Akiing Cooperatives

The Movement is Here

We see the future.  During the battle over Line 3, we met many thousands of people who are working on these same goals of sustainability and respect. Many of them wish to join us in our cooperative development strategy. As pandemics and the vagaries of the fossil fuel economy strike our region, we see the clear need for a resilient regional economy with local foods, local energy and local manufacturing. In the upcoming years, we will rematriate more land, grow hemp and local foods. We will partner with our allies and create renewable energy security for our communities, and businesses associated with renewable energy, food systems and hemp.  We will work in Indigenous led organizations and create a set of cooperatives to advance an equitable and healing economy.  And we will continue to support work to protect our land, water and people including the restoration of Indigenous land through a land trust, and the Rights of Nature.  

Akiing’s work is in the protection of Mama Akiing or Mother Earth, the relatives, and biodiversity and our future generations.

Cooperatives

Akiing is establishing a set of worker-owned cooperatives, to secure access to the hemp and farming needs of the regional economy,  growing leadership, economic justice, and to begin preparing farmers for growing abundantly in the years ahead.  We are supporting the development of five cooperatives in 2022: an Indigenous Hemp and Cannabis Cooperative, 8th Fire Solar Cooperative, Shell River Alliance, Anishinaabe Farmers Cooperative and Winona’s Hemp. 

We see other cooperatives emerging in coming years, particularly in the green building trades.    

We are inspired in our evolution as an organization by the Euskadi Mondragon Cooperative Corporation. Mondragon, officially the Mondragón Cooperative Corporation,  a federation of Worker co-ops, primarily based in the Basque region of Spain. Today, it is the largest worker cooperative in the world with nearly 100,000 worker-owners throughout hundreds of individual cooperatives.  Founded in the town of Mondragón in 1956, Mondragon  today is the seventh largest business in Spain, and it is the leading business group in the Basque Country. We believe our history of regional organizing work and strong group of community farmers and workers is fertile ground for cooperatives. 

The Mondragon mission is encapsulated in its Corporate Values: cooperation, grassroots management, corporate social responsibility, innovation, democratic organization, education and social transformation, among others.  As Anishinaabe people we agree with these basic principles as foundational to economic justice and transition.  The cooperatives also offer trade schools to prepare community members for their working opportunities and provide financial credit for small business and large. These practices align well with what we have already been doing in our community, and we see this model as a perfect fit for our community and organizational trajectory.   

We also see that this model is being well developed by the Cleveland based Evergreen Cooperative and draw on their organizational and structural counsel.