Decolonizing Wealth: Indigenous Wisdom to Heal Divides and Restore Balance

by Edgar Villanueva

This is a book for people who direct the flow of money.

We are also all infected with what I call the “colonizer virus,” which urges us to divide, control, and exploit. Nowhere is the virus more symptomatic than in how we deal with wealth.

To sum it up: when it comes to getting or giving access to money, white men are usually in charge, and everyone else has to be twice (or more) as good to get half (or less) as much. All the institutions along the loans-to-gifts spectrum—I’ll use the term “funders” to encompass them all—are “ivory towers,”

I mean institutions of racism and division. All these funders exist to preserve the wealth and privilege of a few, to separate them from the rest of us. Most employ money in the name of division, to reinforce fear, greed, and envy.