SALE ON NOW! PROMOTIONS

Close Notification

Your cart does not contain any items

Indigenous Currencies: Leaving Some for the Rest in the Digital Age by Ashley Cordes at Abbey's Bookshop,
Indigenous Currencies: Leaving Some for the Rest in the Digital Age
— —
Ashley Cordes

Indigenous Currencies

Leaving Some for the Rest in the Digital Age

Ashley Cordes

$69.99

Paperback

Not in-store but you can order this
How long will it take?
English
MIT Press
20 May 2025
Economics
How Indigenous currencies-including wampum and dentalium shells, beads, and the cryptocurrency MazaCoin-have long constituted a form of resistance to settler colonialism.

How Indigenous currencies-including wampum and dentalium shells, beads, and the cryptocurrency MazaCoin-have long constituted a form of resistance to settler colonialism.

Indigenous Currencies follows dynamic stories of currency as a meaning-making communication technology. Settler economies regard currency as their own invention, casting Indigenous systems of value, exchange, and data stewardship as incompatible with contemporary markets. In this book, Ashley Cordes refutes such claims and describes a long history of Indigenous innovation in currencies, including wampum, dentalium, beads, and, more recently, the cryptocurrency MazaCoin. By looking closely at how currencies developed over time through intercultural communication, Cordes argues that Indigenous currencies transcend the scope of economic value, revealing the cultural, social, and political context of what it means to exchange.

The book's two main case studies, the gold rush and the code rush, frame a deep dive into how Indigenous ways of being have shaped the use and significance of currency and vice versa. Settler currencies, which have developed in the wake of wars and through massively scaled forms of material extraction, offer a very different story of the place of currencies within settler economies of dispossession. The second part of the study asks how contemporary cryptocurrencies may play a critical role in cultivating Tribal sovereignty. The author analyzes structural properties of the polymorphic blockchain to provide key insights into how emergent digital spaces, with their attendant forms of meaning and value represented by code, NFTs, and Web 3.0, are inextricably connected to Indigenous knowledges. The book cultivates a vision of currency in which the principle of leaving some for the rest establishes a way of imagining relationships of exchange beyond their enclosure within settler-capitalist parameters of extraction and into currents of deep reciprocity.
By:  
Imprint:   MIT Press
Country of Publication:   United States
Dimensions:   Height: 229mm,  Width: 152mm, 
Weight:   369g
ISBN:   9780262552530
ISBN 10:   0262552531
Pages:   216
Publication Date:  
Audience:   General/trade ,  ELT Advanced
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active

Ashley Cordes is Assistant Professor of Indigenous Media at the University of Oregon and a recent American Council of Learned Societies Fellow. She is an enrolled citizen of the Ko-Kwel/Coquille Nation and has served as Chair of the Culture and Education Committee.

See Also

Indigenous Currencies: Leaving Some for the Rest in the Digital Age

The Political Economy of International...

Ken Heydon

Paperback

$36.95 

Not in-store but you can order this

ADD +
Indigenous Currencies: Leaving Some for the Rest in the Digital Age

Best Laid Plans

The Inside Story of Reform in Aung...

Sean Turnell

Paperback

$12.99 

In Stock 😊

ADD +
Indigenous Currencies: Leaving Some for the Rest in the Digital Age

Mao

The Man Who Made China

Philip Short

Paperback

$55.95 

Not in-store but you can order this

ADD +
Indigenous Currencies: Leaving Some for the Rest in the Digital Age

Studies on the Abuse and Decline...

Text and Documents

F. A. Hayek

Hardback

$124.95 

Not in-store but you can order this

ADD +
Indigenous Currencies: Leaving Some for the Rest in the Digital Age

Streams of Revenue

The Restoration Economy and the...

Rebecca Lave

Paperback

$59.99 

Not in-store but you can order this

ADD +
Indigenous Currencies: Leaving Some for the Rest in the Digital Age

The Rational Optimist

How Prosperity Evolves

Matt Ridley

Paperback

$19.99 

Not in-store but you can order this

ADD +