The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World

Kimmerer focuses on the perception of economics in the modern United States and compares it to the views of Indigenous American cultures. The “conventional meaning” of economics is the study of how people use and distribute scarce resources (29). From Kimmerer’s perspective, this perception is highly individualistic. This view of economics as the obtaining and distributing of scarce recourse invokes a specifically modern American view of the world in which the survival of the individual and the accumulation of individual wealth is deemed more important than the common good.

In contrast, Kimmerer describes how Indigenous cultures view economics—placing a priority on community and equality rather than the wealth of the individual. To truly prosper in such a society, everyone must prosper. Kimmerer recounts a story from linguist Daniel Everett, who asked a member of a hunter-gatherer community in the Brazilian rainforest why he shared meat with his neighbor, rather than storing it for later use. The man said that he stored his meat “in the belly of [his] brother” (32). This, Kimmerer suggests, illustrates an alternative way of viewing the world based on mutual prosperity.

Rather than exchanging money or bartering, for example, Indigenous cultures maintain a network of relationships in which every member contributes and cares for one another in whatever way they can.