Botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer brings a plant ecologist’s perspective to the economy, pondering how the serviceberry tree could point the way to a more fruitful future.
Also known as sugarplum, juneberry, and shadbush, the serviceberry is part of the Amelanchier genus. Kimmerer, a Distinguished Teaching Professor of Environmental Biology at The State University of New York, tells us the tree has medicinal properties and is vital for biodiversity, providing food for deer, moose, and birds, who gobble up its berries — said to taste just as delicious to humans.
Founder of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment, and a member of the Potawatomi Nation — one of the Indigenous Anishinaabe peoples of the Great Lakes region of Canada and America, Kimmerer writes that in the Potawatomi language, serviceberries are called Bozakmin. “Min” is the root word for “berry,” she writes — but also, crucially, for “gift.”
For Kimmerer, the message of this Indigenous wisdom, then, is that nature offers us an abundance of “earthly gifts” to be thankful for and share, rather than natural resources to be exploited in an extractive economy.
Drawing on the principles of biomimicry (which seeks to imitate nature in the design of products, systems, and policies) plus ecological economics (which considers how economies could look if they were values-driven and emulated the systems of the natural world), Kimmerer asks: What might a “Serviceberry economy” look like?
According to Kimmerer, the serviceberry offers a model of the gift economy — a system based not on selling goods and services, but rather on freely sharing them, focusing on cultivating community rather than lining our pockets with coins.
“This pail of Juneberries,” writes Kimmerer, “represents hundreds of gift exchanges,” from the fallen leaves that nourish the soil, to the bird that eats the berries and scatters the seeds. Indeed, it is only by sharing its berries that the tree can live on.
In Potawatomi folklore, Kimmerer tells us there is a creature called Windigo — a monster defined by greed. To defeat greed, she shares the Indigenous wisdom of the Honourable Harvest. These ancient teachings show us how to respectfully take from the land, including principles such as caring, sharing, and thankfulness.
Inspired, too, by ecopsychology (which focuses on the relationship between humans, nature, and wellbeing), Kimmerer suggests gratitude could be instrumental in solving climate change, which stems from us taking more than we need. If thankfulness and reciprocity were rooted into our economic and cultural systems, how might this transform our lives and our world?
When we hoard and compete, we create scarcity, but when we share, we create abundance. “I want to see emerging gift economies nurtured,” writes Kimmerer, who lists free libraries, volunteering, and free farm stands as examples.
Although this is a small book — and beautifully illustrated by award-winning artist, John Burgoyne — it holds within it big ideas. Blending environmental philosophy with regenerative economics, Kimmerer shares her vision of an economic system shaped by the serviceberry, prompting us to ask: What am I grateful for, and what can I give?
The Serviceberry: An Economy of Gifts and Abundance (Allen Lane, 2024) by Robin Wall Kimmerer. Reviewed by R.B.L. Robinson.
