Rebecca Adamson: Indigenous and Sustainable Finance

Sea Change Radio

Although indigenous people are responsible for a significant proportion of sustainable land stewardship across the planet, they are often overlooked and seldom invited to the table when policy decisions are made. This week on Sea Change Radio, we are pleased to welcome indigenous economist Rebecca Adamson to discuss her pioneering work in the sustainable development space. We examine the tribal investment model she helped create, look at how increasing transparency in natural resource extraction can better protect indigenous communities, and talk about the impact she has made as a board member for both nonprofits and corporate America. Narrator | 00:02 - This is Sea Change Radio covering the shift to sustainability. I'm Alex Wise. Rebecca Adamson (RA) | 00:16 - What we have to do is get back to a place where our values are, what is driving the economy. This system can be reformed. Narrator | 00:27 - Although indigenous people are responsible for a significant proportion of sustainable land stewardship across the planet, they're often overlooked and seldom invited to the table when policy decisions are made. This week on Sea Change Radio, we're pleased to welcome indigenous economist, Rebecca Adamson, to discuss her pioneering work in the sustainable development space. We examine the tribal investment model she helped create, look at how increasing transparency and natural resource extraction can better protect indigenous communities, and talk about the impact she's made as a board member for both nonprofits and corporate America. Alex Wise (AW) | 01:25 - I am joined now on Sea Change Radio by Rebecca Adamson. She is an indigenous economist, an indigenous rights activist, a serial social entrepreneur who focuses on connecting capital markets to community. Rebecca, welcome to Sea Change. Radio. Rebecca Adamson (RA) | 01:39 - Thank you. Thank you, Alex. Alex Wise (AW) | 01:41 - It's a real pleasure to have you. First, why don't you explain what an indigenous economist is, and at the same time, if you can summarize your work in that space. Rebecca Adamson (RA) | 01:52 - Sure. And thank you so much for asking me about it. A lot of times the term indigenous economist just kinda shuts people down because it's like, what the heck could that be? Uh, but I think part of it started with my, my very first job and looking at indigenous schools and the rights for parents to be involved in the school. And as I went on and became a development practitioner in indigenous countries, what I was finding was the very way we looked at the world, the paradigm on how we perceived and organized ourselves was fundamentally different. And so when I began looking at both the schools where the purpose of the school was individual rights or individual progress, I was seeing Indian schools as being a social change agent within the community. And so there was a lot of peer tutoring. There was a collective sense in view of the education. As I got into development, it even got bigger. And when I began looking at what we called success in economic development sense, it didn't match our values. So if we saw a forest as successful, a beautiful living, breathing, large track of forest as successful, we weren't gonna be successful in the market unless we could measure board feet and, and come back in with a profit. So looking at the indigenous economy, I began really peeling apart the difference in what success was. And that's really what took me, uh, well, my whole career actually has been in that issue. And so in the sense of practice in the community, we got invol. I got in very involved in the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, the Lakota Nation, and looking at what would it mean there? And a lot of times economic development creates, have and have nots. And what we needed was a multiple income strategy that could create the most good and benefit for the most people, because that's the fundamental purpose of an indigenous econom...