Indigenous Approaches to Economic Development and Sustainability

Indigenous Peoples are not some homogenous mass but are grouped, belong to and identify with, diverse groups-constructs such as culture, nation, confederacy, tribe, band, ethnicity, religion, "race" and clan, family. But these and other groups-constructs are, like the dimensions of the historical social formations and modes of production within which they were developed, socio-cultural, geo-historical, economic, politico-legal and global; not a matter of biology or genes. Thus as there are some common denominators among also diverse groups of non-Indigenous Peoples, so it is with Indigenous Peoples: some common defining and differentiating denominators in terms of common themes and "epistemologies" as well as "heuristics" (traditional rules of thumb) constructs, definitions of, integrated or more "holistic" and "dialectical" approaches to: development; growth; sustainability; roles of tradition, command and markets in posing and answering basic questions of all social formations and modes of production: what, how, where, when, why, for whom, to produce, distribute, utilize the means of subsistence, survival and expanded reproduction of the society. This paper explores some differences and implications between Indigenous versus more Eurocentric definitions and approaches to economic growth, development and sustainability.