Upholding Indigenous Economic Relationships: Nehiyawak Narratives, by Shalene WuttuneeJobin (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2022), pp. 272.

Increasingly economists are understanding, once again, that economics is about values. Not the traditional values that have shaped many years of Keynesian and monetarist economics debates, although these debates too are important, but the values that we wish to uphold as part of our economic system. This is prompting global debates around the wellbeing economy in Australia, Scotland, New Zealand, Finland, Iceland, Wales and Canada in which governments are measuring values of wellbeing as part of a broader set of economic indicators. In the context of these broader debates about the values we wish to uphold in our economic systems, Cree author Sharlene Wuttunee Jobin looks at Cree Indigenous approaches to considering alternative understandings to livelihoods and economics, so as to create a different economic pathway, a pathway more attuned to the Cree ancestral understanding of the ‘good life’. As the Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Governance, Sharlene Wuttunee Jobin begins from an Indigenous studies perspective by framing her work in the knowledge systems of the nehiyawak ᓀᐦᐃᔭᐊᐧᐠ (Cree people) – whose knowledge and practices shape their economic behaviour and provide the key framings for the book. Accordingly, the book is centred on a deep understanding of the relationship between people and the ‘land’, ‘including the land, water, trees, and so on – which I refer to as non-human beings are all considered alive, and we are live in reciprocal relationships not only with these people but and animals, but with the landscape and water’ (p. 5). This vast and expansive Indigenous ontological framing of the meaning of land as imbricated with people, who remain in relation to it, is mirrored across works of other Indigenous scholars, including those in the Oceania and Australia (Arbon & Rigney, 2014; Simpson, 2014; Tuck et al., 2014; Country et al., 2015; Moreton-Robinson, 2015; Tynan, 2020). These Indigenous scholars describe how this meaning of being in relation to land is also completely at odds with the idea of land as a commodity, a resource for exploitation. As a Cree and Metis scholar, Wuttunee Jobin's model is also informed by her commitment to Indigenous resurgence (Corntassel & Gaudry, 2014; Coulthard, 2014; Corntassel & Hardbarger, 2019) explored as practices grounded in language, ceremonial cycles, living embodied histories, and Indigenous territories (p. 7). Beginning with these broad conceptual framings, the book then explores how Indigenous economic relations have been disrupted by capitalist expansion, and in particular resource extraction, and the colonial logic of economic exploitation (p. 27). Wuttunee Jobin argues that economic exploitation is the enduring relationship between Indigenous peoples and broader settler society (p. 205). However, a central theme of this book is to articulate, through many and varied acts of resurgence, the important ways that Cree are in enduring relation to their land in spite of the disruptions and violence of the settler colonial state (Chapters 2–4). This requires an articulation of both the economy, relationality and personhood beyond that usually considered by either capitalism or Western/European ontology. This is provided in the hundreds of oral histories detailed throughout the book. Chapter 6 deals with the gendered implications of capitalist violence on Indigenous women's bodies, particularly around resource extraction projects and also in the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG+) that has taken place in Canada. The National Inquiry into MMIWG+ released its final report in 2019 demonstrating the clear link that ‘resource extraction projects can lead to increased violence against Indigenous women at the hands of non-Indigenous men, as well as increased violence within Indigenous communities (National Inquiry into MMIWG, 2019, 584). engaging Cree agricultural practices to increase food sovereignty is an act of self determination. Indigenous food sovereignty maintains and restores relationships between Cree people and the land, as well as providing ways to connect to different aspects of Cree personhood (spiritual, physical, mental, emotional) and Cree peoplehood (territory, ceremonial cycles, language, living histories) positively. All of these practices exist in ways that are often outside of what is measured in terms of productivity or output in mainstream economics. However, all may be increasingly important to our collective wellbeing now and into the future.

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