Economic success in a community

Success. What does this even mean? In today’s world of ever increasing accountability and public scrutiny, we seek to measure the success of every activity. Community economic development is not exempt from this either. But how do you measure the success of a community?

There are over hundreds and hundreds of First Nation, Métis, and Inuit communities across Canada. Some are a couple dozen people big, while others number in the thousands. Some are remote, others are situated on main highways. Some have traditional occupations (hunting and trapping), while others have CEOs and large corporations. Which ones are successful? How do you define it?

Some have tried to take the “socio-economic conditions” approach. There is some merit in this approach where people are compared against the ideals of urban life. Here we look at access to health care, access to clean water, access to transportation, access to markets, employment rates, income levels, education levels, perceptions of safety, etc. Certainly some of this can shed a bit of light on the issue, but it does not tell the entire story.

People have tried to use the “economic measures” approach, whereby they examine how many local businesses are in operation, GDP, local revenues, income levels, employment rates, etc. In reality, this is limited to looking at economic activity, which is still useful information. However, it does not tell the entire story either.

At the end of the day, the vast majority of our approaches are comparative in nature to some ingrained ideal. These ingrained ideals are taught to us, culturally, by mainstream society from a very early age. Some of these include:

·         For Individuals:  

o   personal wealth

o   home ownership or size/appearance

o   type of car or truck

o   employer or position at work

·         For communities:

o   Entertainment options

o   Shopping centres

o   Traffic

o   Number of BIG businesses located in the community

Granted these types of “indicators” are mostly taught to children growing up in urban centres. However, the people working in governments, making program and policy decisions, conducting ‘research,’ are typically those in urban centres.

For some, these indicators might resonate. For others, they may leave a bad taste in the mouth. The key here is that people do not define what they mean by economic development. They do not define what success looks like to them, and they do not ensure their views are in alignment with the underlying values of the community.

I have seen many communities, including one First Nation that is a fly-in community (call it community A) with plenty of access to in-home running water. In this community, there are almost no employment options, rampant welfare, violence, alcoholism, drug abuse, marital unfaithfulness to the extreme, child neglect, etc. I have seen another community that is also a fly-in community (call it community B), but that has less than half their people connected to running water. Despite the employment options being few, this community does not share the same level of social dysfunction.

Why? What causes one to have different results than the other? Many people use some of the aforementioned approaches to defining economic success and conclude that both communities are failing. While community B certainly has its challenges, I disagree. I believe that community B is a successful community. Many of the people there are happy in spite of the challenges of water access and distant health care.

What happened to community A? Did they lose hope when outside urbanites came in and repeatedly told them they are failures and that they must strive to be like the big cities? Were they driven to despair when their own definitions of success was trampled on by well-meaning, but misguided bureaucrats, and replaced with an urbanite definition of success?

Often the presence of a flat screen TV or IPod Touch or IPad in the home is a sign of individual economic success. But is it really? Is it a success when we spend more of our time melting into a couch in a zombie like state while being spoon fed mental fodder? Is it truly a success when our children turn away from their soccer balls and become sedentary in front of their tech toys and video games?

Or is it more successful when they do not have these distractions and instead, walk along side the older generations, learning skills and knowledge?

There is no single answer, as it will vary person to person according to their cultural upbringing, personal and communal views. One thing for certain, measures of success are pointless if success has not been defined.

For program or project managers, and especially for government workers, it is absolutely critical to listen to a community about how THEY define success and shape the measurement of success from that.

Rebuilding Indigenous Economies

There has been a lot of talk globally about the need to rebuild Indigenous economies. It is seen as the foundation of sustainability, independence, and wealth creation.

There is no consensus about how to do this.

In fact, there are probably more questions than there are answers. To begin the conversation of how we ought to rebuild our economies as Indigenous people, there are a number of questions that we need to ask ourselves and our communities.

1.       How does the culture behind mainstream economic processes compare with our own culture?

2.       Are we seeking to change our own culture to align better with the economic system that is out there or do we prefer to shape the economic system to our culture?

3.       What will we define as economic success?

The mainstream economic culture that currently exists, is largely based upon individualism, infinite profit, “bottom line” thinking, economic value worldview. The conventional thinking here is that in order for an economy to succeed, you must encourage individuals to have ambitions and pursue those ambitions for personal gain. Individuals with great personal wealth will spend that money buying products and services and paying taxes.

As we look at businesses, the principle of infinite profit comes in. Here, businesses are only seen as successful businesses if their profits are increasing quarter after quarter, year after year to no limit. To achieve such growth, businesses and companies are forced to use their bottom-line as the primary criteria in any decision. If it doesn’t increase the money they make or decrease what they spend, it is not worthwhile. In this way, we shape our entrepreneurs and business leaders to view the world as something that must be labelled with financial value. Each activity, person, object is then given a relative value, and is hence, prioritized.

There are many who are comfortable with this economic culture. There are, however, many who are not. Typically, those who are not comfortable with this economic culture have conflicting values from their own culture. Consider those cultures where collective wealth is a value (ie. Communal vs individual). Or those where the land and water are valued above personal or even communal gain.

Understanding the mainstream economic culture and comparing it with our own culture is critical to understanding what directions we need to take as communities and nations.

With that understanding, we then need to ask whether we desire to align our culture with the mainstream economic culture or whether we wish to take what we can adapt to our culture. This is important because if a community is not willing to assimilate into the larger mainstream economic culture, then conventional methods of economic development will not work.

Revising the economic models to fit a different culture than what the mainstream has to offer requires far more creativity and innovation than conventional approaches. It also requires that a community consider what its definitions of success will be. Adopting a different economic model will mean that people and communities cannot expect the same economic results (it’s possible that not everyone will have big screen TVs and two fancy new cars). That is not to say they will not have the same or greater level of success. But it is all in how we define success.

For some, the conventional approach to economic development is to recognize that there will always be the rich and the poor and the goal is really to move away from being poor, up the ladder, towards being rich. We see this in most Western nations as the gap between the rich and poor continually grows.

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/opinion/columnists/inequality----thy-name-is-revolution-117223113.html

If this is not the path that a community wishes to take, then the approaches must be different. Entrepreneurship and corporate empire building that rewards only a small percentage of people in the backs of legions of workers, will not lead to such values as communal sharing and collective wealth creation, for example.

So, defining success, then, becomes critical to deciding what approach to take. Is economic success defined as greater wealth among individual members of the community/nation? Is it defined by a strong and vibrant Indigenous government? Is it defined by collective ownership and wealth generation? Or by improved health or social conditions? Might it be defined by greater sustainability and health of the environment and people?

There is no correct answer, although some will be more or less damaging to various aspects of our world and peoples. Selecting an answer doesn’t require a PhD either – just an honest introspection and plenty of discussion.