The unsettling potential of Indigenous organizing

Abstract

Despite its long-standing interest in alternative economies and decolonization, Organization’s pages have seen little attention to Indigenous organizing. The journal’s 30th anniversary is the occasion to call for a remedy for this deficit. This piece outlines the trajectory, future research, and possibilities of learning from Indigenous organizing, and calls for contributions that bring together Organization’s established interest in alternative economies and decolonization with a consideration of Indigenous organizing especially as that is embodied in Indigenous entrepreneurship. Paying attention to the features of Indigenous agency in enterprising, broadly conceived, would enlarge understanding of that vital but neglected topic and contribute to the unsettling of orthodox assumptions about management and organization that Organization takes pride in.

Introduction

From its inception, Organization has been devoted to articles aimed at decentering hegemonic ideology about human organizing. In our 20th anniversary issue, Mir and Mir (2013) noted the way that Eurocentric assumptions about political and economic life, projected onto organizations everywhere as though they are derived from human nature, have been subjected in Organization’s pages to searching critique in ways that management publications did not encourage. Fittingly, Organization has been studded with papers questioning capitalist, neoliberal and globalization orthodoxies. Special issues have been devoted to such topics as critical perspectives on entrepreneurship (Tedmanson et al., 2012), voices from the global south (Alcadipani et al., 2012), post-capitalism and alternative economies (Zanoni et al., 2017), and postcolonialism/decolonizing management and organization studies (Jack et al., 2011; Jammulamadaka et al., 2021).

It is surprising that in the abundance of Organization papers drawing on economic diversity for its challenge of organizational orthodoxy there has been little attention paid to burgeoning discussions of Indigenous alternatives. This is a call to contributors to Organization to make our journal a place where discussions of this vital area are front and center. The subject is ripe with potential for our mission to unsettle economic convention and in the process to raise considerations that bear on social justice (Colbourne et al., 2023). As well, it brings into the light a form of organizational life that is often disparaged but deserves to be recognized and honored.

Despite our urgings to transcend a Eurocentric perspective, we have perhaps remained somewhat captive to that ourselves when it comes to fully recognizing and respecting the particularities of Indigenous life. As well, such discussions of Indigenous organizing that have taken place have not generally been framed in the highly theoretical perspectives that Organization encourages and endorses.

Organization is not alone in failing to look at the details of Indigenous economic life as a place to learn about how economic arrangements can function for societal benefit, unsettling received assumptions about central notions such as entrepreneurship. The “othering” of Indigenous economic life prevailed in organization and management literature until at least the late 20th Century, when articles began to appear on Indigenous economic development, much of this focused on the economic centerpiece of Indigenous entrepreneurship (Anderson, 1995; Daly, 1994; Dana, 1995; Hill, 1966). Significantly, this emergence of attention in management literature to Indigenous entrepreneurship—most of it outside “top-ranked” journals—occurred in the wake of a shift in the policy agendas of many governments from an unstable amalgam of “passive welfare” programs and assimilation (Cronin, 2020) to the promotion of Indigenous entrepreneurship as a means of “development” (Dahiwale, 2007: 10). Academic interest in Indigenous entrepreneurship was also accompanied by the emergence of a new level of Indigenous political mobilization and activism that has come to be called “Indigenous resurgence” (Alfred and Corntassel, 2005).

“Indigenous resurgence” and its context

Paying attention to developments in Indigenous social movements can bring valuable insights to our understanding of what is happening in global society. From the onset of colonialism, Indigenous peoples have, to varying degrees and in diverse ways, resisted its forces, but the 60s and 70s saw a new level of Indigenous speaking out, political mobilization and activism (Coulthard, 2014; Misoczky, 2011; Smith, 2005; Varese, 2010). It is instructive to consider what lies behind these Indigenous movements arising in the 1960s and 1970s as a background to the new interest in Indigenous organizing.

The concept of “Indigenous resurgence” has gained prominence in recent decades, mirroring renewed assertions of Indigenous sovereignty, reclaimed cultural traditions, and promotion of Indigenous-led initiatives and institutions. The movements “resurgence” represents are a global phenomenon (Turner, 2007). ^{Smith (2005)} devotes a chapter of her book on “decolonizing methodologies” to what she sees as a global Indigenous movement, “The Indigenous Peoples’ Project,” arising out of the 1960s (p. Ch 6). “Resurgence” appears most explicitly in the work of North American Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars (Alfred and Corntassel, 2005; Asch et al., 2018; Simpson, 2008). South America sees references to “Indigenous or Peasant Insurgency,” “Indigenismo” (Tarica, 2016) or “Indigenous resurgence” (Gustafson, 2020). In Africa, there is discussion of “African renaissance” (Okumu, 2002). Concepts like these reflect a common desire among Indigenous communities to challenge colonial legacies and promote self-determination, cultural revitalization, and social justice.

It is hard not to see ideological forces at play in this phenomenon. The emergence of Indigenous resurgence movements in the late 20th century has been linked to broader global shifts, including the increasing influence of neoliberal economic policies and the rise of globalization. These developments saw a growing concentration of economic and political power in the hands of transnational corporations and global financial institutions, often at the expense of Indigenous peoples and other marginalized communities (Turner, 2007; Varese, 2010). The idea is that nation-states began with a project of homogenizing their populations ethnically and culturally, but their aim was seriously weakened by the flow of capital and influence to global institutions, a move that also hastened the retreat from national welfare policies that took place in the 1970s and 1980s. The role of the state thus shifted from that of creators and enforcers of a common national identity to promoters of their citizens as “workers, consumers, managers and capitalists—that is, as good members of the uniform global economy” (Turner, 2007: 120).

The result is a new concept of citizenship: “expanded, flexible, multidimensional, multi-ethnic, de-nationalized” (Varese, 2010: 259). Turner (2007: 121) argues that in this new setting, “Multiculturalism and the principle that cultural difference confers a right to formal political and social equality have in this way become essential to the legitimation of states in the age of globalization.” He continues:

It is a tribute to the resilience, courage, and political perspicacity of so many indigenous groups that they have been able to exploit the opportunities provided by these contradictory developments of the global political economy as mediated through their ambient nation-states, even as they deal with the negative effects of the shrinkage of social services and threats to their territorial and resource bases from those same states.

Multiculturalism and celebration of diversity may indeed by seen as a mask for neo-colonialism built into the ideology of capitalist consumption (Banerjee and Linstead, 2001). But the point is that, ironically, this neocolonial move in fact opened the door to Indigenous voices among others challenging its hegemony.

It can be argued that this wave of globalization, propelled by the engine of neoliberal ideology (Kotz, 2002), in fact added incentive to Indigenous resurgence through its promotion of increased incursions on Indigenous territories by extractive industry and corporations commodifying water and other precious resources (Prieto, 2022; Varese, 2010). Such inroads have been going on since the dawn of colonizing Indigenous populations, but denunciations of their illegitimacy and impact now received a readier audience, aided by the communications revolution that accompanied globalization (Castells, 1998) and mobilized Indigenous voices of resurgence. This complex of developments simultaneously amplified a sense of kinship and solidarity among Indigenous populations across national and geographical boundaries (Chartrand, 2003).

Emergent interest in Indigenous entrepreneurship

This is the background for a mushrooming interest in Indigenous organizing, directed especially at Indigenous entrepreneurship (IE), that began to emerge in management literature in the late 20th century (Hindle and Lansdowne, 2005; Peredo and Anderson, 2006). As I have argued elsewhere (Peredo, 2001), it would be a mistake to see this as confining our concern to a narrow sector of Indigenous life, defined by “entrepreneurship” and “the economy” as those terms are generally used in conventional management and economic scholarship. Organization readers will share Polanyi’s (1977) rejection of the “economistic fallacy. . .equating the human economy in general with its market form” (p. 10), and will share as well his view of the economy as the entire system a society has for deriving and distributing the means of livelihood from its environment—in a word, “provisioning” (Polanyi, 2001). It follows that the economy is bound up with much of a society’s life, and its way of organizing for that necessity are of pervasive extent and significance, especially as that way of organizing is “embedded,” as Polanyi insisted, in the rest of a society’s governing institutions. Seeing entrepreneurship in the context of economy thus understood means that entrepreneurship gains a range and significance beyond even that given in mainstream conceptions of that notion. Investigating IE is investigating fundamental aspects of Indigenous organizational life.

“Individualist” and ethnocentric approaches to Indigenous entrepreneurship

It is not surprising that the widespread and aggressive governmental adoption in the late 20th century of entrepreneurship as a way of fostering Indigenous “development” was and continues to be based on prevailing individualist and profit-maximizing conceptions of entrepreneurship and the economy. The economy is identified with the market-based world of business, and the entrepreneur is generally seen as an individual who starts a business, perhaps with innovation and risk-taking in the mix. An Australian government strategy for 2011–2018, for instance, was focused on fostering individual enterprise and self-employment (Australian Government, 2011). The Canadian Council for Aboriginal Business uses “Aboriginal self-employment” as its criterion for “Aboriginal entrepreneurs” and growth and profitability are its primary measures for success (Canadian Council for Aboriginal Business, 2016). A 2019 OECD report concerning Sámi entrepreneurship in Sweden reflects a similar approach (OECD, 2019).

Individualistic and “minimalist” approaches to entrepreneurship are found in management literature, according to which entrepreneurship is simply the launching and/or operation of a commercial enterprise (Siropolis, 1977: 23–24), and that may be carried into unsophisticated analyses of IE. This is assumed, for instance, in Johnstone’s study of IE in a Canadian Indigenous community in which he adopts the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor’s standard of “new firm formation” as a measure of entrepreneurial activity and total revenues and employment as prime indicators of success (Johnstone, 2008).

The concept of entrepreneurship has, of course, come in for extensive development beyond the simple idea of opening and/or conducting a business, and efforts have been made to apply some such developed understanding to entrepreneurship in Indigenous contexts while retaining its mainstream assumptions. Mitchell and Morse (2002), for instance, apply a Kirznerian notion of entrepreneurship to the activities in an Indigenous community in Northwest British Columbia, Canada. The assumption of a market context and its usual objectives is explicit: “the job of the entrepreneur is to use market imperfections to advantage” Mitchell and Morse (2002: 142). The authors declare their interest in “the privatization and entrepreneurial transformation of command economies” (p. 139). Employing their distinct approach of “Transactional Cognition Entrepreneurship Theory,” based on individuals’ “mental models,” they conclude that “private enterprise is less likely to occur on-reserve because the focus of native society is not, and has not been, on the market transaction cognition triangle” (p. 164).

On views like these, IE is not theoretically distinct from other kinds of entrepreneurship, though the specific environment of particular Indigenous entrepreneurs will be relevant to the application of general entrepreneurship theories as are the environments of other entrepreneurs.

Entrepreneurship as Indigenous organizing

A robust strand of IE scholarship has emerged embodying the view that IE is empirically and theoretically distinct in ways that not only challenge received understandings of entrepreneurship and enterprise but illuminate the possibilities of distinctive cultural embodiments.

My colleagues and I, for instance, begin by seeing distinct location and socio-cultural environment as part of what makes IE Indigenous (Peredo et al., 2004: 12). We state that Indigenous entrepreneurs “may or may not be located in native homelands—many have been displaced or relocated. But they are situated in communities of indigenous people with the shared social, economic, and cultural patterns that qualify them as indigenous populations.” Collins and Norman (2018) criticize standard views of IE in Australia as ignoring what they call “the Indigenous Estate”: the lands and resources in which the Indigenous are located as well as their cultural heritage.

Land, culture and identity are bound up together in many Indigenous cultures (Davis, 1993), a fact that is manifest in their entrepreneurial ventures (Anderson et al., 2006). These vital components of IE bring with them two further, inter-connected factors that are frequently found in IE. The first is its organizational structure, which challenges the persistent identification of entrepreneurship with the image of the individual hero (Drakopoulou Dodd and Anderson, 2007). Indigenous culture, with all its diversity, typically exhibits an inclination toward what I have called “community orientation,” in which its members “experience their membership as resembling the life of parts of an organism, and . . . feel their status and well-being is a function of the reciprocated contributions they make to their community” (Peredo and Chrisman, 2006: 313). Collective organizational forms are a natural expression of this cultural tendency and are a recurrent feature of IE. Lindsay (2005: 206) sees IE as essentially underpinned by “entrepreneurial strategies originating in and controlled by the community, and the sanction of Indigenous culture.” The extent of collective engagement and governance as well as the degree of its formality vary considerably and are influenced by such things as prevailing kinship relationships (Dana, 2015: 162).

The most concentrated expression of this organizational form occurs in what Indigenous communities in the Global South label (in my translation) “community-based enterprises,” where communities, through collective action, in this case Indigenous communities, operate collectively as both entrepreneurs and enterprise (Peredo, 2001; Peredo and Chrisman, 2006). Giovannini (2014) and Murphy et al. (2020) build on this notion, applying it to Indigenous communities in Mexico and Western Canada.

The cultural embeddedness of community-based enterprises in Indigenous communities brings with it a second feature that distinguishes it from received understandings of entrepreneurship: its complex, community-oriented goal structure. Entrepreneurship in this context transcends the profit-maximizing often associated with entrepreneurship, in favor of community aims for which any form of profit is a means. I have observed that CBEs in the form of Indigenous community-based ventures in the Andes aim at multiple, social, cultural, ecological, and political goals (Peredo, 2001). Lindsay (2005: 206) echoes this in stating that IE goals include self-determination and the preservation of social and cultural values. Anderson and Giberson (2004), Berkes and Adhikari (2006), Curry (2005), and Padilla-Meléndez et al. (2022) are among many other researchers of IE who comment on its multiplicity of goals, many involving community development and “nation-building.” Molina-Ramírez and Barba-Sánchez (2021: 2) see Polanyian “embeddedness,” where economic activity is immersed in “culture, social networks, politics and religion,” as a “differentiating element of Indigenous Entrepreneurship” in Mexico and elsewhere.

A yet more radical view of IE aims to shed light on Indigenous economic practices that, at the same time should raise questions about economic life in general. I have drawn on the Polanyian view of the economy as the entire system of provisioning, in calling for a view of IE that sees it operating beyond market transactions, expressed in other institutions for producing, distributing and consuming the means of livelihood (Peredo and McLean, 2010). We argue that “The concept of entrepreneurship arises where we are trying to understand the changes that take place in economic arrangements, broadly understood, that result in a net increase of things valued by participants in that economy” (p. 610). There are many forms of exchange taking place in Indigenous contexts, and many kinds of increased value aimed at, that should be considered under the rubric of entrepreneurship. A similar understanding is advanced by Dana (2015: 162) when he states “Much of the entrepreneurial activity conducted by indigenous people does not take place in the markets of the modern economy. In some cases, activities occur in the absence of exchange markets of any kind.” Dana points to the potlatch practices among some North American Indigenous as an example of non-market exchange supporting distribution consumption. I have pointed to the ceremonial first haircut of children among the Andean Indigenous as a fascinating example of non-market provisioning (Peredo and McLean, 2010).

The potential implications of these views of IE for our general understanding of organization for provisioning join with the work of authors such as Gibson-Graham (2006) in disturbing the Eurocentric views of economic life that have prevailed in organization and management studies, but also in government policy and practice.

Indigenous organizing and decolonization

One connection of Indigenous organizing with Organization’s interests calls for special attention. Colonization and post/decolonization have come in for considerable examination in Organization’s pages, most notably in two special issues devoted to bringing postcolonial/decolonizing thinking to bear on management and organization studies (Jack et al., 2011; Jammulamadaka et al., 2021). Both issues were concerned largely with the contours of postcolonial scholarship and its application to management and organizational studies. The Indigenous are almost defined by their place as colonized peoples (Corntassel, 2003; Smith, 2005), but in Organization’s special issues, and in management literature generally, Indigenous organizing and activity as a response to colonization are hardly in sight. Misoczky (2011) and Banerjee (2011) comment on Indigenous resistance in Latin America to resource extraction at the hands of market-government alliances, and while Banerjee, in particular, considers the “translocal” organization of resistance, the ways in which Indigenous traditions and culture can contribute in some detailed way to responses to colonization receive little attention.

There is an urgent need to bring together postcolonial/decolonizing with alternative economies scholarship and studies of Indigenous organizing. Such a blend fits the Organization mandate, including its early aspiration to multi-disciplinarity. Top-heavy, theory-laden treatments of decolonization and the ways in which it should be embodied in organizational studies and elsewhere would benefit immensely from a grounded examination of ways in which Indigenous populations have exhibited agency in drawing on their traditions and culture in response to their legacy of colonization. Indigenous organizing is highly diverse in its character, but could it be that in some cases at least it draws on the resources in Indigenous culture in ways that not only contribute to our understanding of diversity in economies and enterprising but shed light on how the hangover of colonization is being addressed (Peredo et al., 2019)? Such a focus would highlight the agency of the colonized in a way called for by Said (1994) but often neglected in treatments of decolonizing. It would be interesting to consider the ways in which varieties of IE, viewed in the context of colonization and decolonizing activity, illustrate or challenge Bhabha’s (1994) concepts of “hybridity” and “new forms of agency.”

Outlining a research agenda

The response of Indigenous peoples to the challenges posed by land dispossession, ecological damage, cultural erasure, and social injustices is characterized by a diverse array of social and political organizing strategies operating at various levels. Indigenous organizing presents a rich tapestry of interrelated forms, including community-based enterprises, political advocacy and coalition formation at regional, national, and international levels, revival of cultural programs, and Indigenous-led resource management programs or movements centering Indigenous knowledges against colonial conservation practices.

At the community level, Indigenous peoples in various parts of the world employ community-based enterprises to achieve self-determination. At the regional, national, and international levels, they engage in political advocacy and coalition formation to protect their rights. The 2012 Idle No More movement in Canada illustrates this kind of organizing. Indigenous peoples are revitalizing their cultures through cultural revival programs such as the Ka Papahana Kaiapuni language immersion program in Hawaii. Indigenous-led resource management programs or movements that center Indigenous knowledges against colonial conservation practices are also emerging as a critical strategy for protecting Indigenous lands and ecological knowledge. The Gamo People’s knowledge in the Highlands of Ethiopia for managing their grazing land against droughts illustrates this effort, while Indigenous-led movements such as RAD—Restore, Assert, and Defend—serve as frameworks for organizing and mobilizing around Indigenous lands and ecological knowledge. What is going on in these settings is a vital challenge to orthodox views that insulate enterprising and entrepreneurship from political struggles and the exercise of social power.

There is a rich research agenda awaiting Organization scholars that could illuminate this challenge, including:

• (1) Power Dynamics: What are the power dynamics within Indigenous communities, and how do they affect governance and decision-making? How do different groups within the community exert power and influence, and how are conflicts resolved? What is the role of traditional forms of governance and leadership, and how do they navigate with colonial state-imposed governance forms?

•  • Relationship with the State: What is the relationship between Indigenous communities and the state or national government? How do Indigenous communities assert their sovereignty and rights in the face of state power? What are the opportunities and challenges of negotiating with state and national governments?

•  • Impacts of Colonization: What are the impacts of colonization on Indigenous governance systems? How have these systems been disrupted and altered by colonialism, and how do Indigenous communities work to restore and revitalize them?

• (2) Land and Resource Management: How do Indigenous communities organize to protect their land and resources? How do Indigenous communities use their governance systems to address environmental and resource management challenges? What are the impacts of extractive industries and environmental degradation on Indigenous communities? What are the relationships between Indigenous communities and the state, corporations, and other stakeholders who have interests in these resources?

• (3) Identity and Culture: How do Indigenous communities define and express their cultural identity in the context of organizing? How do language, traditional knowledge, and other cultural practices influence organizing strategies? How do Indigenous communities organize to engage with the broader public to educate and raise awareness about their cultural heritage and political struggles?

• (4) International and Transnational Connections: How do Indigenous communities connect with each other across national boundaries? How do international organizations and networks support Indigenous organizing? What are the challenges and opportunities of transnational organizing, and how do they shape the strategies and goals of Indigenous movements?

• (5) Gender and Intersectionality: How do gender and other forms of social identity intersect with Indigenous organizing? What are the roles of women, LGBTQ+ people, and other marginalized groups within Indigenous movements? How do these groups challenge traditional gender roles and other forms of discrimination within Indigenous communities?

• (6) Resistance and Resilience: How do Indigenous communities resist colonization, assimilation, and other forms of oppression? How do they draw on their histories and cultural traditions to create strategies for resilience and resistance? How are Indigenous peoples mobilizing for environmental justice? How do Indigenous movements evolve over time in response to changing political, economic, and social contexts?

These are just a few examples of the many different research questions that can be explored in the context of Indigenous organizing that are grist for Organization’s mill. These are just a few of the ways in which a consideration of Indigenous organizing could enhance the discussion of diverse economies in general and decolonization in particular, contributing to Organization’s mission of unsettling the settled.