Dina Gilio-Whitaker: Capitalism not a perfect solution for tribes

Settler colonialism effectively discredited and dismantled Indigenous social systems including science and economic systems (and, yes, we had our own science and economic systems). The systems replacing them--market and wage based economies--were entirely foreign to our ways of being in the world, and caused further social devastation. In essence we became social laboratory experiments to prove the superiority of European civilization compared to our own Earth-centered cultures. I think by now we all know how well that has worked out for us.

The problem is that not only has it not worked out well for our Indian communities, it’s not working out well for anyone else on the planet, two-legged, four-legged, winged, crawlers, swimmers or anyone else, except perhaps for the 1 percent or so at the top of the economic food chain. The changing climate is a direct result of the industrial age and mass consumerism that Western societies glorified as true “civilization.” Already we are observing catastrophic effects to human and non-human life and it’s only going to get worse. Far worse.

Capitalist market fundamentalism at its most basic level is defined by and depends on the endless exploitation of natural (and human) resources, or what we normally call economic growth. The principle of market sustainability holds that the maintenance of and unrestricted access to markets stimulates growth and reverses violence. It doesn’t take an economics genius to understand that on a finite planet there is no such thing as unlimited resources, to say nothing of how the unfettered exploitation of those resources, especially fossil fuels, is responsible for global warming.