Introduction to this blog!

Hi everyone - welcome to the Indigenous Economies blog! My name is Miny Atwal and in late 2020, I began my research assistant position with Professor Rebecca Johnson for assistance with the upcoming Transsystemic Indigenous Business Associations course. It has been nearly 9 months of delving into works that touch on a range of Indigenous economies, principles, theoretical constructs, and legal orders to get a sense of how different Indigenous communities have arranged their economies and business structures.

During the course of this position, I have created a video series that details the work of Dara Kelly's, Feed the people and you will never go hungry: Illuminating Coast Salish economy of affection and Shalene Jobin's, Nehiyawak Narratives: Upholding Indigenous Economic Relationships. So far, this blog mainly shares some of my personal reflections regarding those works while also focussing on (what I believe to be) some of the more salient points that emerge from them. I hope that some of the personal commentary alongside the videos will be a helpful way to begin understanding the very interesting and at times, complex themes that come from these important books and theses. I myself have been engaging with the two works for a long time and I still struggle to put all the pieces together since there is so much to unpack (particularly for someone who is a beginner in Indigenous economies and legal orders). I imagine that meaningfully engaging with these important writings will require some deep diving and inquiries into the unknown by way of discussion, questions and any musings that pop up when reading. As such, I've tried to demonstrate my thought processes via the blog posts in that way to hopefully facilitate thoughts, ideas, questions, and even further confusion. Hopefully this blog doesn't end with me and others can share their reflections with any aspect of Indigenous economies and business associations.

Enjoy the blog!