Indigenomics 101: A new voice shows how to make room for First Nations at the economic table

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The North American bison herd was all but destroyed by European “hide hunters” in the early 1880s, but it’s still possible to sketch the animals’ former range from outer space.

A satellite image of the nighttime sky over the Canadian Prairies and the American Plains is a million pinpoints of light, shimmering testaments to industrialization. But the dark spaces also have a stories to tell. A few years ago, Donna Feir, an economist at the University of Victoria, and a couple of co-authors used nighttime light to help them isolate the communities of the Indigenous tribes that had created thriving, bison-based economies.

Those societies were once among the healthiest and wealthiest in the world. They are now among the poorest, which is why you can spot their territories from the heavens at night: their communities literally glow less brightly than the colonial cities and towns that surround them.

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Economic shocks can ripple through generations if left unaddressed. Think of the COVID-19 crisis, but without the emergency benefits and the rush to develop a vaccine. Scary, isn’t it? Well, people that had relied on bison for thousands of years were suddenly forced to adjust to a free-market economy that derives its energy from mobility, yet they were boxed in by the reserve system, racist laws and little access to capital. You could pull up your bootstraps several times a day and still never overcome those odds. Feir and her colleagues describe the loss of the bison as “one of the most dramatic devaluations of human capital in North American history.”

Scholarship of that sort has changed the facts of Canadian economic history. That matters; as University of British Columbia economist Angela Redish told her peers at the Canadian Economics Association’s annual conference in 2019, “today’s economy is built on that of yesterday.”

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But the narratives we tell ourselves about the kind of economy our ancestors created lag the reality and decision-making will suffer until the catch up. That’s why the emergence of Carol Anne Hilton, founder of the Indigenomics Institute, is so interesting. Her hashtag (#indigenomics) turned manifesto (Indigenomics: Taking a Seat at the Economic Table) has the potential to reframe First Nations as active participants in the economy, rather the takers that are portrayed in myths created by the Indian Act.

“We are building a new truth,” Hilton, a Hesquiaht who earned an MBA at Hertfordshire University in the United Kingdom, said at a virtual conference her think-tank hosted from Victoria last week.

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Indigenomics, the book, published this spring by New Society Publishers, probably holds few surprises for academics such as Feir and Reddish and the Indigenous leaders who have been making similar arguments for decades. But for many of the rest of us, Indigenomics is revelatory. It is also difficult; not because the writing is dense or the ideas are unclear, but because Hilton forces non-Indigenous readers to confront shame and embarrassment over the systematic exclusion of founding peoples from the country’s economic life.

“This is the uncomfortable space,” Hilton writes, and she makes no apologies for it. Hilton wants nothing to do with the notion that the chronic poverty experienced by First Nations is a function of a poorly designed welfare state. “There is no socio-economic gap, only Indigenous economic displacement and upholding of the conditions of Indigenous economic regression,” she says elsewhere in the book.

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There’s an echo of Dambisa Moyo in Hilton’s writing.

Moyo, a Zambian economist and writer, burst onto the international policy scene in 2009 with Dead Aid, a book that argued that decades of foreign aid had left Africa poorer, not richer. Similarly, Hilton sees existing narratives about Indigenous development policy as impediments to making First Nations wealthier. She is comfortable making people uncomfortable because she wants the Canadian mainstream to see First Nations as it would another country in the context of international diplomacy, or the provinces and territories in context of the federation. And she wants other Indigenous people to think that way too.

“It’s time to cross the line, the fabricated line of the reservations that prevent us from recognition, responsibility, and economic recognition,” Hilton writes. “It’s time to address the fabricated line of economic exclusion.”

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Hilton isn’t angry; or at least no angrier than the daughter of parents who attended residential schools ought to be. Rather, she’s simply determined. Dozens of court decisions in recent years that have upheld Native treaty rights. Hilton contends that it should be clear to everyone by now that resistance is futile; those who continue to fight those claims clearly will lose far more often than they will win. She argues that Canada would be better off if the political and business establishments stopped fighting First Nations and instead worked with them as partners.

This is why narratives are so important. The rest of Canada needs to drop its egoistic idea that its ways are always the right ways. That shouldn’t be hard. Cowessess First Nation’s detection last week of more than 700 unmarked graves at the site of residential school in Saskatchewan, and the Tk’emlups te Secwepemc First Nation’s discovery May of what are believed to be the remains of 215 children in British Columbia, are the latest reminders that Canada’s society and economy sit on morally weak foundations. The Canadian establishment has lost the right to insist that First Nations adjust to its worldview. As the University of British Columbia’s Redish said, “today’s economy is built on that of yesterday.”

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But finding common ground needn’t be difficult. Hilton describes the Indigenous approach to economics as one rooted in values such as courage, respect and wisdom, rather than a slavish commitment to market orthodoxy. That means Hilton and Mark Carney, the former Bank of Canada governor, could have a productive conversation. Carney, a former Wall Street investment banker, also argues that too many capitalists have lost sight of what matters. In his new book, he says prices should take a backseat to values. One of the values that Carney says should make a return to economic thought is humility. It’s the way non-Indigenous readers should approach Hilton’s work, given all the damage our egos have wrought.

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