Robin Wall Kimmerer follows the act of love that was Braiding Sweetgrass, with another book full of joy and gratitude that is The Serviceberry. This short book highlights the gift economy that we need, while challenging the economic structure that has been artificially created for us, and one in which we are willing participants of excessive and destructive capitalism. For me, this book echoed with the prayer of St Ignatius of Loyola, ‘to give, and not to count the cost’.
Kimmerer urges us to be grateful and to cultivate gratefulness to nature and to the land for providing for us, each in our time. She passionately argues that belonging to a “web of reciprocity” makes us accountable, as well as being valued:
“All that we need to live flows through the land. It is not an empty metaphor that we call her Mother Earth … Many Indigenous Peoples inherit what is known as a culture of gratitude … Oldest teaching stories remind us that failure to show gratitude dishonors the gift and brings serious consequences.”
An economy of gifts and abundance
Kimmerer warns us though that the serious consequences are already being felt. She challenges why we continue to allow this cannibalistic system to thrive, when alternatives are valued at local community levels.
“Climate catastrophe and biodiversity loss are the consequences of unrestrained taking by humans. Might cultivation of gratitude be part of the solution?
“But so often that production is at the cost of great destruction when an economic system actively destroys what we love, isn’t it time for a different system?”
Kimmerer indicates that these “gift economies” already spring into existence in times of need and disaster, when communities rally to provide for those less well-off, and where care and compassion thrive. She urges though that “the challenge is to cultivate our inherent capacity for gift economies without the catalyst of catastrophe”.
By doing so, she believes that communities can form strong bonds that help with resilience and wellbeing, and that keep people safe in the knowledge that they will not be left behind. That a gift of fixing a car today, could be reciprocated by a gift of surplus fruit tomorrow. “A gift economy nurtures the community bonds that enhance mutual wellbeing.” A change in mindset of what ‘need’ and ‘surplus’ is can change behaviours in communities and regions.
It is all too easy to put off action today in the hope that someone else will help your neighbour. Or, as Kimmerer summarises, “How we think ripples out to how we behave”.
An engine of extinction
The ideology of ‘surplus’ and how this can be shared instead of hoarded, echoes throughout the text. Kimmerer identifies the artificial and destructive capitalist systems that are entrenched within some societies:
“In order for capitalist market economies to function, there must be scarcity, and the system is designed to create scarcity where it does not actually exist. These are societies where powerful and faceless institutions have created a system such that we self-identify as consumers first before understanding ourselves as ecosystem citizens.”
Kimmerer uses the mythology of indigenous peoples as an analogy for these avaricious and insatiable economic systems, as a self-created ‘golem’:
“In fact the ‘monster’ in Potawatomi culture is Windigo who suffers from the illness of taking too much and sharing too little. It is a cannibal whose hunger is never sated, eating through the world. Windigo thinking jeopardises the survival of the community…
“The threat of real scarcity on the horizon is brought to us by unbridled capitalism.”
The constant need for consumption outstrips what can be provided by the capacity of the Earth, creating a demand loop, which urges more and more, in return for less and less.
A regenerative economy on the other hand, argues Kimmerer, is one where “the currency of exchange is gratitude and an infinitely renewable resource of kindness which multiplies every time it is shared rather than depreciating with use”.
We can create these webs of interdependence, outside of a crushing, cannibalistic market economy. Yes, the ‘thieves are very powerful’ which ensnare us, but a cultural transformation is within our power.
The Serviceberry economy
When my neighbour puts out excess windfall apples in a box for passers-by, he does not do so for praise or recognition. The ripples of that simple gift, however, create a powerful wave of love into the community. Or, as 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”.
Kimmerer urges us to seek out new economies which focus on regenerative policies that value that which brings communities together, rather than those which drive up profits for faceless institutions. She quotes Kate Raworth in identifying that, “Wealth is much more than what GDP measures, and the market is not the only source of economic value”.
“We need an economy that shares the gifts of the Earth, following the lead of her oldest teachers, the plants.” … not one which actively harms what we love. In the truest sense, The Serviceberry itself is a gift – a gift of learning and of love. One that reminds us of a more healthy interdependent economy.
It is ours to spread and heal. It is Kimmerer’s gift to us.
