Over the course of his first two books, Sand Talk and Right Story, Wrong Story, Tyson Yunkaporta has carved out a highly distinct intellectual niche.

A member of the Apalech clan from Far North Queensland and founder of the Indigenous Knowledges Systems Lab at Deakin, Yunkaporta applies Indigenous wisdom to contemporary problems with brilliant insight. In this new book, Snake Talk, Yunkaporta has co-authored the text with his wife, Megan Kelleher, a Barada and Gabalbara woman with a background researching blockchain technology and Indigenous knowledge. 

The book explores the snakes, serpents and dragons that feature prominently in so many of the world’s myths, from Nepal, Central America, Ireland, India and China. Kelleher and Yunkaporta approach these stories by meeting, breaking bread and engaging in solemn ritual with representatives of each culture, bringing them into dialogue with Indigenous Lore. The tone is inclusive and invitational, too – oral culture transmuted into written form. 

I would be remiss if I failed to mention the book’s humour. Snake Talk opens with a cheeky anecdote about the confusion of European naturalists encountering the echidna, a mammal with two vaginas. This follows on from Right Story, Wrong Story, which opens with a fact about the male echidna’s four-headed penis. I am personally eager to know whether all their future books will include echidna genitalia as a recurring literary motif. 

Rich and layered, Snake Talk is partly a response to the crises of rising authoritarianism and environmental collapse we currently face. It calls for rebalancing our relationships with the Earth and each other through shared narrative, ‘gathering a world of stories around one fire’. At a time when our world feels fragile, we sorely need the kind of fresh thinking found in this expansive and visionary book.