The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World

by Robin Wall Kimmerer

All Flourishing Is Mutual

The bounty in my bucket today is a western species—A. alnifolia, known as Saskatoons—planted

Eating with the seasons is a way of honoring abundance, by going to meet it when and where it arrives.

When we speak of these not as things or natural resources or commodities, but as gifts, our whole relationship to the natural world changes.

Receiving a gift from the land is coupled to attached responsibilities of sharing, respect, reciprocity, and gratitude—of which you will be reminded.

Recognizing “enoughness” is a radical act in an economy that is always urging us to consume more.

our first response to the receipt of gifts is gratitude, then our second is reciprocity: to give a gift in return.

Gratitude and reciprocity are the currency of a gift economy, and they have the remarkable property of multiplying with every exchange, their energy concentrating as they pass from hand to hand, a truly renewable resource.

In a gift economy, wealth is understood as having enough to share, and the practice for dealing with abundance is to give it away.

In fact, status is determined not by how much one accumulates, but by how much one gives away.

as Dr. Ronald Trosper, a Salish-Kootenai economist has documented in his book Indigenous Economics: Sustaining Peoples and Their Lands

Know the ways of the ones who take care of you, so that you can take care of them.

Introduce yourself. Be accountable as the one who comes asking for a life.

Ask permission before taking. Abide b...

Never take the first one. Never t...

Take only what y...

Take only that which ...

Never take more than half. Leave som...

Harvest in a way that mini...

Use it respectfully. Never waste what y...

Give thanks for what you have been given.

Give a gift in reciprocity for what you have taken.

Sustain the ones who sustain you and the Earth wi...

Contemporary Windigos who cannibalize life for accumulation of money need their own name. Perhaps “Darren” would fit.

She is not obeying the rules of the capitalist market economy; she is not behaving in a way that will maximize her profit. How un-American.

“An investment in community always comes back to you in some way.

I’ve begun to think that berry-picking is the medicine we need to create a legion of land protectors.