Geography and indigeneity III: Co-articulation of colonialism and capitalism in indigeneity’s economies

Abstract

In this final report of three, I examine Indigenous peoples’ dynamic co-constitution with contemporary political economy in its manifestations of neoliberalism, resource extractivism, reordering production and labour relations. Indigenous subjects and spaces are not reducible to the status of capitalism’s side-effects, necessitating analytical attention to the co-articulation of colonialism and capitalism in particular, variegated ways. Debates around extractivism, neoliberalism and economic want are hence recent manifestations of 500-year-old disputes over monetary and normative values, resources and livelihoods. Whether as corporations, labourers, welfare recipients, or ambassadors for culturally distinctive forms of livelihoods-exchange, Indigenous peoples occupy complex, relational positions across economic spheres. The paradox of indigeneity’s economies is that Indigenous populations have been constituted as Other to homo oeconomicus, yet their embeddedness within the economic flows, labour processes and forms of accumulation that make the modern world belie any separation. The report ends by raising questions about decolonising accounts of indigeneity’s economies.