Decolonizing Wealth: Indigenous Wisdom to Heal Divides and Restore Balance
With Decolonizing Wealth, a provocative analysis of the dysfunctional colonial dynamics at play in philanthropy and finance, the award-winning funder Edgar Villanueva draws on his Native American heritage to offer a prescription for restoring balance and healing our divides.
Blaming bankers and capitalism for the awful mess that is 21st Century America has become a popular pastime among academics, activists and economists, whose bestsellers propose their signature solutions. Yet one place where solutions are never sought is Native America.
This second edition expands the provocative analysis of the racist colonial dynamics at play in philanthropy and finance into other sectors and offers practical advice on how anyone can be a healer.
Though it seems counterintuitive, the $1 trillion philanthropic industry has evolved to mirror colonial structures ultimately doing more harm than good. Edgar Villanueva has seen past the field’s glamorous, altruistic façade, and into its shadows: white supremacy, saviour complexes, and internalised oppression.
He shows how to make money “a tool of love, to help us thrive rather than to hurt and divide us”.
The second edition has two new chapters.
Medicine Beyond Money relates inspiring examples of people using their resources to decolonize entertainment, museums, libraries, land ownership, and much more.
Story as Medicine explains how sharing our stories is a vital part of that process.
Across history and to the present day, the accumulation of wealth is steeped in trauma. Drawing from Native traditions, Villanueva empowers individuals and institutions to acknowledge and begin to repair the damage done through his Seven Steps to Healing:
- Grieve
- Apologise
- Listen
- Relate
- Represent
- Invest
- Repair.
As Villanueva writes: “Everyone has a role in the process of healing. All our suffering is mutual. All our healing is mutual”.
