Relating practice to theory in indigenous entrepreneurship: A pilot investigation of the Kitsaki partnership portfolio

• Published in: The American Indian Quarterly
• Main Authors: Hindle, Kevin, Anderson, Robert B., Giberson, Robert J., Kayseas, R.
• Other Authors: Swinburne University of Technology
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: University of Nebraska Press 2005
• Subjects: Canada; Lansdowne; First Nations; inuit; Metis
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1959.3/1510; https://doi.org/10.1353/aiq.2005.0050

In Canada and elsewhere around the world, Indigenous Peoples are struggling to rebuild their 'nations' and improve the socioeconomic circumstances of their people. Many see economic development as the key to success. This is certainly true for Indigenous people in Canada (the First Nations, Metis, and Inuit, collectively called Aboriginal or Indigenous people). Among them, participation in the global economy through entrepreneurship and business development is widely accepted as the key to economy building and nation 're-building.' As elaborated in the next section, the demand is that this participation must be on their own terms for their own purposes, and traditional lands, history, culture, and values play a critical role. There is an intriguing symmetry between the modernity of the desire for global business competence and competitiveness and the insistence upon the distinctive importance of cultural heritage in developing new enterprise. The way that the two superficially contrasting concepts of innovation and heritage are combined in the field of Indigenous entrepreneurship has been expounded by Hindle and Lansdowne.