Giving Compass' Take:

· Rebecca Adamson shares the views of Native Americans on Wall Street and what we can learn from indigenous people about scarcity, a fair economy, and how to thrive in hard times.

· What specifically can we pull from indigenous societies to better the U.S.? 

· Read more about exploring indigenous culture.

Indigenous peoples have known hard times. There are signs of drought, crop failure, and forced migration over the millennia, and of course these peoples survived centuries of colonialism. When we were looking for some wisdom on building a new economy, I immediately thought of Rebecca Adamson. Native peoples have developed societies that function within ecological limits and counter the tendency of societies to polarize between rich and poor, powerful and excluded. Adamson, a Cherokee, is founder of First Nations Development Institute and First Peoples Worldwide. She works globally with grassroots tribal communities, sits on the boards of the Corporation for Enterprise Development and the Calvert Social Investment Fund, and is an adviser to the United Nations on rural development.

Sarah van Gelder: When you look ahead at the coming months, perhaps years, of economic downturn, what do you see coming, and what does indigenous experience teach us about what we should be doing?

Rebecca Adamson: I’ve gotta say, it’s about time the bubbles burst. I don’t want to see anybody without a home or a job, but Wall Street had to come to reality sooner or later. I just wish they were taking the brunt of it instead of Main Street.

President Obama assumes that through more spending we can stimulate the financial sector. But why would we want to save something that had no productivity for human life? Until we move away from that paradigm, I don’t hold out too much optimism for the next months, or the next years, or even the next seven generations.

Read the full article about a fair economy by Sarah van Gelder at YES! Magazine.