From Wampum to Weapon: The Powers and Perils of Imaginary Wealth

Dr Max Haiven (Nova Scotia College of Art and Design)

This presentation develops the concept of the weaponisation of money by focusing on a colonial contact zone in 17th century North-eastern North America. While diverse Indigenous civilizations used wampum (shell beads) in a variety of reflexive practices of social reproduction, European colonists understood it merely as a form of primitive money, and used it as a weapon of genocidal economic warfare. This pivotal moment haunts money to this day. We can look to the work of contemporary artists mobilizing money as a medium in order reveal these political-economic ghosts.