<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
</head>
<body>
<div class="css-ov1ktg">
<div class=" css-qlfk3j">
<div class="rail-wrapper css-a6hloe">
<div class=" css-ac4z6z"><br>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div id="root">
<div class="css-wp58sy">
<div class="css-fmnleb">
<div class="css-ov1ktg">
<div width="718" class="css-1jllois">
<header class="css-d92687">
<h1 class="css-19v093x">Tyson Yunkaporta — Antithesis
Journal</h1>
<div class="css-1x1jxeu">
<div class="css-7kp13n">By</div>
<div class="css-7ol5x1"><span class="css-1q5ec3n">Antithesis
Journal</span></div>
<div class="css-8rl9b7">antithesisjournal.com.au</div>
<div class="css-zskk6u">9 min</div>
</div>
<div class="css-1890bmp"><a
href="https://getpocket.com/redirect?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.antithesisjournal.com.au%2Fblog%2F2019%2F8%2F19%2Fantithesis-author-spotlight-tyson-yunkaporta"
target="_blank" class="css-1neb7j1">View Original</a></div>
</header>
<div class="css-429vn2">
<div role="main" class="css-yt2q7e">
<div id="RIL_container">
<div id="RIL_body">
<div id="RIL_less">
<div lang="en">
<div class="RIL_IMG" id="RIL_IMG_1">
<figure> <img alt="Tyson Yunkaporta,
photographed by James Henry. Image used
with permission."
src="https://pocket-image-cache.com//filters:no_upscale()/https%3A%2F%2Fimages.squarespace-cdn.com%2Fcontent%2Fv1%2F59d195afcf81e0a1cd99b680%2F1566184175545-BF67YM7ECQ2MW23AZZWE%2Fke17ZwdGBToddI8pDm48kLkXF2pIyv_F2eUT9F60jBl7gQa3H78H3Y0txjaiv_0fDoOvxcdMmMKkDsyUqMSsMWxHk725yiiHCCLfrh8O1z4YTzHvnKhyp6Da-NYroOW3ZGjoBKy3azqku80C789l0iyqMbMesKd95J-X4EagrgU9L3Sa3U8cogeb0tjXbfawd0urKshkc5MgdBeJmALQKw%2FTyson%2BYunkaporta%2B%2528High%2BRes%2BJPEGs%2529%2B04%2BCredit%2BJames%2BHenry.jpg"
width="680" height="453"> <figcaption>Tyson
Yunkaporta, photographed by James Henry.
Image used with permission.</figcaption>
</figure>
</div>
<p><strong>You have a book coming out with
Text in September –</strong> <a
href="https://www.textpublishing.com.au/books/sand-talk"><strong><em>Sand
Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save
the World</em></strong></a><strong><em>.</em>
We’re really excited to read it. For
readers who are unfamiliar, can you give
us a little context for the book?</strong></p>
<p>It is basically a reversal of the usual
business of explaining Aboriginal culture to
a global audience – instead, I'm examining
global systems from an Aboriginal
perspective. The goal is to start
out-of-the-box conversations with everyday
people and see what falls out of diverse
dialogues that might resolve some of the
complex sustainability issues facing the
world. I try to impart a sense of the
pattern of creation and how we might begin
to live within that pattern again. To
sustain my oral culture point of view I play
around with language and the very nature of
print - each chapter is based on real-life
yarns and then carved into traditional
objects, with the knowledge then partially
translated into text for the book. I also
write in the dual first-person – an
Aboriginal language pronoun that doesn't
exist in English but which I translate as
‘us-two’, which serves to bring myself into
relation with the reader, forming a kinship
pair.</p>
<p><strong>Can you tell us a little about your
writing process for <em>Sand Talk</em>,
and how long it took you to write?</strong></p>
<p>Well the yarns took two decades, the
carvings took two years, and the book itself
took two weeks. I wrote the first half in a
week staying at Varuna on a writer's
retreat, then I had to snatch a dozen
half-days over the next month while juggling
two babies and full-time work. Our
traditional knowledge transmission and
production is very complex and takes a lot
of time. It is very difficult. Print-based
knowledge transmission is far less complex
and requires a lot less discipline and
thought, so that part was fast and easy.</p>
<p><strong>Many readers of the blog are
aspiring or established editors. Can you
tell us a little about the editing process
that you underwent with <em>Sand Talk</em>?</strong></p>
<p>My editors at Text Publishing were geniuses
who had never worked cross-culturally
before, but they very quickly mastered the
oral culture process and collaborated with
me perfectly on this. I began the process by
making a massive boomerang covered in
symbols that represented all the key
knowledge in the book that I wanted to keep,
and gave it to them to keep nearby while
they went through and made suggestions. I
was not married to any of the wordings in
the book, as I don't really feel that print
represents knowledge in any way, so I was
happy to cut pretty much anything and
rewrite with a better picture of the
audience in mind. Those words on the page
aren't my babies, so I'm happy enough to
kill them. The images are far more important
and those can't be altered. There was one
chapter on gender I hated completely and
rewrote from scratch to represent the
knowledge better. I was stuck on that until
I realised I couldn't write about women as a
man alone, so I got a woman to co-write it
with me. Then it worked. Most editing is
protocol, I think. Get the protocols right
and it all works out.</p>
<p><strong>You have a talk with</strong> <a
href="https://mwf.com.au/program/readings-recommends-indigenous-non-fiction-5697/"><span><strong>Bruce
Pascoe on 6 September for the
Melbourne Writers Festival</strong></span></a><strong>.
Do you feel that his work has carved a
path for the discourse that you are
opening up with <em>Sand Talk</em>?</strong></p>
<p>Our work stands on the shoulders of
warriors like Bruce who have gone ahead and
cleared space for us. Dark Emu means I don't
have to explain and justify the basic facts
of our existence – those fights have already
been fought, so now we get to build on that
and ask ‘Hey! What comes next?’ We have to
honor the work of people like Bruce Pascoe,
Marcia Langton, Aileen Moreton-Robinson,
Jackie Huggins and many others, by taking
things now to the next level. They built the
ground for us to stand on and paid for it in
blood, so we can't just stand on that ground
and recycle tired narratives. We need to
innovate, increase, extrapolate.</p>
<p><strong><em>Sand Talk</em> is a work of
non-fiction. The piece you are publishing
with the <em>Antithesis</em> journal is a
work of fiction – <em>Bones in the Sky</em>.
As a reader, I was so taken with how you
create character. In <em>Bones in the Sky</em>
the characters feel very real for me. How
do you write them? How do you create them?</strong></p>
<p>It's always a battle of ego for me. Every
character I create just seems to want to say
all the things I never thought to say in
traumatic moments of lost dignity. So it's
always this strident, Trump-like voice that
comes out of me when I try to write
non-fiction. I've written heaps of novels
and they've all been terrible, unreadable,
because of this. I'm just wrestling round
with my demons right now writing these
stories. My publisher tells me my short
stories suck and I need to find the
characters by making them talk first. So I'm
working on dialogue for a bit now to get
that Trumpy whining out of me. I find it
hard to write female characters, because
they always end up just being fantasies of
what I'd be like if I had a womb. I have no
idea of the inner experience of women and
it's an impediment. Female writers have an
advantage because most of the media they
have to consume is from a male point of
view, which isn't that hard to figure out
anyway. I'm working on an Aboriginal Viking
saga at the moment. I'm imagining what would
have happened if a blackfella showed up in
Norway back in Beowulf's era, and how he
would cope with that. I'm struggling like
hell, because of course my main character
Raedwulf is complaining a lot ...</p>
<p><strong>Do you have a first reader? Do you
have a desired readership in mind as you
write?</strong></p>
<p>My flawed relationship with women mixes
this up for me too. I try to write for
everybody, but mostly I'm writing for women
in a kind of ‘is this okay – am I on the
right track? kind of way. Seriously, I got
issues with seeking approval from females.
I'd like to say I'm working on it, but I
have absolutely no idea where to begin. Most
men have little enclaves where they decide
what to share and what not to share with
women, but I'm not invited to those because
I hate sport and porn and gambling, so I'm
pretty much just making it up as I go along.
Things are a lot clearer in my own
community, but if you're writing for the
marketplace you have to write for audiences
beyond our community, and I am quite
confused about gender relations in that
world.</p>
<p><strong>You have moved from Far North
Queensland to Melbourne. Do you return to
where you grew up? And how have you found
the transition? Has it impacted on your
writing?</strong></p>
<p>I had to go back up home last year for a
couple of months, just for my own survival.
Seriously, how the hell do people live in
cities? Apparently this one is the most
livable one on the planet, and it is
absolute hell on earth so I can't imagine
what the other cities must be like. People
must be constantly screaming on the inside.
Airfares back home are expensive so I'm kind
of trapped here at the moment. As soon as I
sell a few books I'll be on the first plane
back. I'm trying to set up an extended
family business for the book sales to go
into – like a communal capital model to take
care of everyone's needs, but I'm finding it
hard to get an accountant who knows what I'm
talking about and can figure out how to make
the tax work. Once I get that sorted out
I'll be able to get home regularly again.</p>
<p><strong>What were you like as a child? Were
you always a storyteller?</strong></p>
<p>I was deaf until I was eight – otitis media
is a pretty common condition for us. Post-op
I could hear what everyone was saying but
found I didn't like it much. I was a weird,
introspective kid as a result. I still am. I
read Jane Eyre when I was ten and it made me
start writing stories. I was at this crappy
little barefoot bush school at that stage,
filled mostly with kids from construction
camps, back in the day when you got the cane
every day (especially if you were a brown
kid). They did these IQ tests and I got 180
so that might explain the weird
introspection as well. For the kids, that
behaviour could only be translated as
‘poofter’ so I got knocked around some. I
went to a lot of remote schools like that.
Then I hit puberty and my IQ dropped along
with my balls and I woke up here. It's all a
bit of a blur.</p>
<p><strong>Do you have other writing projects
that you are currently working on?</strong></p>
<p>I have to do a lot of academic publications
to keep my job, so I'm mostly writing that
stuff, but referencing bores the hell out of
me. Ethics applications drive me nuts,
especially when I'm trying to justify my use
of message sticks for data collection. My
book only counts as one publication point
and I have to hit seven, so I'm flat out
with that. I have two babies so there's not
much time to write what I want to write,
especially when I work by carving everything
first then translating it. It's hard to find
space in the city to carve wood with a
tomahawk and knife without people calling
the cops – and I live in a flat the size of
a shot glass so I don't have a backyard to
use. But somewhere in all that I'm working
on my Viking novel. It's a bit of a parody
of the Peer Gynt myth, which for me captures
the essence of the Anglo soul. That's a soul
that needs some unpacking, under the
Aboriginal gaze. I think that work is long
overdue and I do love turning lenses around.</p>
<p><strong>Aside from researching, writing and
working as a senior lecturer at Deakin
University, you also create traditional
tools and weapons. Who taught you this
skill? What does creating these items
connect you to?</strong></p>
<p>I've only been doing it since the nineties,
so I'm not a master carver yet but I'm on my
way. I've learned a lot back up home with
family, making things for sale and also for
ceremonies. But I've learned from old fellas
all over, from NSW to WA. Us carvers just
seem to find each other, although we're
quite a rare breed now. There's plenty of
people pumping out ‘artifacts’ with power
tools but only a few of us still doing it by
hand. A lot of my research has been on
haptic cognition from the point of view of a
wood carver. Haptic cognition describes
neural processes that happen beyond the
brain and even the body. For example, when a
tool or object becomes an extension of your
mind. It is a real, measurable phenomenon
and I think it is the key to understanding
consciousness and the way humans make
meaning and memory. My methodology is called
‘Umpan’, which means carving and cutting,
but has also been adopted as the word for
writing. So of course, understanding the
psychology of traditional carving would be
my pathway to making meaning through print.</p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="css-10y0cgg"><br>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</body>
</html>