Unsettling Wealth Inquiry
Wealth is not a neutral resource. It is a relational site shaped by histories of extraction, colonial accumulation, and the uneven distribution of consequences across communities, ecosystems, and generations. Understanding how wealth moves, who it serves, and what it forecloses has been at the centre of this inquiry since it began.
Over the past two years, we have been developing with artist and educator Azul Carolina Duque this investigation across three phases, asking what it actually takes for wealth to move differently in the lived reality of people making decisions about land, inheritance, investment, and redistribution in the middle of planetary unraveling.
Phase 01
Towards Decolonizing Wealth
Commissioned by Arising Quo, 2024
The first phase developed a theoretical and systemic foundation for understanding wealth through a decolonial lens. Drawing on research and sustained dialogue with wealth holders, Indigenous leaders, and academics across Brazil, Canada, Europe and the US, the work mapped the colonial architecture of European wealth accumulation, from the historical logics of extraction and dispossession to the psychological and emotional patterns that keep those logics invisible and intact.
Phase 02
Unsettling Wealth, Renewing Relations
Commissioned by Arising Quo, 2025
Seven applied pieces and pedagogical frameworks were developed to accompany wealth stewards and others implicated in this field, as they confront the tensions and lived consequences of real decisions around wealth.
Phase 03
Wealth stewarding grounded in accountability and complexity
2026 - 2027
Phase 3 unfolds as a two-year action research, held across interconnected practices:
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— Learning journeys: bringing wealth holders into direct, relational encounter with territories, communities, and grassroots initiatives living the consequences of wealth decisions firsthand;
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— Action research: in-depth interviews, ongoing field observation, and direct accompaniment of wealth stewards as they move through real decisions, with documentation and situated analysis emerging from within these processes;
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— Somatic and embodied practices: engaging forms of interior work beyond what written tools alone can reach, touching the emotional and psychological dimensions that often remain protected;
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— Content production: articles and a pilot podcast extending fragments of these reflections into a wider public conversation without resolving the tensions they carry.
Phase 3 is currently building the partnerships and funding architecture that will carry it. If this inquiry resonates with your work, we welcome conversation.