Lessons in reciprocity: The gifts of Robin Wall Kimmerer

Image credit: Photo by Dale Kakkak; medal by Sunish from Noun Project (CC BY 3.0)

This November, many Americans will gather around dinner tables for shared feasts centered around a roast turkey (possibly undercooked, probably dry) accompanied by all the fixings, against a backdrop of larger-than-life parades and televised ads for Black Friday interrupted by NFL football. The day will be Thanksgiving, a holiday that originated as a time to give thanks for the year's harvest.

This November also happens to be Native American Heritage Month, a fitting time to give thanks to Robin Wall Kimmerer, an enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation and the founder and director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment. Ms. Kimmerer is also a mother, scientist, SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor of Environmental Biology, and the author of numerous best-selling books about the natural world. In 2022, she was named a MacArthur Fellow. As of today she's also a Garbage Hero.

My first introduction to Ms. Kimmerer was through her book Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants, a gift from one of my sons. I then listened to her online interviews and speeches. Another of her books, Gathering Moss, sits on my nightstand. A common theme is reciprocity: As the earth takes care of us, we too must take care of the earth.

Ms. Kimmerer reminds us that the natural world is an incredible, awesome place, abundant with all the gifts that sustain life. Many of these gifts come from plants, or in her Native culture, "the ones who take care of us." They provide food, fibers for clothing and other textiles, shelter and medicine, and they filter and fragrance our air. Care is taken to ensure that their beauty and abundance will return the following season. Reciprocity is sustainability.

Regarding our modern lives, Ms. Kimmerer points out how we've "othered" ourselves from the natural world by assuming the role of observer, having forgotten that we are deeply connected to it. "Just about everything we use is the result of another's life, but the simple reality is rarely acknowledged in our society." She invites us to reflect on the origin of things and pay our respect. When we ask, "what did it take for this thing to end up in my possession?," the answer is far more complex than free two-day shipping. "Not everything needs to be convenient," she calls out. While she pays respect for "the tree in the Kleenex, the algae in the toothpaste, the oaks in the floor, the grapes in the wine," she acknowledges limitations: "I can muster no reflective moment for plastic. It is so far removed from the natural world."

Akin to reciprocity, another common theme in Ms. Kimmerer's teachings is "take only what you need," a practice to ensure the viability of seven generations forward. A stark contrast to our normalized overconsumption. She tells the story of Windigo, the legendary monster of her Anishinaabe people:

It is said that the Windigo will never enter the spirit world but will suffer the eternal pain of need, its essence a hunger that will never be sated. The more a Windigo eats, the more ravenous it becomes. It shrieks with its craving, its mind a torture of unmet want. Consumed by consumption, it lays waste to humankind.

Illustration of a Windigo by Halcyon450

Windigos of legend don't practice reciprocity, nor do the Windigos of today. We recognize them as corporations that exist not for need but for greed, turning the earth's gifts into "commodities" and "natural resources" in an economy that thrives on unmet goals. Some flaunt "sustainability," using it as a guilt-free premise for the continued taking of these gifts.

Corporations are people, consumers are people, and we are all complicit. Planned obsolescence keeps us buying more, items are designed to be discarded, and waste is rampant. Advertising and social media point out that our house decor is passe and our jeans are too skinny, wide, long, or short, and never the right shade of blue (or is it black or gray this season)? Our shoes used to be cool, but now they're ubiquitous so our individuality will no longer allow them. The alluring call of the free upgrade means perfectly functional cell phones are abandoned for the latest models. They sell it, we buy it.

We feel the Windigo presence with every climate-fueled natural disaster, oil spill, landfill, and superfund site. Microplastics and PFAS contamination accumulates in all the places Windigo has been, and it's been everywhere. We feel its presence with every diminished species, wondering when Windigo will come for us, wondering if the water is still safe to drink.

As we give thanks for the year's harvest, let us not give Windigo a seat at our holiday table. Let us instead embrace reciprocity, take only what we need, and pay our respect to the meal. Let us make it an honorable harvest.

The Honorable Harvest Know the ways of the ones who take care of you, so that you may take care of them. Introduce yourself, Be accountable as the one who comes asking for life. Ask permission before taking. Abide by the answer. Never take the first. 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.

Excerpts from Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer, 2013, Milkweed Editions