Stewardship:
Indigenous Community Wealth Building
An on-the-ground solution for shifting local economies that create lasting, equitable outcomes grounded in tribal culture and values. Through the ICWB program, organizations, tribes, and communities have a place-based approach to economic development that puts the basic needs of people and the planet at the center of economic stability and democratic control.
We value working with Indigenous communities to reclaim their roles as stewards, expanding and shifting the conception of economics beyond money and re-centering our collective responsibility to each other, the world around us, and future generations.
Indigenous Community Wealth Building Program
The Indigenous Community Wealth Building Program is a culturally-informed, community-led economic framework for developing long-term, sustainable abundance. It puts a community’s priorities and vision at the center, allowing every community to determine what it sees as wealth on its own terms. The program provides real, on-the-ground solutions for shifting local systems and structures to create lasting, equitable economic outcomes grounded in communities’ culture and values. Through the ICWB program, organizations, tribes, and communities have a place-based approach to economic development that puts the basic needs of people and the planet at the center of creating economic stability and democratic control.
Utilizing our own curriculum that was developed specifically for us, through workshops, community meetings, and each program partner’s own ideas about what’s needed, the program moves through its seasonal, cyclical process. After the an organization’s time in the program has ended, Seven Fires continues to offer a network of other communities and individuals practicing Indigenous Community Wealth Building that can lend support, camaraderie, and guidance through your community’s next steps and beyond.
“Indigenous communities have the power, strength, and intelligence to develop culturally specific strategies of liberation, health, and well-being. Indigenous people have the right to accept new ways of thinking, reconstruct them, or to deny them. Translation is not only encouraged but necessary.”
Stephanie Gutierrez (Oglala Lakota), Seven Fires, Executive Director
“An Indigenous Approach to Community Wealth Building: A Lakota Translation.”
In this report, Seven Fires Executive Director, Stephanie Gutierrez, powerfully demonstrates how any community wealth building effort that does not commit to the work of decolonizing its concepts and strategies will fail to accomplish what it sets out to do.
