By Vanessa Lisa Kiraly ( June 23, 2021, 12:29 PM EDT) -- For Indigenous communities in Canada, individual ownership of land has been anticipated to serve as a foundation for economic development “through its ability to deliver legal certainty, reduce transaction costs and enable taxation” of Indigenous lands. The source of this argument is economist Hernando de Soto, who argues that the poorest of nations already have the assets to prosper; the problem is that their wealth is locked away as “dead capital” within their lands, which cannot be used as collateral for credit due to the property regime in place. De Soto advocates for the privatization of communally held lands to promote investment because the poor would benefit from property rights that delineate a clear and certain system of exchange....