Spreading Wealth Around

Quiet Canines Podcast · Aug 11, 2026 · 2m

Imagine a society where you are considered wealthy not by how much money you keep, but by how much you give away.

In 1623, French missionary Gabriel Sagard lived with the Huron Wendat, an Indigenous people in today’s southern Ontario.

Sagard observed that the Wendat assisted one another so completely that their towns had no indigent beggars. When the Wendat learned that France had crowds of destitute people begging in the street, they condemned the French and said it was because they lacked charity. But the word charity was not an Iroquoian word, and it did not mean charity as defined by…