What is the relationship between economic progress in the land now called Canada and the exploitation of Indigenous peoples? And what gifts embedded within Indigenous world views speak to miyo‐pimâtisiwin ᒥᔪ ᐱᒫᑎᓯᐃᐧᐣ (the good life), and specifically to good economic relations?

Upholding Indigenous Economic Relationships draws on the knowledge systems of the nehiyawak ᓀᐦᐃᔭᐊᐧᐠ (Cree people) to make two central arguments. The first is that economic exploitation was the initial and most enduring relationship between newcomers and Indigenous peoples. The second is that Indigenous economic relationships are constitutive: connections to the land, water, and other human and nonhuman beings form us as individuals and as peoples. This groundbreaking study employs previously overlooked Indigenous economic theories and relationships, and provides contemporary examples of nehiyawak renewing these relationships in resurgent ways. In the process, Upholding Indigenous Economic Relationships offers tools that enable us to reimagine how we can aspire to the good life with all our relations.

Shalene Wuttunee Jobin's profile page

• Joint winner, Best First Book in Native American and Indigenous Studies, Native American and Indigenous Studies Association

Shalene Wuttunee Jobin is a Cree and Métis scholar and a citizen of Red Pheasant Cree First Nation, Treaty 6. She is an associate professor of Indigenous studies and Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Governance at the University of Alberta, the founding director of the Indigenous Governance and Partnership program, and a co-founder of the Wahkohtowin Law and Governance Lodge. She also serves on the board of the Bent Arrow Traditional Healing Society.

Jobin offers a ground-breaking rethinking of what economic means in the context of nehiyawak ᓀᐦᐃᔭᐊᐧᐠ (Plains Cree) culture.

S. Perreault, CHOICE Connect

"Details the tensions between economic exploitation and self-determination and the form that resistance takes among the Cree."

Journal of Economic Literature