154. Decolonizing Wealth by Edgar Villanueva: A Book Review

This week let’s chat about a popular book called Decolonizing Wealth by Edgar Villanueva. It is a book about money, giving, and social justice.

In today’s episode, we will look at how the history of colonization still affects how wealth is used today, often making inequalities worse. Villanueva’s book challenges us to rethink how we view money and shows us that it can be a tool for healing instead of causing division.

Let’s talk about practical ways to change how we think about wealth, focusing on the need to recognize past injustices and empower communities that have been left out. Whether you are interested in philanthropy, social justice, or just want to understand more about money's role in society, this episode will inspire you to think deeply and take action.

Links from today’s episode:

The Decolonizing Wealth Project
https://decolonizingwealth.com/

The 7 Steps to Healing
https://decolonizingwealth.com/7-steps-to-healing/

Decolonizing Wealth by Edgar Villanueva
https://bookshop.org/p/books/decolonizing-wealth-second-edition-indigenous-wisdom-to-heal-divides-and-restore-balance-edgar-villanueva/10784512?ean=9781523091416

ICYMI another episode you might enjoy:
Episode#143 Winners Take All by Anand Giridharadas, a book review

Connect With Genet “GG” Gimja:
Website https://www.progressivepockets.com
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Transcript

Welcome to Progressive Pockets! I go by GG, that’s short for Genet Gimja. This is a show about our money and our power and what we want to do with it beyond ourselves. What do we want for our communities? What do we want for our country? And for our world? What’s our place in all of this?

And today’s episode is about a very popular book called Decolonizing Wealth by Edgar Villanueva. There are so many things to say about this book, but I’m going to start with the most important: I think you should read this book.

I’ve heard the author speak at a few conferences, he is an incredible speaker and writer and I can’t wait to tell you about what he has created here.

Edgar Villanueva is a member of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina and his career has been in  philanthropy. So in that way he has a background which positions him perfectly to offer both an insider's critique and an outsider's fresh perspective on the world of wealth and giving.

Villanueva argues that the way wealth is created and shared today is tied to colonial history. Colonization involved taking land and resources from indigenous peoples and exploiting their labor. This history still influences how wealth is distributed now.

For example, many charitable organizations today are funded by money that was made through these unfair practices. This creates a problem because these organizations often try to help communities without recognizing how their wealth was originally acquired.

Villanueva points out that many charitable organizations have good intentions but still follow old colonial ways. Some of these problems include:

Power Concentration: Wealthy individuals often make decisions without including voices from marginalized communities.

Underfunding Communities of Color: A small amount of philanthropic money goes to communities that have been historically excluded.

Ignoring History: Many organizations don’t acknowledge the history behind their wealth, which can lead to repeating past mistakes.

One of the most challenging and fascinating ideas in this book is that money can be seen as a source of healing rather than just a tool for charity. He literally says that money can be medicine. Let me tell you, I struggled with that. He explains it very well in this book and I have heard him teach this concept in his presentations, but even so, it took me some time to get there. He suggests that if we change how we think about wealth, it can help repair the harm caused by colonization and create connections between people.

He lays out a step by step process in how we can change how we think about and use wealth. I will leave it to you to read the book to learn those steps and I believe he has now come out with a workbook journal type accompaniment so you can work through the steps.

He has started an initiative called Liberated Capital, which aims to put these ideas into practice. This fund supports leaders from marginalized communities and works to fix systemic inequalities.

If you’re looking for a book that really makes you think, this is the one y’all. This is the one. 

So to recap, here’s what we covered today:
Decolonizing Wealth by Edgar Villanueva is a book, a call to action really, to rethink wealth and philanthropy.
In the book, the history of philanthropy is covered in a straightforward and easy to understand way as are the direct links between the history and the current mistakes that are made in philanthropy
The author provides some steps that we can follow to heal our relationship with money and to actually use money as sacred medicine to heal the world.
This is a great book, maybe we need a scale on the show, but this book is 5 out of 5 pockets. If you have a suggestion for what the book rating scale on this show should be, drop me a line.

I’ll include some links in the shownotes if you want to check out Decolonizing Wealth. I am going to include links to where you can buy the book, where you can read more about his work, and I’m also going to include a beautiful website he has created with the 7 steps of healing. It is beautiful and multimedia and you can learn from following those 7 steps as they are laid out on that site, but I do think it is better, if you can read the book so you can get the full context to more fully understand the problem before you jump into the 7 steps.

If you have more time today, here’s another episode to check out, it is episode 143 Winners Take All by Anand Giridharadas. That’s another book review episode, these books feel like they are in conversation with each other. Winners Take All shares some similar criticisms of wealth and philanthropy although from slightly different perspectives and then the biggest difference would be in the solutions each book suggests moving forward.

Before you go, I am going to ask you if you’ve ever taken a minute to leave Progressive Pockets a five star review. Have you ever done that? It takes a minute and you would be surprised how important ratings are for a podcast. When other listeners are deciding to listen to a show, many of them look to see how many ratings there are. And whenever organizations are thinking about sponsoring the show, they also look at the ratings and comments, so please consider doing that if you haven’t before.

Let’s end with a quote…
“We as humans have given money its value of exchange, so we also have the power to change how we utilize it.” That’s from Edgar Villanueva

Let’s talk again soon!