by Mimiges Brownroad, MMNN Contributor

In response to a reader’s request, it is time to tell you more about this new term for an old concept “fair-trade”. Fair-trade is not new in life, it is new as a international market concept and certification systems.

When you sit at your craft table and someone looks at your beadwork you spent 80 hours on, and laughs at you, saying that they can buy a beadwork like that at the store for 1/4 of that price (although it was made in another country, using fake materials). Imagine if you were forced to sell your beadwork for 1/4 of the price because there was only that one buyer, as a middle-person, who then goes to sell it for you.
And fair-trade is more than a fair price, but a system of community development, based on fair-power/voice where ecological and social concerns considered.

We have our own histories here on the lands we now collectively call Turtle Island. Our stories of European colonization are diverse and we are healing and growing. We have our own struggles and celebrations here in Canada. The territories we call Canada happen to become part of the industrialized world, where we are the consumers of resources and have influence over the lives of thousands, even millions of peoples in other parts of the world where they grow and create products for our consumption.

As First Nations peoples in Canada, we sometimes do not get a good sense of the stories of other Indigenous nations living in the less industrialized countries and the ...

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