Can Indigenous and Colonial minds combine?
Tyson Yunkaporta describes the 5 minds in his book, Sand Talk (2019, pp. 169-171) that together offer a holistic world view. Quotes below are gleaned from my own reading of the book. You may read differently and select use words and images to remember the ways of knowing described. Links take you to the Living Data Library where I have selected from the Living Data website examples of these minds at work. I am aware of the subjective and changing nature of the ways we each read and link our reading to our training and experience, and am grateful to Yunkaporta for the ways of knowing that he shares in his book as ‘open source’. The challenge is for everyone to apply these ways of knowing to their own lived experience.
Kinship-mind is about “relationships and connectedness… there are no isolated variables – every element must be considered in relation to other elements and the context.”
Story-mind is how we “…compare our stories with the stories of others to seek greater understanding about our reality. ”
Dreaming-mind is all about connecting abstract and tangible knowledge using metaphors in “…images, dance, song, language, culture, objects, ritual, gestures and more. Feedback loops between the worlds must be completed with practical actions”.
Ancestor-mind is “all about deep engagement, connecting with a timeless state of mind or ‘alpha wave state’, an optimal neural state for learning.”
Pattern-mind is about “seeing entire systems and the trends and patterns in them, using these to make accurate predictions and find solutions to complex problems.”
Can these five Indigenous ways of knowing expand the Eurocentric way that Roget caregorised words in his Thesaurus according to six categories of meaning:
Existence
Space
Matter
Intellect
Volition
Affections
?
Roget’s Circular, an animated digital Thesaurus (Pub. Macquarie Library) and other art works by Lisa Roberts and Melissa Smith installed at Gallery 101, 101 Collins St, Melbourne, for the Bicentenary of Australian Federation program.
