Strategic Stewardship: Revaluing the Elements of a Thriving Community

Stewardship is a concept I learned at one of the most important stops on my seemingly circuitous path to now: my work in southeast Oklahoma with the Choctaw Nation. As a lesson, it has become increasingly more valuable in my work as we develop local economies: we are the stewards of the land and its resources, the most important of which is its people.

This has been uppermost in my mind as I’ve observed the new story of what’s now unfolding locally, nationally and globally. The old pattern held its unwavering focus on the financializing of all transactions, and markedly less value placed on the non-monetary and transformative capital forms such as Awareness, Wisdom and Empathy. What’s apparent is that solely focusing on the financial capital gains without addressing the total costs of those choices is undermining our ability to move forward into a reinvigorated story of shared wellbeing.

Some current articles questioning the real cost of those profits:

Disabled or just desperate? Rural Americans turn to disability as jobs dry up