{"product_id":"indigenous-currencies-ashley-cordes-9780262552530","title":"Indigenous Currencies: Leaving Some for the Rest in the Digital Age","description":"\u003cb\u003eHow Indigenous currencies--including wampum and dentalium shells, beads, and the cryptocurrency MazaCoin--have long constituted a form of resistance to settler colonialism.\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ci\u003eIndigenous Currencies\u003c\/i\u003e 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\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003eargues that Indigenous currencies transcend the scope of economic value, revealing the cultural, social, and political context of what it means to exchange. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eThe 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. Throughout the book, a vision of currency is cultivated where \u003ci\u003eleaving some for the rest \u003c\/i\u003estands as a way of imagining relationships of exchange beyond their enclosure within settler-capitalist parameters of extraction and into currents of deep reciprocity.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Ashley Cordes\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-10:\u003c\/b\u003e 0262552531\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9780262552530\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e MIT Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 04\/22\/2025\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 216\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback","brand":"Ashley Cordes","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":46465657962751,"sku":"9780262552530","price":35.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0662\/2982\/9887\/files\/img_255ca504-fbd2-4473-82de-4705a12f8208.jpg?v=1736346907","url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/indigenous-currencies-ashley-cordes-9780262552530","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}