Indigenous Communalism : Belonging, Healthy Communities, and Decolonizing the Collective

"From the tactile descriptions of a grandmother's inter-generational care, to the strategic and slow consensus work of elected tribal leaders, native community builders perform the daily work of constructing culture and nurturing community. Indigenous Communalism describes a critical ethnography of community-building and community builders in the Akimel O'odham of Southern Arizona, and considers what we can learn about culture, and about strong, healthy communities from Indigenous peoples. This ethnography is deeply descriptive of the moral value of communalism, something that is present in all human communities. But Indigenous peoples express and practice it in distinctive ways. As a contrast to the hyper-individualism in most contemporary economic, legal, and scientific discourse, this book promotes critical awareness of individualist assumptions"--