The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World

by Robin Wall Kimmerer

Saskatoon, Juneberry, Shadbush, Shadblow, Sugarplum, Sarvis, Serviceberry—these are among the many names for Amelanchier. Ethnobotanists know that the more names a plant has, the greater its cultural importance.

Where is the value of a butterfly whose species has prospered for millennia and lives nowhere else on the planet? There is no formula complex enough to hold the birthplace of stories. It pains me to know that an old-growth forest is “worth” far more as lumber than as the lungs of the Earth. And yet I am harnessed to this economy, in ways large and small, yoked to pervasive extraction. I’m wondering how we fix that. And I’m not alone.

The words “ecology” and “economy” come from the same root, the Greek oikos, meaning “home” or “household”: i.e., the systems of relationship, the goods and services that keep us alive. The system of market economies that we’re given as a default is hardly the only model out there. Anthropologists have observed and shared multiple cultural frameworks colored by very different worldviews on “how we provide for ourselves.”

“Store my meat? I store my meat in the belly of my brother,” replied the hunter.

Those who have give to those who don’t so that everyone in the system has what they need. It is not regulated from above but derives from a collective sense of equity in “enoughness” and accountability in distributing the gifts of the Earth.

You don’t have to participate in a potlatch to experience the gift economy; when you open your awareness and give them a name, you can see gift economies all around you.

Giving begets giving and the gift stays in motion.

The challenge is to cultivate our inherent capacity for gift economies without the catalyst of catastrophe. We have to believe in our neighbors, that our shared interests supersede the impulses of selfishness. There is a tragedy in believing the proffered narrative of our system, which turns us against each other in a zero-sum game.

Not surprisingly I suppose, many of these students’ examples come from a very different realm—the digital world. They quickly cite access to open-source software and the existence of Wikipedia as manifestations of a gift economy, where knowledge is freely shared on digital platforms in an information commons. Over and over, they name TikTok and YouTube videos where “you can learn anything because someone has made a gift of their time and experience to share with anyone who wants it.”

Gift economies arise from the abundance of gifts from the Earth, which are owned by no one and therefore shared. Sharing engenders relationships of goodwill and bonds that ensure you will be invited to the feast when your neighbor is fortunate. Security is ensured by nurturing the bonds of reciprocity. Margaret Atwood writes, “Every time a gift is given it is enlivened and regenerated through the new spiritual life it engenders both in the giver and in the recipient.” You can store meat in your own pantry or in the belly of your brother. Both have the result of keeping hunger at bay but with very different consequences for the people and for the land which provided that sustenance.

The question that’s often asked is how do we take gift economies from individual relationships and scale them up? I have to say that I’m not sure that’s the right question. Why does everything have to be expanded? It is the small scale and context that make the flow of gifts meaningful. But if gift economies are to have impact, I’m willing to think about what that might look like on a community scale.

These ancient guidelines, referred to as the Honorable Harvest, constrain rampant consumption to ensure that the Dish remains full. I’ve been told that these ethics themselves are the result of timeless treaties between the Human people and the Deer people, the Bear people, the Fish people, and the Plant people, in which our more-than-human relatives agree to share the gift of their lives to sustain the lives of the humans. In return, the Human people agree to protocols of restraint, respect, and reciprocity. I suspect that these ethics also arose from making mistakes and suffering the ecological consequences. I wonder if we will learn again.

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 by the answer. Never take the first one. Never take the last.

Take only what you need. Take only that which is given. Never take more than half. Leave some for others. Harvest in a way that minimizes harm. Use it respectfully. Never waste what you have taken. Share. 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 will last forever.

So, let’s ask the Saskatoons. These ten-foot-tall trees are the producers in this economy. Using the free raw materials of light, water, and air, they transmute these gifts into leaves and flowers and fruits. They store some energy as sugars in the making of their own bodies, but much of it is shared. Some of the abundance of spring rain and sun manifests in the form of flowers, which offer a feast for insects when it’s cold and rainy. The insects return the favor by carrying pollen. Food is rarely in short supply for Saskatoons, but mobility is rare. Movement is a gift of the pollinators, but the energy needed to support buzzing around is scarce. So the trees and the insects create a relationship of exchange that benefits both. In summer, when the boughs are laden, Serviceberries produce an abundance of sugar. Do they hoard that energy for themselves? No, they invite the birds to a feast. Come, my relatives, fill your bellies, say the Serviceberries. Are they not storing their meat in the bellies of their brothers and sisters—the Jays, the Thrashers, and the Robins?

Good feelings are the real value added. Even when something is paid for as a commodity, the gift of relationship is still attached to it.

I cherish the notion of the gift economy, that we might back away from the grinding system, which reduces everything to a commodity and leaves most of us bereft of what we really want: a sense of belonging and relationship and purpose and beauty, which can never be commoditized.

The move toward a local food economy is not just about freshness and food miles and carbon footprints and soil organic matter. It’s about all of those things, but it’s also about the deep human desire for connection, for honor, to be in reciprocity with the gifts that are given you.

The surplus will be stored in the belly of a neighbor.

As a botanist, I know that there is guidance from the world of fields and forests. Plant communities are changing and replacing one another all of the time, in a dynamic mosaic we know as ecological succession. Far from the stereotype of the “forest primeval,” plant communities are constantly in flux. From a bird’s-eye view, the “unbroken forest” is in fact a patchwork of stands of different ages and experience. Fires, landslides, floods, windstorms, outbreaks of insects, disease, and disasters of human origin disrupt the green blanket in unpredictable ways—and yet with a somewhat predictable response. Oftentimes a major disturbance that clears the former forest creates a gap, with full sun, disturbed soil, and plenty of resources, since the previous inhabitants are now gone. Such places are colonized by fast-growing species in high density, trying to take advantage of the transitory conditions. These pioneer species are opportunists, with traits that consume resources, crowd out others, and reproduce like crazy. It’s all “me, me, me,” investing only in their own exponential growth with no regard for the future, their relatives, or longevity. Sound familiar? It’s a field of fast-growing weeds, or a stand of aspens. It’s as if Euromericans, in the age of colonization and displacement of “old-growth cultures” are behaving like colonizing plants after a massive disturbance, dominating the landscape. But those colonizing plants find they cannot continue this rate of growth and...

Succession relies in part on incremental change, the slow, steady replacement of that which does not serve ecological flourishing with new communities. But it also relies on disturbance, on disruption of the status quo in order to let new species emerge and flower.

Already the land is too quiet. What if our metrics for well-being included birdsong, the crescendo of Crickets on a summer evening, and neighbors calling to each other across the road?

Regenerative economies that reciprocate the gift are the only path forward. To replenish the possibility of mutual flourishing, for birds and berries and people, we need an economy that shares the gifts of the Earth, following the lead of our oldest teachers, the plants. They invite us all into the circle to give our human gifts in return for all we are given. How will we answer?