Your correspondent might like another book of Indigenous wisdom besides Dark Emu (Letters, January 15). The screamingly important message of Tyson Yunkaporta’s Sand Talk: how Indigenous thinking can save the world is the wise Indigenous plan for deciding not only what’s best for the planet but what’s best in general.
There are four stages in this process and each stage has its own easy-to-remember title: respect, connect, reflect, direct. The last stage, direct, where action is taken, must only come into effect after the first three stages have run their course. Unfortunately, we have too often leapt into the direct stage first, instead of sitting in a circle, taking turns to speak, and listening to each other until the most appropriate way forward becomes apparent. - Pen Layton-Caisley, Marrickville
