Globalisation, economic literacy and native economic development

While Canada is not considered to be economically disadvantaged, certain peoples within Canada are. For example, economic 'mastery in one's own house' is important to native peoples in Northwest British Columbia (NWBC) but has not yet been achieved. Thus arises the yet unanswered question: How can such economic dependency be eliminated? In this paper, I make the case for a new economic literacy in native economic development. I argue that the elimination of economic dependency can only occur by conscientiously repairing the damage from 19th century globalisation, while not missing globalisation opportunities in the 21st century. This means going beyond a simplistic resource redistribution approach, and fostering high levels of economic literacy, based on: (1) key transaction cognitions (as defined herein) in a larger portion of people on-reserve, (2) providing equal opportunities for on-reserve capital formation through attention to property rights and (3) adjusting or transforming native governance structures; all to minimise the economic entropy from transaction costs.