ANCIENT wayfinders

Amid modern challenges, indigenous wisdom may offer a path to healing. From fostering community bonds to embracing spiritual connections with nature, we explore the enduring relevance of ancient wisdom in today's world.

- Linda Moon

In the whirlwind of technological progress, it's easy to overlook the deeper issues plaguing our society. Despite the veneer of advancement, there is a disturbing rise in depression, anxiety, loneliness, obesity, inequality, chronic disease and other indices of poor wellbeing. Also suffering - as an extension of our societal problems - is the environment. Our current epoch has been so detrimental to the planet it has been given its own name - the "Anthropocene" - to define the hugely detrimental impact of human activities (including war weapons, mining, pollutants and modern agriculture) on the earth and its natural systems. You don't have to be a sociologist to suspect that society has lost its way.

Yet, amid these challenges, indigenous cultures offer a beacon of hope, holding vital clues to how we can live peacefully and sustainably on the planet. Such cultures remain a vast treasure chest of knowledge and wisdom accrued over thousands of years on what matters most: relationships; caring for the natural environment; what it means to be human.

Reframing our relationship with the world

In Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World, Deakin University lecturer Tyson Yunkaporta challenges conventional notions of progress. He considers the irony of scientists searching for higher intelligence on other planets. "Beings of higher intelligence are already here. They just haven't used their intelligence to destroy anything yet," he writes.

Drawing from his Apalech heritage, Yunkaporta invites us to reconsider our understanding of intelligence, highlighting the wisdom embedded in the natural world, including what he calls our "nonhuman kin". Our folly, he says, is holding literacy and technology up as markers of civilisation and dismissing the wisdom of the original "old people" of all nations who lived within the pattern of creation.