Rewilding Thought and Action

Reflections from the book ”Sand Talk” by Tyson Yunkaporta

Thinking. Being. Doing.

Learning is not a subject.It’s a way of being in the world.

In the old systems, thinking stood apart, dissected, measured, timed.But in nature, thought, being, and action move together, like roots, soil, and rain.To rewild learning, we bring them back into conversation.Not hierarchy, but harmony.

A Series of Yarns

Every insight begins as a yarn, a circle of stories, laughter, pauses, contradictions.There are no experts, only exchanges.No linear path, only winding trails of understanding.

The yarn teaches us that wisdom lives between people, not inside one.To rewild learning, we must host more circles and fewer lectures.Listen for meaning that grows, not conclusions that end.

Pattern Thinking

Nature doesn’t memorise content.It recognises patterns of rhythm, change, and relationship.The pattern mind sees the system, not the parts.

Rewilded learning trains the eyes to notice,how rivers braid, how ideas echo, how one question branches into another.This is not abstraction. It’s awareness.

Dreaming

Dreaming is not escaping reality.It’s meeting it from another direction.

Through metaphors, symbols, and story, the dreaming mind sees connections invisible to reason.It lets imagination work like rainfall, gently transforming the ground beneath us. A rewilded classroom dreams together, painting futures that logic alone could never design.

Web of Connections

The world’s intelligence lives in diversity.Networks of dissimilar minds, different species, different ways of knowing —that’s where innovation breathes.

Every viewpoint is useful.It takes the wide web of perspectives to navigate this universe — let alone care for it.

Rewilding learning means building classrooms that act like ecosystems:interdependent, responsive, alive.

Sparring, Singing, Space, and Time

To learn is to spar — not to defeat, but to refine.To sing — not to perform, but to remember.To honour space — so silence can teach.To move with time — in cycles, not deadlines.

Nature keeps no clocks, yet everything arrives when it should.

Kinship

Kinship is the curriculum.Not as a metaphor — as reality.

We are related to land, water, air, and each other.When we forget that, we lose direction.When we remember, education becomes care.

Rewilded learning builds kinship mind:thinking with land, teaching through community, learning from elements.

The Minds We Learn With

Rewilding means teaching through many minds:

• Kinship mind — seeing relationships as intelligence.

• Story mind — carrying memory through narrative.

• Dreaming mind — working with knowledge through metaphor.

• Ancestor mind — losing linear time to find deep understanding.

• Pattern mind — seeing systems, cycles, and change.

Together, they form an education that touches mind, body, heart, and spirit.Learning that feels like living.

The Rewilded Way

Cultural innovation begins where deep relationships meet land and spirit.Knowledge doesn’t end an experience — it completes a cycle.It returns as new understanding, new direction, new value.

Everything in the universe is alive.Everything holds knowledge.Rewilding Learning is how we remember to listen.