The Serviceberry by Robin Wall Kimmerer
Like the vivid fruit on its cover, this slim volume bursts with juicy ideas and nourishing encouragement. Serviceberry, the central character native tree, grounds one clear focus: exploring how we humans can, and urgently need to, change our ethics of exchange.
The book’s subtitle, Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World eloquently sets the tone for Robin Wall Kimmerer to once again educate and motivate us. From her joyful narrative thread of a berry-picking day, she invites us into a worldview full of grace. She shares this real potential through her Potawatomi cultural values, skilled love of “doing science,” and profound kindred feeling for the plants she knows and honors as more-than-human relations.
Robin evolves her central thought as she harvests berries with her feathered namesake and neighborhood friends. We join her in considering the nature of reciprocity that thrives at the heart of a Gift Economy. How, she asks, can we learn from Indigenous wisdom and ecological systems, to re-imagine and re-configure our currencies of exchange? She writes:
This abundance of berries feels like a pure gift from the land. I have not earned, paid for, nor labored for them. There is no mathematics of worthiness that reckons I deserve them in any way. And yet here they are—along with the sun and the air and the birds and the rain, gathering in the towers of cumulonimbi. You could call them natural resources or ecosystem services, but the Robins and I know them as gifts. We both sing gratitude with our mouths full.
Along the way, she introduces us to reciprocity advocates, and to some economics pros. I enjoyed looking them up and learning about their work. My fave by far is RWK’s friend and fellow SUNY professor, Dr. Valerie Luzadis, a leader in the new field of Ecological Economics. She is growing an Earth-informed understanding of how we organize ourselves to sustain life and enhance its quality. This perspective upends the American Economic Association norms, based on scarcity, competition and response to incentives. Italic emphasis is mine.
The conventional view enshrines one species (guess who?) in the decision-making (aka dominant) role and venerates those who grab the most. Good ole’ Human Exceptionalism. Credit us with mass species extinctions, climate system dis-integration, micro-plastics in our testes and breast milk, and a wealth of related social and cultural problems.
Amazingly free of blame, RWK communicates how Earth’s systems and interactions all support thriving interactions, for all living communities. Yes, there’s lean times and flush times, predators and prey. All part of the story. She tells how indigenous societies, over vast spans of time, have sustained well-being for themselves and their environs by valuing relationships and generous exchange. Her plant-kin, serviceberry, is this saga’s star. How?
Let’s ask the Saskatoons…Using the free raw materials of light, water and air, they transmute these gifts into leaves and flower and fruits…Food is rarely in short supply for Saskatoons, but mobility is rare. Movement is a gift of the pollinators, but the energy needed to support buzzing around is scarce. So they create a relationship of exchange that benefits both.
The Serviceberry was first shared in October 2022, as an essay in Emergence Magazine. Its original subtitle was An Economy of Abundance. Check out this online print, film, and interview zine that explores connections between ecology, culture and spirituality. It’s been one of my top web-bookmarks for years. There’s a new conversation with RWK, entitled Practical Reverence.
Published by Scribner in November 2024, The Serviceberry is RWK’s first mass-market piece. Braiding Sweetgrass and her first book Gathering Moss come from small and university presses, respectively. Though she’s conservative about “scaling up,” I believe the intention here is to send this idea-seed far and wide, to cultivate Serviceberry-mind with many, many humans. I’ve given away six copies, so far—all from Left Bank Books.
The book’s design invites us to feel this kind of richness, in the textured cover and deckle-edged papers. Illustrations by John Burgoyne handsomely complement the text. With only 105 pages, and its compact size, you could read this book in an afternoon. But why gorge when plenty is in hand?
Showing hands in berry-sharing pose, The Serviceberry’s back cover boldly states the heart of its message: All Flourishing Is Mutual. A change-maker to savor and absorb.
—Jean Ponzi
Green Resources Specialist, EarthWays Center of the Missouri Botanical Garden