The history of Indigenous economies in the Americas presents a puzzle: When Europeans first encountered Indigenous peoples, they discovered societies with high standards of living, vast trading networks, and flourishing markets. But colonizers changed the rules of the game, and by the twentieth century, most Indians had been forced onto reservations and saddled with institutions inimical to their customs and cultures, and incompatible with wealth creation. As a result of being wrapped in the federal government's "white tape," these once thriving societies are today impoverished and dependent. This volume charts a course for reversing the decline in Indigenous economies and establishing a path to prosperity based on secure tribal property rights, clear jurisdiction and governance, and fiscal and financial power. It explains how the rules of the game promote or hinder the development of wealth; gives an overview of institutional conditions in Indian Country today; and identifies improvements with significant potential to renew Indian economies. Both data and contemporary stories of success and failure illustrate how revitalizing institutional frameworks can restart the engine of economic growth to generate business and employment, raise living standards in Indian communities, and, most importantly, restore the dignity Native Americans once had and still deserve.

This unique book investigates the history and future of American Indian economic activities and explains why tribal governments and reservation communities must focus on creating sustainable privately and tribally owned businesses if reservation communities and tribal cultures are to continue to exist. Native American peoples suffer from health, educational, infrastructure, and social deficiencies that most Americans who live outside of tribal lands are wholly unaware of and would not tolerate. By creating sustainable economic development on reservations, however, gradual, long-term change can be effected, thereby improving the standard of living and sustaining tribal cultures. Reservation "Capitalism": Economic Development in Indian Country supplies the true history, present-day circumstances, and potential future of Indian communities and economics. It provides key background information on indigenous economic systems and property rights regimes in what is now the United States, and explains how the vast majority of native lands and natural resource assets were lost. The book focuses on strategies for establishing privately and publicly owned economic activities on reservations and creating economies where reservation inhabitants can be employed, live, and buy the necessities of life, thereby enabling complete tribal self-sufficiency and self-determination.

What are the keys to good economic policy? George P. Shultz and John B. Taylor draw from their several decades of experience at the forefront of national economic policy making to show how market fundamentals beat politically popular government interventions—be they from Democrats or Republicans—as a recipe for success. Choose Economic Freedom reconstructs debates from the 1960s and 1970s about the use of wage and price controls as tools of policy, showing how brilliant economists can hold diametrically opposed views about the wisdom of using government intervention to spur the economy. Speeches and documents from the era include a recently unearthed memo from Arthur Burns, Federal Reserve chair, in 1971, in which he argues in favor of controls. Under Burns's guidance and in the face of stubborn inflation, Nixon introduced wage and price guidelines and freezes. But over the long run, these became a drag on the economy and ultimately failed. It wasn't until the Reagan administration that these controls were reversed, resulting in a vibrant economy. The words of iconic economist Milton Friedman—whose "free to choose" ethos inspired the free-market revolution of the Reagan era—along with lessons Shultz and Taylor learned from the front lines, demonstrate that tried-and-true economic policy works.

Most American Indian reservations are islands of poverty in a sea of wealth, but they do not have to remain that way. To extract themselves from poverty, Native Americans will have to build on their rich cultural history including familiarity with markets and integrate themselves into modern economies by creating institutions that reward productivity and entrepreneurship and that establish tribal governments that are capable of providing a stable rule of law. The chapters in this volume document the involvement of indigenous people in market economies long before European contact, provide evidence on how the wealth of Indian Nations has been held hostage to bureaucratic red tape, and explains how their wealth can be unlocked through self-determination and sovereignty.

Igniting the $100 billion Indigenous economy It is time. It is time to increase the visibility, role, and responsibility of the emerging modern Indigenous economy and the people involved. This is the foundation for economic reconciliation. This is Indigenomics. Indigenomics lays out the tenets of the emerging Indigenous economy, built around relationships, multigenerational stewardship of resources, and care for all. Highlights include: The ongoing power shift and rise of the modern Indigenous economy Voices of leading Indigenous business leaders The unfolding story in the law courts that is testing Canada's relationship with Indigenous peoples Exposure of the false media narrative of Indigenous dependency A new narrative, rooted in the reality on the ground, that Indigenous peoples are economic powerhouses On the ground examples of the emerging Indigenous economy. Indigenomics calls for a new model of development, one that advances Indigenous self-determination, collective well-being, and reconciliation. This is vital reading for business leaders and entrepreneurs, Indigenous organizations and nations, governments and policymakers, and economists. AWARDS WINNER | 2022 First Nations Community Reads Awards SILVER | 2022 Nautilus Book Awards - World Cultures' Transformational Growth & Development SHORTLISTED | 2021 Donner Prize

Igniting the $100 billion Indigenous economy It is time. It is time to increase the visibility, role, and responsibility of the emerging modern Indigenous economy and the people involved. This is the foundation for economic reconciliation. This is Indigenomics. Indigenomics lays out the tenets of the emerging Indigenous economy, built around relationships, multigenerational stewardship of resources, and care for all. Highlights include: The ongoing power shift and rise of the modern Indigenous economy Voices of leading Indigenous business leaders The unfolding story in the law courts that is testing Canada's relationship with Indigenous peoples Exposure of the false media narrative of Indigenous dependency A new narrative, rooted in the reality on the ground, that Indigenous peoples are economic powerhouses On the ground examples of the emerging Indigenous economy. Indigenomics calls for a new model of development, one that advances Indigenous self-determination, collective well-being, and reconciliation. This is vital reading for business leaders and entrepreneurs, Indigenous organizations and nations, governments and policymakers, and economists. AWARDS WINNER | 2022 First Nations Community Reads Awards SILVER | 2022 Nautilus Book Awards - World Cultures' Transformational Growth & Development SHORTLISTED | 2021 Donner Prize

Awards: One Book South Dakota Common Read, South Dakota Humanities Council, 2022. PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award, PEN America, 2020. One Book One Tribe Book Award, First Nations Development Institute, 2020. Finalist, Stubbendieck Great Plains Distinguished Book Prize, 2019. Shortlist, Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize, 2019. Our History Is the Future is at once a work of history, a personal story, and a manifesto. Now available in paperback on the fifth anniversary of its original publication, Our History Is the Future features a new afterword by Nick Estes about the rising indigenous campaigns to protect our environment from extractive industries and to shape new ways of relating to one another and the world. In this award-winning book, Estes traces traditions of Indigenous resistance leading to the present campaigns against fossil fuel pipelines, such as the Dakota Access Pipeline Protests, from the days of the Missouri River trading forts through the Indian Wars, the Pick-Sloan dams, the American Indian Movement, and the campaign for Indigenous rights at the United Nations. In 2016, a small protest encampment at the Standing Rock reservation in North Dakota, initially established to block construction of the Dakota Access oil pipeline, grew to be the largest Indigenous protest movement in the twenty-first century, attracting tens of thousands of Indigenous and non-Native allies from around the world. Its slogan “Mni Wiconi”—Water Is Life—was about more than just a pipeline. Water Protectors knew this battle for Native sovereignty had already been fought many times before, and that, even with the encampment gone, their anti-colonial struggle would continue. While a historian by trade, Estes draws on observations from the encampments and from growing up as a citizen of the Oceti Sakowin (the Nation of the Seven Council Fires) and his own family’s rich history of struggle.

Empire’s Tracks boldly reframes the history of the transcontinental railroad from the perspectives of the Cheyenne, Lakota, and Pawnee Native American tribes, and the Chinese migrants who toiled on its path. In this meticulously researched book, Manu Karuka situates the railroad within the violent global histories of colonialism and capitalism. Through an examination of legislative, military, and business records, Karuka deftly explains the imperial foundations of U.S. political economy. Tracing the shared paths of Indigenous and Asian American histories, this multisited interdisciplinary study connects military occupation to exclusionary border policies, a linked chain spanning the heart of U.S. imperialism. This highly original and beautifully wrought book unveils how the transcontinental railroad laid the tracks of the U.S. Empire.

Renewing Destruction examines how wind energy projects impact people and their environments. Wind energy development, in Mexico and most countries, fall into a ‘roll out’ neoliberal strategy that is justified by climate change mitigation programs that are continuing a process of land and wind resources grabbing for profit. The result has been an exaggeration of pre-existing problems in communities around land, income-inequality, local politics and, contrary to public relations stories, is devastating traditional livelihoods and socio-ecological relationships. Exacerbating pre-existing social and material problems in surrounding towns, wind energy development is placing greater stress on semi-subsistence communities, marginalizing Indigenous traditions and indirectly resulting in the displacement and migration of people into urban centers. Based on intensive fieldwork with local groups in Oaxaca, Mexico, this book provides an in-depth study, demonstrating the complications and problems that emerge with the current regime of ‘sustainable development’ and wind energy projects in Mexico, which has wider lessons to be drawn for other regions and countries. Put simply, the book reveals a tragic reality that calls into question the marketed hopes of the green economy and the current method of climate change mitigation. It shows the variegated impacts and issues associated with building wind energy parks, which extends to recognizing the destructive effects on Indigenous cultures and practices in the region. The book, however, highlights what to consider or, more importantly, what to avoid if one is working with industrial-scale wind energy systems.