The Applied Theory of First Nations Economic Development: A Critique [Journal of Aboriginal Economic Development, JAED]

"Founded by Professors Stephen Cornell and Joseph P. Kalt at Harvard University in 1987, The Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development (The Harvard Project) aims to understand and foster the conditions under which sustained, self-determined, social and economic development may be achieved among American Indian nations. The project has become something of a benchmark for current discussion of First Nations economic development. However, as a result of my research and fieldwork with the Nuxalk Nation in Bella Coola, British Columbia, Canada during 2003-5, I have strong reservations about its terms of reference and underlying ideology. The Harvard model embraces western style economics, under-pinned by an individualistic orientation and acceptance of authority based on self-interest. Cornell and Kalt tend to use uncritically concepts such as markets, enterprises, and Westernized notions of economic development (their writings are littered with words such as 'progress' and 'productivity'); they lament the lack of economic success of those tribes whose cultures do not easily welcome the business model. Instead of such exclusion, we should be examining the cultural specificity of our own assumptions, together with the motivations for our engagement with, and expectations of, aboriginal peoples."