Decolonial economics: Insights from an Indigenous-led labour market study

Globally, Indigenous peoples are overrepresented in unemployment rates, low income, poverty, low education, and other social indicators. Mainstream measures to address these things still maintain the terms of the conversation within a colonial/neoliberal framework, perpetuating inequities and coloniality. We document an attempt to overcome this by Anishinaabe First Nations in the Canadian context via a decolonial labour market study. The study shows how quantitative methods and market failure analysis can be both decolonial and useful for policy analysis and implementation when such things are directed by Indigenous organizations and undertaken with community participation. These results contribute to the development of an Indigenous economics, or a decolonial economics, that begins with different assumptions and goals than would a mainstream market analysis, but that does not exclude the use of tools from welfare economics.