Robin Wall Kimmerer, a botanist who works at the intersection of Western and Indigenous science and culture, has followed her bestselling Braiding Sweetgrass with another book that calls us to think in both new and ancient ways about our relationship with the natural world.
This time, her holiday gift to readers is a slender book called The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World. It explores the inherent and longstanding tension between the economic system based on profit and accumulation, and indigenous and natural economic systems based on sharing. Its theme is “all flourishing is mutual.”
Her star example of sharing is a Serviceberry tree – Amelanchier alnifolia – on a neighbor’s farm. When the tree blooms, it provides pollen and nectar to bees and other insects. They, in turn, pollinate the flowers, which enables it to develop berries. Birds eat the berries, fly away, and poop out the seeds to plant more Serviceberry trees. A host of earth-dwelling micro-organisms, the larvae of several butterfly species, the soil-enriching fallen leaves of nearby maple trees also play roles in the Serviceberry’s complex sharing economy.
She writes that in her Potawatomi tradition – a part of the larger Anishinaabe peoples of the Great Lakes region – plants and animals are regarded as precursors and teachers of the more recent advent of humans. One essential lesson is that as relative newcomers, humans ought to be humble enough to learn about how to cultivate sharing relationships like those in the natural world that are not based on extraction, accumulation, profit, and hoarding.
Hers is a critique of capitalism that would make both Milton Friedman and Karl Marx roll over in their graves. She has little interest in who owns the mean of production, or how monetary policy affects us. She is grounded instead in the economics of nature itself, and how that grounding – or lack of it – shapes the world we live in and its future. It’s a shame that Marx and Friedman are not alive to read this book; one wonders how it might have enlarged their vision.
We have many local programs she would like. One is Souper Sunday. It was started by Chris Hyde, who was retired, depressed and sitting in his living room one night when an idea came to him: If he made free soup for everyone, something good would happen. It has. He operates a Facebook page that lets people know what he’s making, when it will be ready, and how to message him to let him know you will pick some up from his front porch. A remarkable community of sharing has grown up around his idea. People give him gift cards for grocery stores, bring vegetables from their gardens, and volunteer to work in his. One donated a freezer for his “soup library” and others rebuilt his front porch to make it more accessible. Last summer, he hosted Sunday afternoon barbecues in his backyard; about 30 people showed up with side dishes.
Now, he and his allies are creating a website and an official nonprofit. He is also advising others who have begun to emulate his idea both here and in other towns and states.
This effort proves Wall Kimmerer’s point that flourishing is mutual: Chris is much less depressed, neighbors are eating good food, a caring community is blooming. Still, it hasn’t slowed down the ravaging of the natural world and the persistence of poverty inherent in our current economic system.
Hers is an eloquent, sensible but slender hope. But as she writes, “We live in the tension between what is and what is possible.”
In spite of the vast distance between her vision and our current global reality, this book is a gift of wisdom and hope.
Jill Severn writes from her home in Olympia, where she grows vegetables, flowers, and a small flock of chickens. She loves conversation among gardeners. Start one by emailing her at jill@theJOLTnews.com
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Georgewalter
Are Kimmerer's ideas utopian? That's not so obvious to me. Complex economies (what some might call civilization) have only existed for a few thousand years. They are still experiments that have not yet proved successful.
I believe that success can only be measured hundreds of thousands of years, or more. This is far beyond a human lifetime, of course, or even 100 generations of lifetimes.
In my view, Kimmerer's ideas reflect the way humans are meant to live. She provipdes hope, and guidance, that we humans may yet survive this extractive, accumulation, profit civilization that seems to be failing and possibly doomed.
Friday, November 29 Report this
joycetogden
Serviceberry (Saskatoon berry) bushes will grow in Olympia BUT beware of a nearby cedar tree. Our Saskatoons are bombarded each spring with spores from the "apple rust" that grow on my neighbor's cedar just over the fence. These rust spores kill the Saskatoon new growth and turn the berries to little round rust spheres.
Saturday, November 30 Report this
ejpoleii
Utopian is an inadequate term.
5 days ago Report this
wildnature
Thank you for this wonderful article wedding the 2 subjects of the book and the soup maker together. I have put a hold on the book at the library, and am the 126th person in line. You are being read.
5 days ago Report this