Robin Wall Kimmerer - The Serviceberry
“I want to live in a society where the currency of exchange is gratitude and the infinitely renewable resource of kindness, which multiplies every time it is shared, rather than depreciating with use."
As a plant ecologist and a member of Citizen Potawatomi Nation, the writing of Robin Wall Kimmerer combines science and Indigenous knowledge in a uniquely insightful take on how we experience ourselves as part of the natural world generally, and in particular our relationship with plants.
This essay from last December in Emergence Magazine offers an alternative economic model. While harvesting serviceberries in the company of a host of birds near her home, she considers the benefits of an economy based on generosity, and asks, how can we learn from Indigenous wisdom and ecological systems to reimagine currencies of exchange? While the free market system touts individualism and defines value by monetary worth, a gift economy functions through an ethic of reciprocity and interconnection. “Thriving is possible,” she writes, “only if you have nurtured strong relations with your community.”
