The picture above is of Robin Wall Kimmerer, a Potawatomi botanist, an author, and the director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry.
I first heard about Kimmerer by reading a "By The Book" column in The New York Times. Click right here to get access to that column, and to find out what Kimmerer considers to have been "the best book she ever received as a gift." Clicking right here will take you to a story in The Times that will tell you more about Kimmerer, and about one of the books she has authored, Braiding Sweetgrass. Please note, you may have to surmount a paywall to read either of these articles in The Times.
Regular readers of my blog postings may or may not remember that I have already written about the "best book" that I, personally, ever received as a gift. Click here for that. No paywall should defeat that inquiry!
My blog posting today was stimulated by something Kimmerer wrote in her most recent book, The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World. This book was first published in Emergence Magazine, so you don't actually have to buy the book to find out what Kimmerer wants to say about that topic. Instead, you can just click right here.
In the article I just linked, "The Serviceberry," Kimmerer says this:
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,” including gift economies.
As the berries plunk into my bucket, I’m thinking about what I’ll do with them all. I’ll drop some off for friends and neighbors, and I’ll certainly fill the freezer for Juneberry muffins in February. This “problem” of managing decisions about abundance reminds me of a report that linguist Daniel Everett wrote as he was learning from a hunter-gatherer community in the Brazilian rainforest. A hunter had brought home a sizable kill, far too much to be eaten by his family. The researcher asked how he would store the excess. Smoking and drying technologies were well known; storing was possible. The hunter was puzzled by the question—store the meat? Why would he do that? Instead, he sent out an invitation to a feast, and soon the neighboring families were gathered around his fire, until every last morsel was consumed. This seemed like maladaptive behavior to the anthropologist, who asked again: given the uncertainty of meat in the forest, why didn’t he store the meat for himself, which is what the economic system of his home culture would predict.
“Store my meat? I store my meat in the belly of my brother,” replied the hunter.
Are we "in this together," as I frequently claim? If we are, then I'm thinking that some revisions to our current economic systems are called for. In fact, they're long overdue!
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