two-way dialogue between these first people's and second people's ways of thinking and being, and that's what he's really trying to offer and is a true conversation where, can Aboriginal people finally, truly benefit from a modern system and not have it be abusive to them? And can the modern system learn, really, really learn better ways of being to transform the system that we are all living in? Because it doesn't work for a lot of people, and it's certainly not sustainable.

Minute 30

I had a sticky note also around yarning protocols. It has protocols of active listening, mutual respect, and building on what others have said, rather than openly contradicting or debating. There's no firm protocol of one person speaking at a time. The back and forth yarning style neutralizes the unpleasant phenomenon that occurs in many conversations, meetings, and dialogues that occur of grandstanding and waffling while the rest of the group drowns in boredom. Monologues are rare in Aboriginal culture, unless a senior person is telling a long story or an angry person is airing grievances.

I mean, it's just, the primary mode of communication in yarns in narrative, the sharing of anecdotes, stories, and experiences from the lived reality of the participants. And the actual Sand Talk as part of it. And this is something that I think is missing in most, in every kind of meeting, is the visual grounding of the conversation and saying like, "Can I draw this for you? This is what I am seeing. This is the way I am seeing what I am talking about right now and stepping away..." Literally, most meetings are just a bunch of air talk instead of Sand Talk, and I would literally love more Sand Talk in more meetings.

Minute 35

And I guess it just reminded me again, which is something that I'm reminded of constantly, of just the usefulness of creating those shared physical and visual representations of what it unlocks for people, of what it makes possible. And because it makes it easier also for people to disagree, because they're looking at it and they're like, "But those two things don't fit together for me, so why have you put them together?" Or like, I'll draw an arrow between two things and they're like, "Well..." And it will bring up a tension that previously will feel like a relational tension or a conceptual tension that they can't speak, but it's like, they can verbalize what they disagree with, which.... Yeah. I'm just reminded of that, and just, yeah, how we put those lines in the sand.

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Daniel Stillman:

This is me making my editing job easier everybody. Welcome to the Conversation Factory Book Club tape one, or two, depending on how you decide to count things. All right. We talked about just doing a Round Robin, so let's go alphabetically, which seems a totally reasonable way to do it. Jenn, that means you get to go first. Let's just take a couple minutes and talk about the questions we were sitting with. As we were reading Sand Talk, what did we notice about ourselves? What did you bring to this? And what is it doing to you? How is it changing your story and how are you taking it into your work?

Jenn Hayslett:

Thanks, Daniel. All big questions. And I think I'll start with the question that Meredith posed as we were beginning to talk about how was I as a reader in approaching this very different, non-linear book that is purposefully non-linear, and that the author, Tyson Yunkaporta, did I say that correctly do you think? Yeah? Is trying to-

Daniel Stillman:

I think so.

Jenn Hayslett:

... introduce his different way of thinking, or not just his, but an Aboriginal, his cultural way of thinking. And so there's a lot of weaving that happens and I had to really do a lot of self-talk around not wanting it to be linear, allowing myself to be woven into the circular motions of the story and of the text. And so I just really noticed that.

Jenn Hayslett:

I also did a tremendous amount of underlining and stars and hearts and yeah, things that I just felt very connected to and "if people are laughing, they are learning. True learning is a joy because it is an act of creation."

Jenn Hayslett:

I sat with that for a long time. And I also really felt moved and a lot of questioning came up for me in terms of his writing about public education as indoctrination, as how to... The historical chapter, really looking at how public education is meant to create sameness and homogeneity and looking at it as this Germanic, oppressive structure. So a lot of questioning around that that I'm really sitting with. I think that's enough for now.

Daniel Stillman:

Okay. That's good. Thank you for that, Jenn. And Meredith, I guess the same for you?

Meredith England:

So, some of the stuff, a lot of the stuff that really sat with me with this book was very physical stuff in the way that he talks about, the physical stories that he tells. I love the hand movement, the hands at the beginning where he's like, "Here is your world and I'm looking at it in this way." And so I'm just constantly reminded of that as I read it. And the way he talks about... He says, "I made an ax to store my understandings." And so the way that in each chapter he has a visual, which I really connect to. I find that just even for memory, for being able, something I can loop back to that suddenly has all of this meaning and that I can add meaning to it.

Meredith England:

And the way that he almost protects his thinking, or he protects and grows his thinking through making, so making an ax, making a shield, making a fishing boomerang. It just felt so... I found that just so energizing actually how he was talking about that. And really... And super inspiring as well, so that just really struck me as things that we can do with our bodies and with our hands that are just so connected to actually deepening what we're thinking about.

Meredith England:

And he talks about custodianship and for me, the idea of the theme of stewardship is something that has just completely shaped my life, and particularly my career, and that's just how I think about life is like, what am I stewarding? And so, yeah, just really connected with some of the ways that he was talking about being an agent of sustainability.

Daniel Stillman:

There are so many things I want to pull. All the things that I want to talk about, I'm going to make a list of them, because I don't know if you can hear me scribing away while you talk about stuff, and I captured the circular versus linear thinking from you, Jenn, true learning is an act of creation. I had an old professional who used to say the same thing, "If they're laughing, they're learning." And it's just like, truth is true. These are just timeless, this is the human essence.

Daniel Stillman:

In terms of what I noticed about myself as I was reading it, even though I'm not an Australian, and I appreciate you bringing that up, Meredith, this feeling of it's triggering to face the colonial past that we are all beneficiaries of. The whole world is recovering from this giant blow that's been inflicted on the whole world. And it was kind of mind blowing, because Tyson's own story, I know, is complex. Some people would question his bonafides as a true Aboriginal person, because he's adopted on one side and I think this question of, who gets to say they're what? When this group of people has been systematically pulled away from their past and their history is like, what a head turner that is, to be, "Oh no, you can't demonstrate that you have an unbroken lineage." It's like, "Well, who could?"

Jenn Hayslett:

No one. And he really articulates that.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. And so just sitting with that head fake of like, wow, it is just so hard to sit in this moment with the pain that's been done and then, how do we countenance and deal with that fact? And as you said, Jenn, can I even use the term yarning? Is that appropriate when Tyson is trying to provide an opportunity for all of us to absorb and to be in dialogue with this other way of thinking. And so you talk about circular versus linear being in the land versus being all in our heads.

Daniel Stillman:

I mean, one of the drawings I drew, the same one you drew, Jenn, I got to hold it really, really close, the interplay between the real and the metaphorical between practice and reflection and the embodiment of cognition, which as Tyson said, this is something I really got from, it's like our entire brains, our entire ways of being come from being here in a real world and navigating a place and a space and being in a relationship with others, navigating complexity.

Daniel Stillman:

Embodied cognition is something that we've been doing for as long as we are people, just putting notches on a bone to count higher than we can count with our brains, we put half of our brain into the objects that we use. And so I feel like Tyson's book really helped me, it was very reassuring to see, I think sometimes we think traditional thinking is very woo-woo, pseudo-spiritual. And he talks about this as just performative. Blowing on a didgeridoo and doing a dance and making textiles, as if that's being indigenous. And he's like, "No, it's thinking deeply, it's connecting, it's dealing with complexity, it's thinking about where we've come from and where we're going, it's being a steward of the land."

Daniel Stillman:

And so the idea that I was not reading this book thinking that complexity theory would play so thoroughly and deeply and that embodied cognition would play so deeply and thoroughly. And that the idea of being indigenous and being connected to a land, Meredith, you and I were having a conversation just before this about, how do you get people to process data and make meaning of it? And it's like, they have to find their way, they have to become oriented and navigated and rooted in a space, which is very hard to do, it's a very complex thing. So those are all the things I mean, I think Tyson spun my head around many, many of those things.

Jenn Hayslett:

And the peace that in the list of things that you were talking about, that is more complex thinking and groundedness. The piece that also figures prominently is this idea of just being and noticing and observing pattern and in order to really, deeply observe it and watch and notice all of the pieces to be able to predict what's going to happen and know when the ants are going to come out of the nest, that that takes deep knowledge and knowing that is not just based upon being in a place and observation, but also being open to those who've come before you and really receiving the knowledge with respect.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah.

Meredith England:

Yeah. There was something, I loved the story that he tells about that, about the young boy standing on the beach who is disengaged from the activity that they're trying to do and he's basically, "Well, the sand moves here and it goes here and we're all fucked."

Jenn Hayslett:

Totally.

Meredith England:

And what I liked about it, I mean as you picked up on Jenn, and I won't have good words for it, but I really like how Tyson... Well, no, I was going to say he plays with time, he doesn't play with time, he basically says, "You have to think about time and space differently." And there's a particular thing that he wrote, so the idea of a dreaming, I have never understood what that meant, and I guess he's given me a new way of thinking about it. For Australian children, we get told stories about the dreaming of the rainbow serpent, and it's this idea, Daniel, of what you were talking about of this Aboriginal spirituality and stories of creation, but they're really old and they're made up and a bit weird.

Meredith England:

That's just to be honest, that's just how I experience them. And then there's this great bit where he says, "I use many terms that I don't particularly like, such as the dreaming," just because basically it helps people understand because you're reading it in English. And he says, "Because in any case, it's almost impossible to speak in English without them, unless you want to say, super rational, inter-dimensional ontology, endogenous, custodial, ritual complexes." I was like, "Oh." [crosstalk 00:15:40] so that's what the beginning is the idea of what the dreaming is.

Meredith England:

And just so, because for me particular, picking up what you were saying Jenn, the idea of a dreaming and windscreen wipers having a dreaming and mobile phones have a dreaming, and the bed that I slept on last night has a dreaming, feels like this invitation into spacial connections and time connections and history connections that we most often don't think about, don't really want to think about, and think don't have relevance because we're like, "Oh, onward and forward and whatever's coming next will be better that what came behind."

Meredith England:

That was something that really is messing with me a lot is this connection to time and time and history and the presence of it. I don't know. I'm not explaining it very well, but just the total non-linearity of time.

Daniel Stillman:

Okay. So this is great, and so Jenn, I want to respect that you did some pre-work and I actually think we can go through, because one of the things that you highlighted in your notes, I think relates to this, and it's the kinship system where every three generations there's a reset in which your grandparents' parents are classified as your children. And that was just like a, "What?"

Jenn Hayslett:

I know.

Daniel Stillman:

[crosstalk 00:17:05] side of the head you're like, "Oh my god." And I think this non-linearity of time and the cyclicality of kinship and to say, "What are we doing here to ourselves and to our future children grandparents?"

Jenn Hayslett:

Yeah. I mean, I'm heading into the grandma stage. I mean, my children are not ready, I'm in the age where that's an appropriate thing to be thinking about, and-

Daniel Stillman:

Right. But you're not putting pressure on them, just to be clear?

Jenn Hayslett:

No pressure.

Daniel Stillman:

If it happens, that would be great.

Jenn Hayslett:

Yeah. So, I experience that quote in a very different place and watching my parents age and that piece that this is set up in this system as a way for deep respect and knowing and fabric of care. Right? And just who knows if that actually is where it goes and I want to know more about how it plays out in the culture or originally played out, right? Because the culture is now not as rich because of the colonial impact, shouldn't say not as rich, but not as strong potentially. If there's a rebuilding.

Jenn Hayslett:

But to me what that quote says is that we are part in our families and in our communities of this cycle and we need to clarify and honor and have it in our bones that we are our grandparents' parents are classified as our children in a cycle of renewal. It's beautiful.

Daniel Stillman:

Meredith, I kind of connect this to, when you were talking about being an agent of sustainability, there's this idea that Tyson talks about and I'm very sensitive to this, this idea of going to this place to extract wisdom in the way that you go to the jungle to extract molecules, like, "Oh, let's find out what the Aboriginal doctors are giving and they'll take that molecule, versus understanding its relationship. And I feel like what Jenn's talking about, being deeply aware of your place in the cycle of life, is part of the... I really struggle with this idea of what a custodial... Why do we get to be a custodial species? But I feel like it's like, you notice, you are a person who notices what is going on in the world, which is why you do the work you do. You work in sustainability because you are aware of it and you can't not do it. You're currently a custodial species.

Meredith England:

Yes. But I guess... I think that we all are. For me, that almost feels like whether you think of it as accidental or designed, that's almost, if you look around you, it just is what we are, in that given what we have become as humans, what we have evolved into, we interact with landscapes, with other species, with each other in ways that other species don't and so for me that almost just feels descriptive, rather than even... What's the word I'm looking for? It's just describing what is, rather than describing some new understanding of it.

Meredith England:

I'm like, I don't know, for me, it's one of those base things where you could ask me why and I would just say, "Because it is." Why? Because it is. That's one of my baseline things. And I think and interestingly for me, and this feels kind of tricky, the very deeply held idea of stewardship, the history of that for me comes from my historical Christian faith, which I now don't hold, but that thread of stewardship, that completely shapes how I am, that's how I think about being a mum is like, I'm a steward of my children, I'm not...

Meredith England:

And that's literally primarily how I think about it. And so there's a... Yeah. In some ways, so the idea of being custodial, the idea of being stewards, it feels really deep for me, but I can't describe it, or I find it quite hard to unpack, because I'm like, "Well, it's just, of course." I was just describing a phenomenon more than anything else, but I think when you bring kinship and time and space and these threads of connection to it, then its starts to really, for me, that starts to really expand.

Meredith England:

And even there are lots of things, particularly in the climate change movement that are very much about trying to get people to think about time in different ways, so that they will make different decisions. So, trying to get politicians to think about their grandchildren and their grandchildren's grandchildren, and this is making me wonder like, what does it mean if we, as you say Jenn, this structural way of thinking about kinship over time and the relationships over time, what does that start to do to how we think about where we came from, and now what we do? Yeah, I guess-

Jenn Hayslett:

Yeah. I very much wish he were here, because I really want to understand more about how that kinship system plays out, what does that really look like in terms of family connection and support and is this is metaphorical, or are we talking about the bloodline family and the direct descendants? Or is it metaphorical to look at all generations? And... Yeah, this idea of a system and the classification and I'm not sure, again, he probably is choosing that word because there's no perfect word, but is there a more formal structure and does this get recorded?

Jenn Hayslett:

My guess is not, based upon other things he's said, but I wonder. I'm wondering, Meredith, do you know much about the kinship system in this-

Meredith England:

No.

Jenn Hayslett:

No.

Daniel Stillman:

And if Tyson were here, I would just, Meredith and I were talking, we had another conversation before this, my interview with Tyson is going to be launching shortly, it's really hard to get a straight answer from him on anything, so if he was here-

Meredith England:

Okay. Even if he was here, you probably wouldn't get a good answer.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. You might not get the-

Jenn Hayslett:

Right, because there's no straight path.

Daniel Stillman:

Because there's no straight path. I do think it is literal. For him, it is not figurative, it's literal. But I also think all of the lenses he offers in the book are lenses. The kinship mind is a way of looking, it's not the only way, and certainly "Western thinking" is not cyclical, it is 100% linear, and the dialogue between cyclical and linear is, and this is one of the things that I think I took from Tyson's book as well is, there hasn't been a true two-way dialogue between these first people's and second people's ways of thinking and being, and that's what he's really trying to offer and is a true conversation where, can Aboriginal people finally, truly benefit from a modern system and not have it be abusive to them? And can the modern system learn, really, really learn better ways of being to transform the system that we are all living in? Because it doesn't work for a lot of people, and it's certainly not sustainable.

Daniel Stillman:

I feel like, I want to make sure we talk about yarning, Jenn, and I don't know, Meredith, this was like, for me, the idea that there was an entire other philosophy of dialogue, dialoguing, that was, there's the traditional idea of the talking stick, which is in the [inaudible 00:27:21] tradition, it's not in the Australian Aboriginal tradition, it is non-linear, there is no front and back, there's no sides in a yarn, there's no stage, there's no talking stick, there's no beginning and end. It's just sharing narratives and laughing and maybe you're making food while you're doing it, or you're weaving, or you're not.

Daniel Stillman:

It was very, I know, Jenn, you'd captured a quote about this, "The endpoint of a yarn is a set of understandings, values, and directions shared by all members of a group in a loose consensus that is inclusive of diverse points of view," which I thought was like, this is what everybody comes to every facilitation training I've ever done. It's like, "How do I get a group of people to get aligned enough to move forward together together, really?"

Jenn Hayslett:

Yeah. This to me, is so beautiful and elusive and that's why I captured it inside of a yellow star in my image, that there's this lightness and energy around this idea for me that I am very excited about. This idea of, "a set of understandings, values, and directions, shared by all members of the group." Now, to me, there's also inclusive of diverse points of view. Now, how is it that people feel that their values are being honored? Loose consensus? What is loose consensus? Does one person feel that the group is not moving forward in the way that they wish, but they're willing to acquiesce? Or is there just the fabric of enjoyment and pleasure that moves us forward? The fabric of our shared energy and humanity? So, definitely interested in learning more.

Daniel Stillman:

I have opened up to, because I'm so glad you included a page number, because I had a sticky note also around yarning protocols. It has protocols of active listening, mutual respect, and building on what others have said, rather than openly contradicting or debating. There's no firm protocol of one person speaking at a time. The back and forth yarning style neutralizes the unpleasant phenomenon that occurs in many conversations, meetings, and dialogues that occur of grandstanding and waffling while the rest of the group drowns in boredom. Monologues are rare in Aboriginal culture, unless a senior person is telling a long story or an angry person is airing grievances.

Daniel Stillman:

I will now stop grandstanding and airing my grievances. Meredith, do you have any... I mean, I assume that the yarning protocols hit you as well, because this is what you do.

Meredith England:

So I'm only halfway through, and I don't think that I've got to that bit which is devastating, this is the... I'm totally breaKing the rules of book club, which is turning up at book club having only read half the book, so I'm really sorry.

Daniel Stillman:

But the first half is so good.

Meredith England:

The first half is so good. I'm like, have to read everything twice and this book is taking me so long to read.

Jenn Hayslett:

I still have a third left too, Meredith.

Daniel Stillman:

I have like 10 more pages that I have gotten stuck on.

Jenn Hayslett:

And it's so delicious and I-

Daniel Stillman:

We're all coming clean.

Jenn Hayslett:

Yeah. And I don't think, he would have so appreciate that, that we are talking and diving in and in it and experiencing it without needing to be linear and getting to the end, right? We're processing. we're in it.

Daniel Stillman:

Meredith, since you've got your book there, what's the part that you've gotten stuck on that you need to go over multiple times? What's something you feel like you actually had to read twice? I'm very curious to know.

Meredith England:

Yeah, yeah. So, no, I will answer that question, before I do, I'm actually really-

Daniel Stillman:

Okay.

Meredith England:

Well no, because I'm interested by what you were talking about about the Sand Talk and Air Talk. And a conversation that I was in yesterday, which was the first face to face conversation that a team that I am in had had for obviously over a year, we're all able to get in a room together down here in Melbourne. And I had my tiny little notebook and so I was scribbling notes in my book, and we're planning, we were basically conceiving and planning about 12 months' worth of work and my notebook was just getting a little bit small and I couldn't find a bigger piece of paper.

Meredith England:

And so there was a whiteboard behind me, and so I started doodling on it, just because, and we had Miro, we had two Miro screens on one side of the wall, and then there was just an empty whiteboard, and so I started doodling literally because I just needed a bigger piece of paper. And so I'd stand up and I'd doodle a bit, and then sit down and then stand up and doodle a bit, and sit down. And then by the end of it, and this wasn't about... It wasn't a great doodle or anything of what I was mapping out, but it did eventually, particular towards the end of the conversation, it enabled a different conversation.

Meredith England:

And there were words and pictures on it and stuff like that, but it made it possible for people to conceive of three previously unconnected, or quite siloed pieces of work, and just to think about it in a different way. And I guess it just reminded me again, which is something that I'm reminded of constantly, of just the usefulness of creating those shared physical and visual representations of what it unlocks for people, of what it makes possible. And because it makes easier also for people to disagree, because they're looking at it and they're like, "But those two things done fit together for me, so why have you put them together?" Or like, I'll draw an arrow between two things and they're like, "Well..." And it will bring up a tension that previously will feel like a relational tension or a conceptual tension that they can't speak, but it's like, they can verbalize what they disagree with, which.... Yeah. I'm just reminded of that, and just, yeah, how we put those lines in the sand.

Meredith England:

So the stuff that I am really, I keep reading and it's in different parts of the book, is the idea of the spaces in between. So, it comes up in a... And yeah, so it comes up in a couple of different places where he talks about sky country and the Greek mistake of dead matter and how actually, finally scientists are starting to realize that all of the stuff that we have called empty space for a really long time, they're calling it dark matter, which doesn't really help us understand more about what it is, but it's certainly not dead and it's certainly not nothing.

Meredith England:

And then he also, he talks about, I've never heard smoke and the smoking ceremonies and stuff being talked about in this way, I probably lost it now. So in the chapter where he talks about ghosts and spirit, and... I'm trying to find it. He specifically talks about smoke is not earth and it's not air, and it's used in this way. The smoke is liminal, neither earth nor air, but part of both, and it moves across the same spaces in between as shadow spirits do, sending them on their way.

Meredith England:

So he's talking about smoke and that situation of, and I love that whole story that he tells about being in the writer's retreat and the agony that he feels of even writing about it really struck me of like, when do you say things? When do you write those stories down? But yeah, I'm really noodling on the idea of the spaces in between, which for me is the spaces between people, the landscape spaces where I think, in my work sometimes, we get fixated on the from-to, and I'm not going to the idea, the metaphor of journey necessarily, but what's the space that we are inhabiting in both of those places and in the in between? And it also just makes me reflect on the spaces between and the liminal spaces in time as well and connecting back to the kinship idea that you were talking about, Jenn.

Meredith England:

So, I have no, and maybe not surprisingly, I'm totally grasping on this one because there is nothing to hold onto. He-

Jenn Hayslett:

He relates back to... I'm sorry. Go ahead.

Meredith England:

Oh no, just one last thing. He talks about how important the spaces are in between in the way that he talks about being an agent of sustainability, and so there's a, I'm trying to remember the language that he... When he talks about interaction and the energy and sprit of communication to power the system, that felt like he was very much talking about the spaces in between, and my son is also... Sorry, I'm just drawing together like 15 different thoughts that feel connected to me, my son at the moment is studying a bit of physics in science and he's fascinated by the, I'm going to get, Daniel help me out here, the Law of Energy that says that energy never goes away. What's that one called?

Daniel Stillman:

It's the Law of Conservation of energy.

Meredith England:

Yeah. And so he's constantly talking to me about how anything I do is never useless, which I love, and so there's something for me in this idea of the flow of energy in the in between spaces, that it's never wasted, it doesn't... And I will stop there. Those are all the things on my table.

Daniel Stillman:

Well, so Jenn, you had captured a diagram that I had captured too, which is exactly the part you're talking about, Meredith, the spirit and land connection, and this is, he also talks about it as abstract and concrete, thinking and doing, and the connection between them. The smoke, I'd forgotten that the smoke was part of this. Those are those lines and its liminal thinking, which is embedded in this way of thinking. Or this was my version of it, Jenn, I'd drawn this [inaudible 00:39:58] metaphor and abstraction, real connected to the land, and the practice loop between it and how embodied cognition helps with that process.

Daniel Stillman:

That to me is so one of the things that's really, I mean, maybe it's confirming something that I believe that I'm passionate about, but we are smoke, Meredith. Your job, what you are doing, making that smokiness, trying to concretize that process of thinking, it's hard, it's hard to do.

Jenn Hayslett:

And bringing it back to the human species and how we translate that. And I love how you're talking about the spaces in between. It feels to me like, when he's talking about just being present and aware and tuned in and the being rather than the doing, or the knowing, that a big piece of that, it's so interesting that he talks about the gut, right? That if we're too much in our brains, there you talked about the embodiment, if we're too much in our brains and not enough in our spirit and our soul and our gut literally, and paying attention to the gut brain, the gut knowing, that allows us to feel the spaces in between things, to hear the ants, to feel them, even if we can't see them, that this is beyond seeing. And that flow of energy and patterning is a deep knowing.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah.

Jenn Hayslett:

And it's continuous, there's no end, there's no one seer or elder who holds all.

Meredith England:

The ongoing pattern finding and pattern recognition. There's respect for those who have history and knowledge or hierarchy, but that that continues to move, which I think, so for me, is when he talks about the romanticism and the desecration of Aboriginal culture as cute and stuck in time, that really hit home for me, particularly as someone who lives in this place where that's what we've done to it.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. Well, I'm looking at the clock and I want to take care of us and the conversation and make sure we have enough time for a check out. And you two haven't actually introduced yourselves, which I feel like people will be like, "Who are these people who are talking?" And I'll take that somehow and bring it to the beginning of the conversation. So, can we first check out with whatever you want to check out with. And then I'll thank you for your time, and then you can introduce yourselves. We'll start totally backwards. In whatever order you'd like to, Meredith, what are you checking out with from this conversation?

Meredith England:

I'm going to check out with the [enu 00:43:33] and the dangers of greater than, less than thinking, and just horrors that greater than, less than thinking and narcissism brings to the world. He uses that as this framing right at the beginning that enu just brought chaos by bringing greater than, less than thinking. And yeah. I'll check out with that.

Jenn Hayslett:

I'll check out with something related, a quote on page three. "The war between good and evil is in reality an imposition of stupidity and simplicity over wisdom and complexity." Just that simple being and knowing is not uncomplex. Being present for complexity.

Daniel Stillman:

I love that. Being present for complexity is such a great idea. It's like, "I'm here for the complexity." I think one thing I hadn't really thought about, Meredith, that I want to check out with is this smoke thing, which I think I was like, "Okay, he's just being weird and spiritualistic," and the idea that there's this liminal connection between abstraction and reality, between spirit and space, between thinking and doing, it is smoky, it is ineffable, and it is hard to contain it, but we also in invoking smoke and bringing smoke in to the process, Leonardo da Vinci was this whole idea was, "Can you draw smoke?" Being with smokiness which is just the hardest thing to do. So I want to, I don't know how to explore that, but I think that's something interesting to explore.

Daniel Stillman:

Thank you both so much for making time for this conversation and I think is a really... I really believe the subtitle of the book, that indigenous thinking can save the world, because what we've got is not necessarily taking us in the right direction, so rethinking what we're doing is worth doing. So, thank you, both of you.

Meredith England:

Thank you, Daniel, for organizing this. So lovely to be able-

Jenn Hayslett:

For holding this face.

Daniel Stillman:

It's the least I can do. All right. And scene. Meredith, can you introduce yourself to the world?

Meredith England:

Sure. So, I'm Meredith England. I live in Australia. I am a conversation designer and facilitator working in the spaces where big organizations come together to talk about hard things and how to take action on climate change.

Daniel Stillman:

Really well said. I always struggle with what to say at parties, so well done. Jenn, if you could do the same. Welcome aboard.

Jenn Hayslett:

Sure. I'm Jenn Hayslett. I live in Vermont in the United States. I'm also a facilitator and trainer. I primarily work with executive directors and development directors in non-profit organizations, helping them ask for what matters and bringing really important support to their work. So I'm working in the non-profit space.

Daniel Stillman:

I'm really glad you both joined for this conversation, and Meredith your thing that this book is not done with us yet, I think, is really, really true. I look forward to reading the transcript of this conversation and the interview with Tyson will be out soon so you'll be able to take a look at that one too.

Jenn Hayslett:

Excellent.

Daniel Stillman:

There's a lot of wisdom to mine from this universe that those of us who are on the non-indigenous, second people side of the conversation can absorb a lot more and listen more thoughtfully. I want to be respectful of both of your times, because I know it's slowly lightening where Meredith is.

Meredith England:

It is. The sun's coming up.

Daniel Stillman:

Her day is about to begin, and for Jenn and I, it's ending. So, is there anything that remains unsaid that should be said? Or do you both feel complete? What do we need to say to be complete?

Meredith England:

Just thank you guys so much-

Jenn Hayslett:

I want to appreciate... [crosstalk 00:48:47].

Meredith England:

Oh, you go, Jenn.

Jenn Hayslett:

I want to appreciate Tyson for starting this conversation, and we're continuing the yarn.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. Meredith, any last unsaid to be said for you?

Meredith England:

Just thanks for having this conversation and threading our responses and reactions and thoughts and questions and unsaid things into something that, for me, takes it a bit further so that I can keep the conversation going with this book.

Daniel Stillman:

And now you get to read the second half of the book. This is so interesting.

Jenn Hayslett:

I know. Can we talk again?

Meredith England:

Oh my goodness, there's so much to come.

Daniel Stillman:

Oh my god.

Meredith England:

Awesome.

Daniel Stillman:

Well that's perfect. Thank you so much both of you.

Jenn Hayslett:

Yeah, thank you Daniel.

Meredith England:

Thank you very much.

Jenn Hayslett:

And thank you, Meredith.

Meredith England:

Thanks Jenn. Bye-bye.

Jenn Hayslett:

See you.