Wise Practices: Exploring Indigenous Economic Justice and Self-Determination

Indigenous peoples in Canada are striving for greater economic prosperity and political self-determination. Investigating specific legal, economic, and political practices, and including research from interviews with Indigenous political and business leaders, this collection seeks to provide insights grounded in lived experience. Covering such critical topics as economic justice and self-determination, and the barriers faced in pursuing each, Wise Practices sets out to understand the issues not in terms of sweeping empirical findings but through particular experiences of individuals and communities. The choice to focus on specific practices of law and governance is a conscious rejection of idealized theorizing about law and governance and represents an important step beyond the existing scholarship.

This volume offers readers a broad scope of perspectives, incorporating contemporary thought on Indigenous law and legal orders, the impact of state law on Indigenous peoples, theories and practices of economic development, and grounded practices of governances. While the authors address a range of topics, each does so in a way that sheds light on how Indigenous practices of law and governance support the social and economic development of Indigenous peoples.

Robert Hamilton is an assistant professor in the Faculty of Law at the University of Calgary.


John Borrows is a professor and the Loveland Chair in Indigenous Law in the Faculty of Law at the University of Toronto.


Brent Mainprize is a professor in the Gustavson School of Business at the University of Victoria.


Ryan Beaton is a PhD Candidate in the Faculty of Law at the University of Victoria.


Joshua Nichols is an assistant professor in the Faculty of Law at McGill University.