Decolonizing Entrepreneurship: Time to Open Both Eyes

This paper is not meant as a criticism of the scholarship of entrepreneurship but is written in the spirit of something one of the authors read as a Ph.D. student, that we often do not recognize a privileged position until we are made aware of the privilege (Osmund & Thorn, 1993). In the case of decolonizing entrepreneurship research and teaching,¹ recognizing our privilege matters for selfish and unselfish reasons (i) the moral imperative to redress harms of colonization and (ii) insights into what we are missing of the whole of entrepreneurship in our research and teaching. Therefore, this paper is written in an effort to inform and elicit change. We suggest that in this case, the learning and change require a (i) discussion of colonization and the historical as well as the continued impact of colonization on Indigenous people and non-Indigenous people, (ii) learning to recognize that to succeed, our existing theories of entrepreneurship are not necessarily fit for Indigenous people; and (iii) rethink how theories arising from different ways of knowing, understanding, and being can be used together toward greater good.

To provide clarity, we begin by defining the terms and concepts central to our paper, starting with the term Indigenous. Indigenous is an umbrella term for those peoples who have been subjected to colonization of their lands and cultures (Tuhiwai Smith, 2008; Wilmer, 1993), and who have retained historically continuous social, economic, and philosophical characteristics distinct from the dominant societies of new societies that grew up around them, and who continue to assert and re-assert their peoples’ distinctness (United Nations, 2007). When thinking of Indigenous people, it is critical to keep in mind the distinctness and vibrancy of the differences between each Indigenous nation, people, or community. Each community is reflective of its origins, history, and the impact of place. Common exonyms covered by the umbrella include Aboriginal and Native American, among others; each serves to essentialize and mask the distinctness of a people’s distinctness. It is estimated that 500 million Indigenous people live in 90 countries, representing significant parts of most national economies (Anderson et al., 2005). As they continue to recover from the assaults of colonization and recover the economic sovereignty they had before colonization, their economic clout will continue to grow (Anderson et al., 2006). Indigenous people are actively pursuing the reestablishment of their economic self-determination and recognize the role of entrepreneurship in this pursuit (Anderson et al., 2004). As researchers seeking an understanding of entrepreneurship and as educators engaged in sharing knowledge and understanding entrepreneurship, we have the opportunity to participate with Indigenous people in their societal projects.

Put simply, colonization is a process of one polity establishing political control and subjugation of a territory and the territory’s inhabitants. History demonstrates that colonization is not limited to any single era of history, that there is not one model of colonization, and the experience of colonization is context-specific (Alfred, 2009). Despite this, the history of colonization demonstrates that the subjugation of territory and people is not simply the acquisition and accumulation of territory and people, but it requires the erasure of what was there and replacing it with what the colonizers bring with them (Said, 1994). Colonization’s impact on colonized territories is pernicious and long-lasting. The methods of subjugation and impacts of acquisition all remain to some extent, and those who remain in a territory after it acquires its ‘freedom’ from the colonizing power.

Decolonization refers to the intellectual deconstruction of colonial ideologies, narratives, and institutional edifices built up to support the false notion that Western knowledge is universal and the creation of space for Indigenous ways of knowing, being, and doing at the center of academia equal to Western ways of knowing, being, and doing (Moosavi, 2020; Pimbott, 2020). With this understanding of Indigenous and decolonization, it is important to recognize and acknowledge the political nature of Indigeneity through factors such as resistance of the dominant society and assertion of rights to exist according to their choice.

There is no single definition of Indigenous knowledge because this is another umbrella term for a set of complex practical and spiritual knowledge systems based on the worldviews of Indigenous Peoples developed through their relationship with the environment and which is the result of Indigenous peoples’ adaptations to the land over countless generations (Dybbroe, 1999). Indigenous knowledge encompasses unique cultures, languages, values, histories, governance, and legal systems and is unique to each Indigenous community. Indigenous knowledge cannot be separated from the people inextricably connected to that knowledge and their Knowledge Holders are the only people who can truly define Indigenous Knowledge for their communities. Indigenous knowledge is sometimes referred to as Traditional Knowledge (Canada.ca, 2022; Daniel et al., 2022). We choose not to use this term because it poorly recognizes that much like the Scientific Method upon which academia relies, Indigenous knowledge systems are equally rigorous and are built upon the experiences (hypothesis testing) of earlier generations, informing the practice of current generations (Kimmerer, 2013). We do, however, substitute Indigenous Knowledge with Indigenous ways of being, doing, and knowing as a reminder of the all-encompassing nature of Indigenous and non-Indigenous knowledge systems. Therefore, in our paper, we use the term Indigenous knowledge to represent the ways of knowing, being, and doing that idiosyncratically developed within each Indigenous culture. In the same logic, we use the term Western knowledge to refer to the ways of knowing, being, and doing that developed within the West (defined below).

We draw upon for our definition of entrepreneurship and Indigenous entrepreneurship. Accordingly, entrepreneurship is “not just a way of conducting business; it is an ideology originating from basic human needs and desires … entails discovering the new, while changing, adapting and preserving the best of the old” (Kao, 2007, p. 44). This recognizes that there is more to entrepreneurship than being an exclusively economic phenomenon in market societies (Calas et al., 2009). Following from this while also recognizing there is no such thing as a unity that could be called Indigenous Entrepreneurship; instead, it is entrepreneurship whose ideology fits with the ways of being, doing, and knowing of an Indigenous people that entails discovering the new while changing, adapting and preserving the best of the old.

The moral imperative we refer to relies on two premises. Those of us who are not Indigenous but who live in or have lived in societies with colonial histories have all benefited from the colonial past. We have benefited from what has been built on lands and resources taken from Indigenous people. To exemplify what we mean by this statement, think of Canada, where two of the authors live. The dominant society in Canada is made up of immigrants. Regardless of when they came, all reside on land and rely on infrastructure funded by colonial actions and with resources taken from Indigenous nations. Canadian universities are located on land taken, often in violation of treaties. As beneficiaries of colonization, we are imbued with a moral imperative to play a meaningful role in reconciliation with Indigenous people. The second premise we propose also represents concrete ways we can participate in reconciliation.

Entrepreneurship is “fundamentally a process of social change” (Calas et al., 2009, p. 553). Although we do not wish to continue the discourse of deficiency in relation to Indigenous people, the fact is that by most measures of economic, health, and welfare measures of well-being, Indigenous communities in every country endure worse outcomes than non-Indigenous communities in the country (e.g., see Fuentes et al., 2020; Gall et al., 2021). Indigenous leaders recognize that revitalizing their entrepreneurial spirit and harnessing entrepreneurship’s economic potential is a necessary part of improving their community’s well-being while also restoring, rejuvenating, and strengthening themselves from a foundation that is grounded on their traditions, culture, knowledge, and understanding (Anderson, 2002; Peredo et al., 2004). “Become a Chief who creates revenue-generating jobs that make money for your First Nation” (Louie, 2021, p. 131). As academics, we possess knowledge and an understanding of entrepreneurship that results in an ethical obligation to follow the lead of Indigenous leaders and communities and contribute where we can to their entrepreneurial goals.

There is nothing new about colonization. As the Assyrian empire expanded from its heartland, its gods, governance, and knowledge were imposed to replace the culture, gods, and knowledge of the acquired territories, only to be supplanted by the Persian Empire and its ways of knowing, being, and doing. Distinct colonization processes of erasure and replacement can be tracked in the Roman, Mongol, Aztec, Ottoman, and countless other epochs.

Although the Assyrian, Persian, Roman, Mogul, Aztec, and Ottoman empires are ancient history, it could be argued that the world is still living through the impacts of a more recent period of colonization that arose with the expansion of the West. By the West, we refer to the cultural archive that grew out of the Mediterranean Basin and was shaped by the Enlightenment and Renaissance periods to imagine “new worlds, new wealth and new possessions that could be discovered and controlled” (Tuhiwai Smith, 2008, p. 22) by the West’s superior ways of knowing, being, and doing (Foucault, 1972; Said, 1994). What differentiates this period of colonization from those that preceded it is that the gods, governance, and knowledge were not those of single polities or empires but of a whole region of the world, the West, and that few regions of the world were spared from direct colonization by Western nations.

The history of the past, roughly 600 years, is one of Western nation-states expanding through establishing colonies and colonial administrations in places geographically, culturally, and epistemologically far removed from Western Europe. As the colonies spread, the colonizers, and in some cases, their successor independent polities, developed systems, institutions, and discourses to subordinate Indigenous populations encountered and to justify the colonization in the colonizers’ home countries. Notions such as inferior, less developed, dependent, and peoples desiring and beseeching domination became common aspects of colonization. Indigenous knowledge, their epistemologies, accumulated knowledge, modes of governance, cultures, societies, and economies were delegitimized as undeveloped, unscientific, and irrational and replaced by “legitimate” Western mores. In every colonized territory, the systems, institutions, and discourses of colonization reinforced a discourse of Indigenous people and their ancestors as heathens, pagans, uncivilized, inferior in every way, and the need to give up their way of life and assimilate for their own good. Indigenous people and non-Indigenous populations in the colonies and home countries were subjected to this institutionalized discourse (Sinclair, 2019). The almost universal application of these discourses resulted in historical and current notions of the superiority of Western knowledge and a lack of faith in the legitimacy of Indigenous ways of knowing, being, and doing held by Indigenous individuals about themselves and other Indigenous people, descendants of settlers in former colonies, and recent immigrants to formerly colonized countries (Chakrabarty, 2000).

Even now, it is not difficult to find echoes of colonization’s delegitimization practices in the discourses of today when, for example, regions or societies are compared as developed versus less developed, knowledge versus folk knowledge, history versus oral tradition, or tribe, ethnic group, versus nation. Along with the delegitimization, the process of colonization worked physically through things like bounties, politically by not recognizing sovereignty, and culturally erasing Indigenous people from the colonized territory. Cultural erasure is seen in, for example, Canadian governments’ use of “systematic, government-sponsored attempt to destroy Aboriginal (Indigenous) cultures and languages and to assimilate Aboriginal (Indigenous) peoples so that they no longer existed as distinct peoples” (TRC, 2015, p. 107). Cultural erasure is also seen in and perpetuated by less dramatic practices like using one term for all Indigenous people. An example is the use of Aborigine for all Indigenous people of Australia instead of identifying the person as a member of one of the 500 polities, each with distinct languages, cultures, and laws (Map of Indigenous Australia, 2022), thereby erasing cultures in popular discourse.

Why does colonization still matter in the post-colonial era? Our societies remain dramatically influenced by the West’s colonization of a large part of the world. Those who live, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, in formerly colonized countries do so in societies where aspects of inherited structures and institutions of colonization remain and continue to reinforce and perpetuate the delegitimizing and erasing of Indigeneity and subjugation. Amnesty International, the United Nations, and the 148 countries that support the UN Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) acknowledge deleterious effects of this period of colonization and that Indigenous peoples “rights have always been violated. Indigenous Peoples today, are arguably among the most disadvantaged and vulnerable groups of people in the world” (United Nations, 2007).

The effect of colonization is not limited to Indigenous people but also has lingering effects on the descendants of the colonizers and settlers, not questioning the superiority of Western thought and paradigms. The dominant discourse around the past and present of colonization and decolonization affects us all. As briefly pointed out above, the language of colonization’s delegitimizing and erasing Indigenous peoples continues in common uses and in ways most of us are unaware of. Most non-Indigenous peoples are unaware of the many ways that their lives remain structured around the continued assumption that the ideas subsumed in what we call the West are right, true, and superior to anything else. Although we live in a decolonized world where the colonization of empire-building has stopped, this unawareness inhibits the decolonization of the minds of non-Indigenous peoples.

We are taught in schools and universities and reminded through various forms of knowledge dissemination that Herodotus, a 5^th century BC Greek was the first historian because it is the first (known) written preservation of events of the past (Whitley & Barbour, 2007). Western tradition takes for granted that written histories by trained historians are facts that have not been cleaned up, reshaped, or changed to serve the writer’s purposes (Holland, 2012) and takes for granted that non-written forms of history, oral histories are illegitimate and void of fact or truth. This thinking ignores the humanity of both written and oral histories, that Indigenous knowledge keepers also undergo rigorous training, and that all histories take the past out of context to serve the function of supporting a thesis (Sontag, 1962). This attitude is replicated by our continued categorization of the past as “historic” and “prehistoric.”

Entrepreneurship, management, and the Academy, in general, are not untouched by the effects of colonization described above in the continued emphasis on Western knowledge as the center of legitimate knowledge (Kemple & Mawani, 2009). From even a superficial survey of our fields, the dominance of Western ways of being, knowing, and doing can be observed in the affiliations and training of authors and Academy of Management members, the reliance on Western literature, theories, and methods as sources in our publications, the location of influential journals and their editors, and the spread of Western pedagogy in business education (Gopinath, 1998). The norms of our academic discipline present Western knowledge as superior, legitimate, and scientific, whilst Indigenous knowledge is categorized as inferior, illegitimate, uncivilized, backward, and superstitious (Jack et al., 2011).

Thus far, we have attempted to raise awareness of the nature and extent of the privileged position many of us have inherited and worked within. In doing so, our message is that despite the discourse of colonization, Indigenous people, their knowledge, and their ways of being, doing, and knowing are no less valid than the knowledge and ways of being, knowing, and doing of Western academia. If we accept this, then we must also accept that understanding the fullness of any phenomena requires the inclusion of Indigenous and non-Indigenous knowledge. As in any phenomena of interest, the distinct differences between Indigenous knowledge extend to entrepreneurship.

To assume entrepreneurship grew out of the European context or capitalism is wrong-headed. Before colonization, Indigenous societies had economies that allowed their people to prosper and thrive. In comparison to themselves, early European visitors to North America described the people and communities they met as healthy, strong, and vital (Mann, 2005). Evidence abounds of widely dispersed inter-tribal trade networks existing before colonization (Stewart, 2004). In the words of Chief Clarence Louie of the Osoyoos Indian Band of British Columbia, “Every tribe was self-sufficient and had economies based on the land and the water and on inter-tribal trade…. The first entrepreneurs in North America we the First Nations” (Louie, 2021, p. 132). But the colonizers, administrators, researchers, and educators, confident in the superiority of Western ways of knowing, being, and doing entrepreneurship, failed to recognize Indigenous entrepreneurship and learn the lessons offered.

Our literature recognizes that opportunity recognition, innovation, and entrepreneurship are culturally embedded (Dana, 2007). We suggest that the extend of the embeddedness of entrepreneurship extends far beyond culture. Indigenous cultures, ontologies, and epistemologies grew through paths and environments different from those of the West. Indigenous societies developed unique ways of ordering their world (Tuhiwai Smith, 2008), concepts of self and of ethics (Srinivas, 2012), and their ways of knowing, being, and doing (Martin & Mirraboopa, 2003) that can be starkly different from those of the West (Whiteman & Cooper, 2000). Societies developed idiosyncratic questions, applied their theories, and developed knowledge that is novel to the knowledge developed in the context of the West. Indigenous societies found answers to questions we in the West have not thought to exist or to ask.

In a general sense, Indigenous “enterprise-related activities exemplify a distinguishable kind of activity” (Peredo et al., 2004, p. 3). There are also many ways that Indigenous people engage in and understand entrepreneurship. Despite the idiosyncratic reality of Indigenous entrepreneurship, Dana (2007) point out four elements that, to varying degrees and toward various outcomes, distinguish the entrepreneurial activity of Indigenous people: (i) a degree of incompatibility with Western notions of entrepreneurship; (ii) elements of egalitarianism, sharing, and community; (iii) connection to non-economic variables such as land, place, culture, and entrepreneurship as a tool for reinforcing and restoring what was taken; and (iv) a pull toward traditional knowledge and practices of entrepreneurship and the push toward capitalistic entrepreneurial activities.

The distinction and incompatibilities between Indigenous entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship as understood by academia are recalled by Gartner (2001), who draws upon the parable of understanding an elephant to remind us that there are many parts to the whole of entrepreneurship and that understanding requires our being conscious of the assumptions we make and explicit about what we believe we understand of entrepreneurship. We add to this that without including Indigenous knowledge and Indigenous entrepreneurship, the whole of entrepreneurship cannot be known.

Following along with the recognition of the value and existence of legitimate knowledge and theories outside of that developed in the West and by Western-trained scholarship are questions of the applicability of theories rooted in Western understandings, methods, and expectations. The problem is that theories are rooted in theories developed to understand, explain, and predict in contexts of Western ways of knowing and doing entrepreneurship. The belief in Western-developed theories of entrepreneurship legitimacy and their universal applicability led to the assumption and practice of universally applying the theories regardless of the context. However, Indigenous people and contexts exemplify enterprise-related activities distinct from those of Western societies, which renders mainstream theories and understanding of entrepreneurship less helpful to the questions asked and the outcomes of Indigenous people than previously assumed. How, then, do we go about decolonizing entrepreneurship and developing knowledge that serves to answer the questions and reach the outcomes sought by Indigenous and non-Indigenous people?

We believe the answer lies somewhere within what we know about entrepreneurship, what we are researching and teaching, what Indigenous people know about the ways of knowing, being, and doing, and how these might coexist for the benefit of all.

There is precedence for Indigenous knowledge coexisting with the colonizers’ Western knowledge. During the initial stages of colonizing, colonizers were reliant on the munificence of the Indigenous people, followed by a period of mutual interdependence and independence ending in the subjugation of the Indigenous people. Manuel and Posluns (1974) described the relationship, “Both the native people and the visitors developed a mutual dependence that assured that even when relations were not friendly, they would at least be respectful and, for the most part, peaceable” (p. 7). Recreating this sense of mutual dependence and respect is for us, decolonizing entrepreneurship.

How we begin to rebuild mutual interdependence and respect could be answered by starting with Willmott (2008). Willmott reminded us that the value of knowledge ultimately resides in its broad relevance, notably, its capacity to enrich collective self-understanding and thereby provide the basis for sustaining and improving the quality of life; the pursuit of valuable knowledge requires informed pluralism. Informed pluralism “tempers dogmatic claims of sole authority” for any knowledge system by incorporating critical awareness of the limitations of each knowledge claim or contribution while also maintaining an in-depth appreciation of the nature and value of alternative knowledge systems and their ways of being, knowing, and doing. The path to increasingly valuable knowledge is to critically recognize the limits of our knowledge, theories, and claims; accept unreservedly the value of other vaults of knowledge; and incorporate each knowledge system into the puzzles we seek to solve.

Translating Willmott’s idea of informed pluralism to a decolonizing project requires the recognition that Indigenous knowledge and theories can complement those of our Academy without repeating the history of researchers and academics expropriating or subsuming Indigenous knowledge into the dominant body of knowledge (Nadasdy, 1999). It also requires changing the assumption that there is one universal knowledge. Western traditions of knowledge have in them inherent belief in there being a universal knowledge, i.e., one way of knowing, being, and doing applicable and pertinent in all contexts. It is within this paradigm most academics in our field were trained and continue to operate within. Indigenous knowledge systems are not thus hampered. There exist multiple Indigenous conceptual frameworks that appreciate the nature and value of alternate knowledge and allow knowledge systems to “speak for themselves in its own context, without assigning one dominant knowledge system” (Reid et al., 2021, p. 248). Although distinct to each Indigenous people, the conceptual frameworks provide paths for the use of multiple knowledge traditions in parallel to each other, neither touching nor subsuming each other but allowing the enrichment of each knowledge system independently. In Reid et al. (2021), four such frameworks are introduced: Kaswentha, Ganma, Waka-Taurua, and Etuaptmumk. What follows is an attempt to summarize their introductions of the frameworks. To be clear, what follows does not rise to the level of Willmott’s “in-depth” understanding and does great harm to the conceptual richness of the frameworks and knowledge on which they are built. We trust the summaries serve to pique the interest of readers so that they seek to develop proper relationships with the appropriate knowledge holders for instruction and guidance.

Kaswentha, an example of which is shown in Fig. 1, is Haudenosaunee for the concept of the ongoing negotiation between distinct people in the mutual agreement of coexistence (Parmenter, 2013). Kaswentha is often associated with the Two Row Wampum belt, created to record through visual symbols that trigger meanings and details of treaties between the Haudenosaunee and Europeans. The belt records two parallel purple lines of beads in a river of white beads that symbolize each people traveling side by side in cooperation and respect while never attempting to steer the other (Onondaga Nation, n.d.).

Fig. 2 presents a representation of Ganma, the Yolngu framework that uses the metaphor of two streams, one from the land and the other from the sea, mixing to theorize about the forces of the waters combining to create deeper understandings and truths. Ganma theory provides enabling mechanisms for relating ideas, concepts, and all perceptions intermingling with tolerance and respect and without privileging one (Watson et al., 1989).

Waka-Taurua, illustrated in Fig. 3, is a framework developed by Māori consultations between 2017 and 2018 on how Māori knowledge and non-Maori knowledge could be lashed together to achieve a common purpose (Maxwell et al., 2020). This approach is represented as two autonomous canoes, each with its own set of paddles/hoe (tools, actions, knowledge, and theories) temporarily tied together with a deck representing shared and negotiated engagement space. Importantly, Waka-Taurua allows for more than knowledge exchange, the non-privileged selection between what is determined as most applicable to the question at hand, but it also allows for innovation (Maxwell et al., 2020).

In Fig 4, we present an illustration of Etuaptmumk is another example of the living nature of Indigenous knowledge systems, recognizing the interdependence, the need, and the opportunity to learn from each other in unifying knowledge. Respected Mi’kmaw Elder Albert Marshall taught that learning to see from one eye with the strengths of Indigenous knowledge, from the other eye with the strengths of Western knowledge, and to use both these eyes together, for the benefit of all (Reid et al., 2021, p. 246).

An example of Indigenous communities allowing knowledge systems to speak for themselves in their own context can be seen by comparing two Dene communities, the Inuvialuit and the Dene First Nation of the Sahtu Region, and their responses to oil and gas development (Dana et al., 2008, 2009). The Sahtu Dene territory is along the Mackenzie River and Great Bear Lake. The Inuvialuit territory lies further north and encompasses the Mackenzie Delta and the Beaufort Sea. As a result of the differences in place and history, the communities each have distinct Indigenous knowledge and distinct, though related, languages. Outside awareness of the presence of oil and gas reserves along the Mackenzie River dates back to the 1890s, but outside interest in the reserves waxed and waned until the 1970s. This marked the beginning of a period of interest in the fuel reserves in Inuvialuit and Sahtu Dene’s territories. Along with the prospectors and oil companies came outside ways of knowing, being, and doing, such as the market economy and maximum resource extraction.

In their research with the communities, Dana et al. (2008, 2009) observed that both communities started with an omnipresent and central understanding of their connection to the land, animals, and environment of their homelands. From that foundation, the researched found distinctions in the knowledge and understanding the communities developed when using both eyes to understand what would be best for their community. In the case of the Inuvialuit, their goal was to strengthen and rebuild their communities by “maintaining their traditional way of life and, at the same time, venture into the market economy” (Dana et al., 2008, p. 158). To this end, the Inuvialuit Development Corp was created to enable involvement and impactful participation in local, polar, and national economies. The development corporation entered joint ventures and development partnerships with the oil and gas companies. By 2000, 70% of the regional oil and gas-related contracts had been made by Inuvialuit-owned businesses. In their analysis of the strengths of Indigenous and Western knowledge, the Sathu Dene came to a different understanding of a path forward. They did not turn away from industrial development but kept it as a junior partner in protecting their lands and traditional renewable resource economy. This was done by agreeing to pipeline routes that avoided culturally significant sites and the creation of cost and revenue-sharing agreements. In both cases, the Indigenous communities were able to strengthen themselves culturally, economically, and their political autonomy. These serve as examples that demonstrate the potential for Indigenous and non-Indigenous ways of being, knowing, and doing collaboratively for the benefit of all.

There is no straightforward procedure for decolonizing. Nothing about this journey is straightforward, quick, or simple. It is a journey that requires patience, humility, reflection, repentance, and a committed willingness to change. Despite this, we suggest a three-part iterative and unending process whereby we, scholars and educators, might proceed with decolonizing entrepreneurship and thereby better fulfill our responsibility to leave the world a better place. Suggesting there is a process as simple as having three parts is both deceptive. Any part of our proposed process is far more complicated, challenging, and time-consuming than we could describe. However, here is our three-part process, which is in no order.

One part of the process surrounds knowledge, including acceptance of Indigenous concepts of multiple knowledge systems working together. Central is the mechanism and understanding that facilitates neither knowledge being subsumed by others nor the enrichment of each knowledge system independently. This step does not end with a scholar accepting there are alternate and valuable knowledge systems. It is not enough to accept the presence of multiple equal knowledge systems because we will often also have to reframe or break our current paradigm of being, knowing, and doing entrepreneurship.

Dana (2007) provide examples of areas where Indigenous knowledge can challenge our entrepreneurship paradigm. The authors identify several understandings that are common among many bodies of Indigenous knowledge. Ones specific to entrepreneurship are the communal and cooperative nature of existence and value creation from entrepreneurship as monetary, cultural, and political. An example of a grander challenge is time. Indigenous conceptions of time in terms of span, interaction with, and simultaneous coexistence of past, present, and future. These examples are the specific bodies of Indigenous knowledge and understandings of entrepreneurship that are the result of each Indigenous community’s engagement, and understanding of entrepreneurship is the result of their experience and the influence of the place.

Place leads us to another part of our process, which is honoring and respecting the local or most relevant Indigenous community in your work. Again, in general, Indigenous people’s ways of knowing, being, and doing place speak to connections to where they are or have been that are deeper and more pervasive than Western concepts of place and its influence on knowledge. The closest we are aware of is Heidegger’s (1962) hermeneutic-phenomenological theory and Ericson’s (2021) theory of social material weaving. Indigenous understandings are rooted in place, and all that is there (Dana, 2007). The connection includes symbiotic connections between the people, plants, animals, water, soil, and air. In the symbiotic relationship, Western hierarchies of sentience and intelligence do not hold; humans are not superior to the other entities. Interdependence exists between all people, animals, plants, and physical features of the places they, Indigenous people, have always existed in. As a starting point, Western concepts of embeddedness recognize the influence of place and context on our understanding of and engagement in entrepreneurship, but Indigenous concepts of embeddedness go exponentially deeper than anything we have been taught. Consequently, place and the Indigenous people of a place mean everything in any decolonization path. Whether we are considering the place of your origin, place of your present, or place of your research and teaching, it is necessary to learn at the feet of the Indigenous knowledge holders of the place is an essential part of the decolonization of our minds.

Learning from and being taught by knowledge-holders requires building trusting and reciprocal relationships within the Indigenous communities of the place you are. There are challenges to building relationships. One challenge arises from the fact that Indigenous people have been researched for as long as there have been colonial and post-colonial times and their experience of research, and researchers has predominantly been exploitive and negative (Tuhiwai Smith, 2008). Too often, the practice of researchers has been presenting our work as discovery instead of acknowledging we have extracted, commodified, and distributed Indigenous knowledge, values, and beliefs for our purposes and as our property (Bishop, 1998; Denzin & Lincoln, 2008). Much of the research has not been for the benefit or interest of the Indigenous people but has been for the benefit and advancement of the researchers and funders. At times, the research and researchers have played significant roles in supporting the regulatory mechanisms of subjugation and colonization (Asch, 2014).

Learning from Indigenous knowledge holders and developing the in-depth understanding Willmott referred to requires our overcoming the effects of the history of colonization, and research requires patient and purposeful efforts to establish trusting relationships with local Indigenous communities. How you build relationships depends on the Indigenous people, their protocols, and expectations. In a presentation at the 2023 International Academy of Indigenous Research in Management and Organization (IARIMOS), Algonquin Anishinabe Claudette Commanda, Chancellor of the University of Ottawa, shared guidance, for establishing trusting relationships. She advised audience members to reframe our work from studying Indigenous people to being part of their research. This means working with communities to find answers to the questions they have. It means a commitment that all research is for the benefit, as defined by the community, of the community. It can also mean following knowledge holders in building two-eyed research methods.

Her guidance was to also learn the community’s protocols and follow them as you build the necessary relationship. In the case of her community, asking to meet the Chief and Council was an essential protocol. So, too, is recognizing and respecting their status as knowledge holders. She suggested one way to do this is to invite them into your classes and presentations in such a way as to recognize their status and show this respect by inviting them to your university as peers. Ask community leaders to teach you how to be a “good scholar.” To build trusting relationships, her admonition was to establish reciprocal relationships that recognize interdependence and interconnectedness where good research and teaching are compatible with what the community wants.

The third part of our suggested process is to incorporate Kaswentha, Ganma, Waka-Taurua, Etuaptmumk, or other Indigenous frameworks into our teaching and research. Share with others as you learn and decolonize yourself. Open your students’ and colleagues’ minds to the possibilities of other ways of knowing, being, and doing entrepreneurship by including Indigenous content in your courses and working with Indigenous researchers. But be aware that incorporating Indigenous knowledge is not as simple as the sentence makes it sound. Learn and follow the local protocols for sharing knowledge that respect the knowledge holder who shared the knowledge.

We attempted to point out a motivation for decolonizing entrepreneurship research and education. We shed light on the realities of our legacies of colonization and argued that there are ethical and scholarly reasons to engage in the decolonization of entrepreneurship. Colonization and its legacies have left us with great inequalities and we can have a role in reconciling these inequalities. Educators have important roles in reconciliation. The “What We Have Learned” report from the groundbreaking Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission into the legacy of Canada’s residential schools places emphasis on our role: “Reconciliation requires sustained public education and dialogue, including youth engagement, about the history and legacy of residential schools, Treaties, and Aboriginal rights, as well as the historical and contemporary contributions of Aboriginal peoples to Canadian society” (TRC, 2015, p. 126).

To decolonize entrepreneurship research and education, we are being asked to participate in reconciliation by restoring relationships of mutual dependence despite the incompatible aspects of our ways of knowing, being, and doing. As we learn from Kaswentha, Ganma, Waka-Taurua, and Etuaptmumk there is a need in our research and education to collaborate as equals, become aware of the needs and interests of, and conduct research and education that matters not only to our academic field but also for the Indigenous society with whom we are researching. This will mean we no longer ethnocentrically define the research problem, theories, and methods (Sillitoe et al., 2010). In so doing, not only will we be allies in reconciliation, but by practicing Indigenous multiple knowledge frameworks, we will have available theories and knowledge most applicable to any context and the innovation we need in our ever-changing world.