Indigenomics Institute founder Carol Anne Hilton describes the Indigenous approach to economics as one rooted in values rather than a slavish commitment to market orthodoxy. PHOTO BY YOUTUBE

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The North American bison herd was all but destroyed by European “hide hunters” in the early 1880s, but it’s still possible to sketch the animals’ former range from outer space.

A satellite image of the nighttime sky over the Canadian Prairies and the American Plains is a million pinpoints of light, shimmering testaments to industrialization. But the dark spaces also have stories to tell. A few years ago, Donna Feir, an economist at the University of Victoria, and a couple of co-authors used nighttime light to help them isolate the communities of the Indigenous tribes that had created thriving, bison-based economies.

Those societies were once among the healthiest and wealthiest in the world. They are now among the poorest, which is why you can spot their territories from the heavens at night: their communities literally glow less brightly than the colonial cities and towns that surround them.

Economic shocks can ripple through generations if left unaddressed. Think of the COVID-19 crisis, but without the emergency benefits and the rush to develop a vaccine. Scary, isn’t it? Well, people that had relied on bison for thousands of years were suddenly forced to adjust to a free-market economy that derives its energy from mobility, yet they were boxed in by the reserve system, racist laws, and little access to capital. You could pull up your bootstraps several times a day and still never overcome those odds. Feir and her colleagues describe the loss of the bison as “one of the most dramatic devaluations of human capital in North American history.”

Scholarship of that sort has changed the facts of Canadian economic history. That matters; as University of British Columbia economist Angela Redish told her peers at the Canadian Economics Association’s annual conference in 2019, “today’s economy is built on that of yesterday.”