Serviceberry as a Gift Economy

In our non-stop, technology-dependent society, there is a disincentive to slow down and connect to the land around you. It takes effort on your part to stop and learn from the places you call home. Part of connecting to the place you live is learning who lives there, including the plants. Learning about my plant neighbors has been something I did not really start until moving to Washington. While I never had a lot of motivation to learn about local flora and fauna by myself, whenever I was taught a new plant by someone, my relationship to these plants stuck. My relationship with a plant is irrevocably tied to my relationship with the person who taught me about them. Meredith taught me how to see the butterfly leaves of the salmonberry, and how to spot the delicate leaflets of the maidenhair fern that remind me of her own bouncy curls. Tanner taught me the name for the bursts of sunshine that emerge in Eastern Washington around April - the arrowleaf balsamroot. And Tom taught me a plant with many names - saskatoon (my favorite), juneberry, or serviceberry - which fills me with nostalgia for the place where I first saw it and the people who were with me when I did.

Serviceberry has found me in some of the most significant places in my life. At IslandWood, where I started a Masters of Education program and returned to teach environmental education, in Vermont, where I first started leading conservation projects, and back in Western Washington, where I have planted it to restore ecosystems in Pierce County. Serviceberry found me again in the form of an essay by Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer - mother, scientist, professor, and enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation - called “The Serviceberry: An Economy of Abundance.” Dr Kimmerer is one of my idols in environmental restoration. Last week I attended a webinar where Dr. Kimmerer was the keynote speaker and I died when I found out we were on the same zoom call. She has two incredible books - Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses and Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants - and although I had seen this article circulating around my networks a few months back, I did not read it until today.

In it, Dr. Kimmerer details the difference between market economies (the system dominant here in the US) and gift economies (economies often found in Indigenous communities) through the experience of harvesting a neighbor’s serviceberries. Market economies are characterized by the principles of scarcity (which doesn’t always exist) and maximizing return on investment. Success in a market economy comes from possession and accumulation. By contrast, gift economies are characterized by abundance, where “goods and services circulate without explicit expectations of direct compensation. Those who have give to those who don’t so that everyone in the system has what they need. It is not regulated from above, but derives from a collective sense of equity and accountability in response to the gifts of the Earth.” While the currency of a market economy is money, the currency of a gift economy is gratitude and relationship. Market economies are based on accumulation while gift economies are based on reciprocity.

In our current market economy, we see ourselves first as consumers, second as ecosystem citizens (if we think of it at all). However, ecological economists try to merge these two systems and ask how to build economic systems that meet citizens' needs while aligning with principles that allow for long-term sustainability of the planet. A type of gift economy requires investment in the community, and as Kimmerer quotes her neighbor in her essay, “an investment in community always comes back to you in some way.”

While this sounds like an incredible route to take, it can also sound idealistic and not feasible in the world today. And I think that if you think that, it won’t be. But if you think it can happen, it can. It starts with creating intentional community and webs of interdependence within our market economy system. It means connecting more deeply with our human communities to be more connected to our more-than-human communities. As Kimmerer expresses, our market economy will not disappear anytime soon, but the ability to carve out a space for and carefully craft a gift economy within our communities is a viable option.

For me, a gift economy fits perfectly into my career path in conservation. I feel a huge sense of responsibility to take care of the planet that sustains me and 7.6 billion other people, and for me, environmental restoration is how I do that. I have a career that mirrors my own values, and makes my own involvement in a gift economy relatively easy. But you don’t have to be slogging in the rain pulling out blackberry for 40 hours a week to participate - your actions can be smaller. It can mean planting a garden and stewarding the seeds to use next year or to give to others. It can be installing a rain garden. It can mean helping to clean up a local park. I can mean voting for the people who will fight for the future of the planet or for initiatives that benefit your local environment. It can be spreading seeds as you pick berries to eat or filling your bird feeders. It can be buying local produce. It can be growing your own herbs. It can mean making a meal for someone. It can be learning who has stewarded the land you lived on pre-Contact and how you can support those Indigenous communities (starting here). It can be starting by reading this article (or listening to Dr. Kimmerer read it to you). It can be learning who lives near you - human and more-than-human.

It strikes me how my own knowledge of the plants around me came to me through a gift economy of sorts. People who I have had meaningful relationships with in my life passed on their knowledge of the places we inhabited without expectation of compensation. And I do feel a sense of abundance with the knowledge that I have and continue to gain, along with a sense of responsibility to pass it on. I love being able to teach students to recognize their more-than-human neighbors, and I hope that it makes them feel more connected to their home, as it does for me.

Land restoration is never-ending work. Even without the strains of pollution, invasive species, and degradation by humans, land conservation is something that needs to happen continuously. With these strains, the work can be an uphill battle. But as futile as it can sometimes seem, I think the work is still worth it. Environmental restoration is how I participate in a gift economy with the land that gives me so much in return - clean air to breathe, water to drink, beautiful places to reflect, food, community, and so much more - and my goal is to help other people be involved too. The serviceberry, and all her Pacific Northwest counterparts, provide a model of a gift economy we can all strive to work towards.