Grounded relationality revitalizes indigenous economic governance that exists outside of exploitation and is a form of dissonance that uniquely shapes subjectivities and challenges domination by the settler state – never compatible with settler reforms that always culminate in dispossession and assimilation

It is like Grandpa is talking to us today, reminding us of a time when friendship and reciprocity guided the relationship between the Cree and the newcomers in the eagle hills, at a time when a traveller was made welcome day or night. This book is about unpacking relationships between Plains Cree people and newcomers. Specifically, this book offers an Indigenous perspective on the economic realm. What is the relationship between Canada's "progress" and the exploitation of Indigenous peoples? What gifts are embedded in Indigenous world views to speak to miyo-pimâtisiwin, the good life, and, specifically, good relations related to the economy? In this book I present two main arguments. The first is that economic exploitation was the first and most enduring relationship between newcomers and Indigenous peoples. This set the stage for settler colonialism to take hold. This important characterization has not been analyzed extensively enough. The second argument is that our economic relationships are constitutive; by this I mean that the relationships we have to the land, people, and other beings create and co-create who we are as individuals and as peoples. Indigenous peoples' options for achieving economic self-determination need to be attuned to the constitutive nature of these relationships. I draw from nehiyawak narratives to hold up Indigenous principles related to Cree livelihood that are embedded in our world view. I argue that these enduring principles are still of relevance today. Simply stated, the answer is not trading state colonialism for capitalist colonialism. A changing economy has fundamentally altered relationships with ask\y g'p+, the land, broadly conceived. This change has different contours. One has to do with a shift from a subsistence and trade economy to capitalism and wage labour. This change has altered our relationships, prioritized waged labour, and changed our relationship from living with the land to making a living off the land (Ghostkeeper 2007). Tied to this are the particularly destructive aspects of resource extraction. Resource extraction has diminished everyone's ability to live at a subsistence level by decreasing wildlife populations and increasing harmful toxins found in the food system and natural environment. This has left many Indigenous communities without adequate subsistence options. A subsistence livelihood is basic to the econ-omy, but it is also intimately connected with social connections and cultural practices (Kuokkanen 2011). To state it another way, to lose the ability to live with the land has a major impact not only on the economy of a people (historically and currently), but also on its social system. Being able to maintain miyo-wicêhtowin TV A 14>4-> (good relationships) with the land has intrinsic value, even if the land, because of human impact, is no longer able to provide for all the people's subsistence needs. A common public critique of Indigenous self-determination is that it is not feasible without economic independence from the settler state. This critique and the logics settlers use to try to govern Indigenous peoples serve to push Indigenous communities to look beyond themselves for economic development initiatives that might promise a stronger capital portfolio. This has led to radical transformations for Indigenous peoples, who find themselves increasingly governed from the outside and by the logic of the global market. This story is being told. What has not been fully explored is the Indigenous-nation-specific dissonance that is deeply rooted in settler economic exploitation, and corresponding acts of discord, refusal, and re-sistance. The duality entailed in revitalizing Indigenous economic relation-ships, in the context of Indigenous resistance to economic exploitation, has a logic of its own. That logic is the subject of this study. Most non-Indigenous Canadians do not understand this logic underpinning Indigenous resist-ance. Therefore, this study might be of interest for Canadians to understand an Indigenous world view that underpins Indigenous dissonance and resistance. The intervention provided by this study is grounded in dual concepts. It is at once a critique of unexamined economic development in a Plains Cree context, and also a narrative that foregrounds accounts of Cree-centred acts of wähkohtöwin <. j')A, the normative principles guiding relationships, that serve as resistance to these logics. Although this study focuses on one Indigenous people, it is my hope that other Indigenous peoples will see value in the method of drawing from wisdom within their own oral traditions or other resurgent methods (land-based, ceremonial cycle, language, etc.) to revitalize their economic relationships. Stated in another way: the nehiyawak o"As ‹' (Cree people), whose knowledge systems I draw upon, have distinctive governing relationships of colonial logic: colonialism has also centred on disrupting and destroying Indigenous economies - for example, exploitation during the fur trade (when the Hudson's Bay Company unjustly sold 2.9 million square miles of Indigenous lands) or through resource extraction (with oil and gas companies operating on Indigenous lands), and then creating and forcing upon us economic development programs linked to modernization (arguing that Indigenous cultures hinder economic development, and that once we assimilate into white society we will be able to develop economically) (Canada 1996, vol. 2, ch. 5). There is an ironic aspect to this settler-colonial logic. It trades one master for another. For example, Canada negotiates a Comprehensive Land Claims agreement with a First Nation. This Indigenous nation in a northern part of the prairie region lived a mostly subsistence lifestyle of hunting, fishing, and harvesting for hundreds and hundreds of years, although resource extraction has increasingly infringed on this. The bipartite (with the federal government) or tripartite (with the province included) agreements are made with the uneven power relations of a Canadian government that determines the scope and boundaries of negotiations and seeks to provide certainty (legal and economic) to non-Indigenous interests. This allows, for example. a multinational corporation to start a new oil and gas project in an Indigenous community in Canada, and in exchange the corporation will hire a few community members to operate some of the equipment. Say this community's food security came mainly from living with the land - hunting, fishing, and harvesting. Then the corporation has to build a road, which increases external traffic. The oil and gas project and the new road disrupt and displace the moose, elk, muskrat, and so on that the commun-ty hunts for food. With leakages from tailings ponds and unfettered de-velopment, the fish in that First Nation's bodies of water now have tumours and are not fit for human consumption, and water from the river is poisoned and no longer potable. The First Nation can no longer be self-sufficient and feed itself. What are the options left for the community? Perhaps an Impact Benefit Agreement is negotiated, and a few members will have training in this new industry. Often, economic exploitation becomes a filter that limits economic choices and viable options for Indigenous communities - it constricts. In this example, self-government, which can often start from an outstanding land claims process, pushes Indigenous societies aggressively into the second colonial logic: economic exploitation through the exposure of Indigenous lands to faster resource development (see Jobin 2020). Gaining more independence from the Canadian government by negotiating self-government or by allowing economic development initiatives that open lands to multinational corporations places Indigenous people more aggressively under the governance of the global capitalist market (Castro-Rea and Altamirano-Jiménez 2008). This is a difficult option for Indigenous communities, because before the negotiations, economic development surrounding the Indigenous territory already had affected their ability to live a subsistence lifestyle.