When indigenous scholars, intellectuals and philosophers (such as the Wendat chief Kandiaronk quoted below) of eastern Turtle Island made their first observations of European culture and its focus on money in the 1600-s they expressed something that came to be known as The Indigenous Critique.

What was said about how focusing our lives and priorities on accumulating money at any cost and how that has a degenerative and corrosive effect on morality was very astute and sadly , also prophetic in describing what would one day become a sickness of the mind that infected some of those indigenous to Turtle Island as well (see my most recent note for one example).

In some cases, indigenous intellectuals travelled to Europe in order to study and understand feudal society. One such person was a Huron-Wendat leader named, Kandiaronk also known as Le Rat, who seems to have impressed everyone he ever met with his great brilliance.

In New France (known as Ontario, Canada today) Wendat leader Kandiaronk raised scathing critiques of European social customs and values, particularly criticizing monarchical rule, social hierarchies, emphasis on the accumulation of wealth and materialism, and punitive justice systems. These descriptions then made their way back to Europe, where they were widely distributed among the intellectual class and, Graeber and Wengrow argue, became the inspiration for much Enlightenment thought.

After visiting France and then returning to the Eastern Woodlands of Turtle Island Kondiaronk (the Wendat chief described above) offers this distillation of the indigenous critique:

“I’ve spent six years thinking about the state of European society and I still can’t think of a single one of your ways that isn’t inhumane, and I sincerely believe that it can only be because you stick to your distinctions of ‘mine’ and ‘yours’.

I affirm that what you call money is the devil of devils; the tyrant of the French, the source of all evil; the scourge of souls and the slaughterhouse of the living. To imagine that one can live in the land of money and preserve one’s soul is like imagining that one can preserve one’s life at the bottom of a lake. Money is the father of luxury, lasciviousness, intrigue, deceit, lies, betrayal, insincerity, all the worst behaviors in the world. Fathers sell their children, husbands their wives, wives betray their husbands, brothers kill each other, friends are false, and all for money. In light of all this, tell me that we Wendat are not right to refuse to touch or even look at money“

“Over and over I have set forth the qualities that we Wendat believe ought to define humanity – wisdom, reason, equity, etc. – and demonstrated that the existence of separate material interests knocks all these on the head. A man motivated by interest cannot be a man of reason. “

Kandiaronk’s view was that the greed, poverty, and crime found in French society arise from lust for money. By refusing to deal with money, the Wendat were able to live in freedom and equality.