Planting the Cultural Seed of Gift Thinking and Becoming The Antidote For The Wendigo Economy
Seed saving and gifting as an act of both sabotaging modernity and cultivating that which will take its place
I recently posted about planting the metaphorical seeds for germinating an emergent regenerative culture and someone asked me what kind of system I use to save and catalogue my physical heirloom seeds.
This made me think of a poignant Martín Prechtel quote about the sacred imperative of re-growing the seeds we save so that they retain their lifeforce, their stories and vigor.
You see, the thing about seeds, is that unlike other things that people see as valuable (like gold or cash) they are living embryos that produce far more than any one person could use each year and must be perpetually re-grown to retain genetic integrity and vitality. Thus, the seed saver is motivated to both perpetually cultivate and gift them to others. This is especially true of the recalcitrant seeds like the ones shown in this image below (Malus sieversii wild apple seeds) as the seeds only retain their viability and ability to unlock an immense ancient genetic library of potential for one year (as they must remain moist, living and breathing).
This has compelled me to share an abundance of Malus sieversii seeds with people all over the world, locally and to guerilla garden them in parks.
So, it is often the case that the best way to “save” seeds is to give them away to worthy and ecologically literate individuals. Perpetual cultivation and gifting them into one’s community along with the stories of the seed’s indigenous past is the best system for saving them for future generations.
Those that attempt to treat living seeds like gold to be hoarded in a vault for the benefit of the few (like that Bill Gates/Rockefeller funded high tech seed vault) are not involved in the sacred act of saving seed, they are pillaging and dishonoring seed.
Therefore, as I work to both plant the seeds for an emergent place based biocentric culture and preserve the genetic diversity of seeds, my preferred method to save the seeds, is to find people striving to become ancestors worth descending from and gift the seeds to them so they can pass them onto their descendants.
There are some people in the alternative media space that see the collapse coming, but would like to convince you to buy gold, silver or invest in alterative cryptocurrencies in order to “protect your wealth”. The mentality that encourages one to horde is scarcity thinking, and while hedging your bets in a financial sense does have merit, placing all one’s eggs in the basket of depending transactional units of currency or precious metals to be able to pay someone else to do the work of feeding you represents its own kind of poverty.
My friends, our human family has been stricken with a spiritual sickness. It has infiltrated into the very core of modern industrial civilization. This sickness of the spirit and mind is known by some as the Wendigo. It wants to devour your humanity and all of our non-human kin on this Beautiful Earth.
I believe each and everyone of us are capable of becoming the antidote for this sickness and poverty of the spirit in each of our communities.
The cure to this sickness cannot be provided to you by institutions or individuals outside of yourself, it is found within. This is the call to Re-member and Reclaim our Indigeneity to the Earth and plant the seeds for emergent biocentric cultures to germinate in the here and now, aligned with the living economy of the Earth and empowered by a reciprocal connection to her irrepressible regenerative capacity.
The times ahead will not be easy, humanity will face a reckoning as the morally hollow and ecologically malignant towers of industry and tyranny come crashing down and implode, leaving those that have become hopelessly dependent on flimsy centralized infrastructure with the devastating realization that their ancestors were wise to learn to grow and preserve their own food and that they may not survive due to their choice to look down on such things all their lives as “uncivilized”.
What invariably survives collapse? What survives crisis? Community. Whatever you give and contribute into your community and you generate that goodwill, and you generate those structures of taking care of each other and reciprocal gift relationships, that is an investment you can count on. That is a savings account that fires cannot burn and thieves cannot steal.
The best investment you can make is generosity that aligns with the regenerative capacity of the Earth and the innate goodness of humanity, for the only thing that cannot be taken from you is that which you cultivate in your heart and mind and that which you give to your community.
Unlike minerals such as Gold Or Silver (which can be hoarded for long periods of time and retain their value in hidden stashes) heirloom seeds are living embryos, and their continued value necessitates involving oneself in the participatory act of co-creation through tending, nurturing, observing and valuing non-human life.
Silver, Gold, Cryptocurrency, Fiat and other substances or symbols that retain value (or perceived value) separate from any relationship to the living non-human world around us can be horded, fought over, stashed and obsessed over in very anthropocentric ways, while ecological literacy is diminished (or never nurtured in a human to begin with) and one’s “wealth” can increase along with their greed, fear and isolation.
The human fiat currency economy necessitates scarcity (or at the very least the perception of scarcity) and its propaganda systems attempt to instill in us from a young age that “there is not enough to go around”, that it is a “survival of the fittest/dog eat dog world” and that success in life is measured by how much fiat (or gold, silver or crypto) you can hoard and/or how many material possessions you can accumulate. Of course, scarcity is an illusion and where it exists in relation to food, in an empirical sense, is the result of said scarcity economic model crippling the local ecology and ancient cultural practices of a said region, which at one time, embodied, recognized and perpetuated the abundance inherent in that bioregion.
The ancient living economy of the Earth, on the other hand, is based on a perpetual cycle of gifts moving freely within a self-organizing, anti-fragile, symbiotically connected community of beings (which each have niche gifts that they provide to make their community increasingly resilient, biodiverse, beautiful and nourishing as a whole). It is the antithesis of the human fiat economy, as instead of hoarding, it involves giving gifts to other beings and having faith in the soundness, elegance and longevity of Creator’s design.
Also, for most of us (myself included) we do not have unlimited space to perpetually expand how many seeds we will plant each year (and we can only eat so much food). Thus, the inherent quality of seed saving (which invariably produces more seeds than any one person can make use of themselves) is that it incentivizes generosity (because while one can store some seeds for quite a long time and they will remain viable, their shelf life is not indefinite, and the one who tends plants and lovingly saves seeds from their prized crops feels compelled to ensure those seeds go forward to achieve their true potential).
The path from the current way of life on Earth to the abundant world composed of myriad bio-regionally defined place based regenerative cultures we all is only possible can only become manifest through one million baby steps being taken by 100 million people until a critical mass is reached. That turning point is the place where we see the disturbing results of the Asch conformity experiment inverted, bearing witness to a time when those with a proclivity to follow the herd begin to follow in a direction that is actually beneficial to them. The beautiful world you want to live in (but do not see around you now) is not found by walking through pearly gates and there is no quick fix to get there.
I’ll tell you what is a great starting point to embark on a path to get there though, something like a handful of acorns, hickory nuts and pawpaw seeds.
Holding those living embryos in one hand is holding the potential for ten thousand food forests in your hand. That handful of seeds could liberate a thousand communities from dependance on big ag, poverty/malnourishment of the spirit, corrupt governments, big pharma and ecological illiteracy.
Yes, perhaps True Wealth is found in realizing that humans alone cannot create any True Wealth at all, though, there are some supremely powerful creative forces we can align with, enabling us to go along for the ride on a co-creative path to abundance and learning to perceive and potentiate the Wealth that is already all around us.
I have been engaging in this sacred task for quite some time now and pondering its implications.
Below is one instance where I attempted to quantify that endeavor with the metrics that are so coveted by the adherents of the statist religion $$$.
The Best Investment On Earth, Is Earth
(The following section offers a comparative analysis of conventional economics vs gift economics through a thought experiment involving investing in a bank vs ‘investing’ in the Earth (via planting/saving seeds)
While I was sorting kale seeds I had saved from our garden a few years back I was thinking about how I come across a lot of people who see the spiritual, psychological, emergency preparedness or (at the least) the nutritional value in gardening, but for some reason think it’s not financially viable and use that as an excuse to opt out of even trying. When I tell people that I see immense value in growing a food garden each year some of them say things like “I don’t have time for playing in the mud, gardening doesn’t pay the bills!”. In my experience, gardening actually does just that.
According to the government, the average Canadian household spent $8109.00 on groceries in 2014 ( a very conservative amount in my estimation). According to recent reports an average family's food bill in 2022 was $14,767 (today its over 17,000). And how much of that food do you think is processed, contains GMOs, or is chemical laden leading to a shorter and less full life, with big medical expenses down the road?
If one spends only $20–40 on basic supplies (and/or just get learn how to gather materials from nature or repurpose them for free) and with only a weekend or two spent preparing the soil in the garden (or growing containers for your balcony, windows etc if you are in a city/apartment) each year, and a quick watering before work each morning can result in a significant amount of veggies, herbs and fruit (hundreds of dollars worth of fresh organic produce). Truthfully, anyone can do this to some extent, and in doing so feel good knowing they are doing their best to feed their family real- healthy- nutritious food.
I will now address the potential fiscal savings/rewards of investing one’s money and time into the earth (with Gift Thinking) vs investing that money and time into a bank.
While sorting and packaging the heirloom kale seeds I had saved from last year’s garden it occurred to me that not only is investing in the earth more nutritionally, spiritually, and emotionally rewarding than investing in a bank, it can be more fiscally rewarding as well. The fact is when you invest in a garden you end up with an abundance of not only crops with more than enough to share with friends/neighbors but also the abundance of seeds that can be saved from each harvest. I began to contemplate what the latent money value of these seeds were (if they were all to be grown and harvested from a garden), and then proceeded to compare my original investment in the package of organic kale seeds (less than $5 ) which I “deposited” into the earth to what kind of return I would have gotten had I invested that five dollars into a bank. Here’s what I came up with:
Investment of less than five dollars on kale seeds (about 20 heirloom “red russian” seeds) result/return after one year : ten healthy adult kale plants which I harvested semi-daily from June until November ( We ate about ten dollars worth of kale at local store prices a week from the garden, so after 6 months they produced about 240 dollars worth of organic kale). So from less than a five dollar investment (along with time spent every few days on watering and tlc) I got $235.00 return from investing in the earth (a 4800% increase)! Now how much return would I have gotten if I invested 5 dollars in a bank after one year? Well let’s say the savings account has an interest rate of 3% (which is being generous for most banks) after one year from my original 5 dollar investment I would have a whopping 15 cents return!
After that first year of investing in the earth by “depositing” the kale seeds and letting the plants go to flower (on top of my steady harvesting) I was able to save well over a hundred seeds from each plant at the end of the year (which will amount to over one thousand viable seeds achieving maturity/full harvest). Since with gardening (“investing in the earth”) there is always abundance and more than enough to go around, I will share many seeds with friends, family and neighbors. I then decided I wanted to project this investment comparison further in compounding it over multiple years. I will give about ten seeds to each person/family and all I will ask in return is that they save seeds from their kale plants and share them with others. I wondered how much actual money value in kale could be grown, harvested and enjoyed after seven years of this “Gift Thinking” model of gardening kale, saving seeds and sharing the next year. In the interest of making a fair calculation I wanted to be very modest with my estimates for projected harvest yields and seeds able to be saved each year (considering not all plants will grow in great soil under ideal conditions). So I estimated that for others each ten kale plants would yield a minimum of 10 pounds of kale annually (amounting to 30 dollars worth of organic kale at $3.00 a pound). And instead of assuming they will be able to save 1000 seeds like I did, I estimate they will save well over one hundred (amounting to one hundred viable seeds that grow into harvestable mature plants.
So let’s recap; with my 1000 seeds (from my first harvest) being given to 100 families/gardeners, after the second year a total of $3000.00 worth of organic kale would have been grown, harvested and enjoyed by those people (“collective beneficiaries” of my investment in the earth). That means, from my original money spent (less than 5 dollars) invested in a pack of seeds, some water and tlc, and sharing the resulting seeds after only two years a return of $2995.00 would be collectively accessed and enjoyed. While that same five dollars invested in a bank would have earned me you guessed it! A colossal 30 cents! :)
With an original investment of five dollars after seven years continuing the above described ‘pay it forward’ aka Gift Thinking model (investing in the Earth compared to investing in a bank) you would have this:
Bank total (money value accessible by one): $6.17
Earth total (latent collective money value) : $30,000,000.00
Some people have invented elaborate systems so that they can print/create 'money' to have material wealth, dominate others, and then go buy food from farmers who work the land.. other people work hard all day at a "9-5" to get paper or digital currency from the first people, and then after that they go and give the paper or data to a farmer (or grocer who got it from the farmer) and get 'food'.
Even if we lived in a world with an honest money and a just/transparent governance system growing your own food and sharing the resulting abundance would be a wise decision.
It is time for a wake up call. We don’t live in a world with an honest money or just/transparent governance system. Our fiat money system is a scam and the statist religion is used as a tool to inculcate people to give over half of their hard earned time and energy to put money in the pockets of yacht dwelling central banking cartel oligarchs. Thus, growing your own food is not just a wise decision, it is a choice that is imperative to your health and survival in the near future.
The Central Banking Cartel Is Bleeding Us Dry And They Are Using The Statist Religion As The Hypodermic Needle
We were raised to believe that taxes are the benevolent government’s way of caring for and protecting us with infrastructure, military, education and “health” care. We are told that this part of a “social contract” in which the state provides security, infrastructure, and collective purpose in exchange for taxation and civic participation.
Our economy has become one based in perpetual debt slavery and waging a war on nature (pillaging her body to facilitate the ‘perpetual growth’ model that capitalism is based upon).
If you want to get a more vivid picture of the type of world we live actually in, what the real global governance structure looks like (and what it’s modus operandi is) I wrote another article which you can find here which provides details and an abundance of hyperlinks to pertinent data and evidence.
In conclusion, I will elaborate on the core message of what I shared in my previous article (while also adding some pertinent data points and relevant perspectives to this one) by sharing an excerpt from my first book.
We live in a time when staring into little glowing screens texting each other (while people are in the same room) is considered normal. Rarely when we go to the grocery store will we find that which is seasonally growing in our local community, rather we will find the cheapest, most mass produced items shipped across vast distances (at the expense of the integrity of eco-systems, small farmers' prosperity and the quality of the food itself). These things are symptoms of a society that has sacrificed real connection, vibrant delicious and nutritious food, as well as community for superficial stimulation, profits over compassion and integrity, quick fix ‘think of me first’ mentality... a society filled with material objects that always leave us wanting more. Today’s modern society is one based in fear of and separation from each other, nature and our deeper Self). That is not by accident.
Why not skip all the middle men, become immune to the corporate parasites, nurture the spirit and consciously choose to become resilient in the face of an intentionally destabilized economy and flimsy industrial food system? Through choosing to grow your own food (and share the resulting abundance of seeds, knowledge and produce) you are nourishing the body and soul, and planting the seeds for not only yourself, but future generations to have an abundance of True Wealth.
The simple act of planting seeds in the rich earth, growing an organic food garden and using kitchen scraps/ yard waste to build soil (and sharing the seeds we save) has not only served to save us big money on grocery bills, it has improved our quality of life through the increased health and peace of mind it has provided us. In the process we discovered a kind of abundance (existing both inwardly and outwardly) that I did not have a word to describe, and so, I have created a new term which I will now attempt to define to the best of my ability.
True Wealth ; refers to the degree of which one is self-sustaining, living sustainably (or better yet living regeneratively) and to the degree of which one has established a lasting symbiotic relationship with the land one lives on. Beyond those physical defining perimeters it is also defined by the measure of which one feels happy and at peace inwardly (truly illusive states of being for many currently on Earth, "rich" and "poor" alike). Unlike material wealth (which is temporary and cannot provide lasting happiness) True Wealth is permanent and nurtures lasting happiness. It is more about the measure of how much one gives and shares, and less about what one acquires, takes, or hoards.
The gift of True Wealth is found in the years, lasting fulfillment and health which is added to our lives when we care for the land we live on (and those who we share it with). Lasting fulfillment is found in savoring those precious moments that are given to us each time we stop to appreciate the "little things". It is the gift we give ourselves when we choose to use our time on earth to help things grow and nurture them to achieve their highest potential.
Therefore, growing one's own food and medicine, learning to respectfully forage and wild tend the forest, preserving harvests, building soil and saving seed increases one's emergency preparedness and increases one's quality of life in the best of times while also enabling one to be prepared to thrive and survive in worst case scenarios.
Emergency preparedness does not have to be something involving fear, stress or obsessing.. if we choose to do things that help us align with natural localized cycles for providing our basic survival needs (like gardening, foraging, seed saving and preserving) we are increasing our emergency preparedness in a joyful and healthy way.
Saving up money for a ‘rainy day’ is not a solid way to prepare for emergencies because money has no innate value. Seeds, good soil, gardening skills, increased health/immunity, preserving experience and the symbiotic relationships and friendships we forge with neighbors and the broader community we are a part of (through sharing our abundant harvests and helping others to grow regenerative gardens) are however things that have innate value.
Even if money had some intrinsic value and dependable stability (which it doesn't) basing one's life around constantly striving to acquire and horde more of it (capitalism) is not healthy. Capitalism is an unnatural human concept (that is based on an inaccurate and outdated view of life and evolutionary processes). It is a model based on the inaccurate view that in nature competitiveness, 'survival of the fittest' and adversarial relationships are the norm. Modern science and ecological studies have shown us (that when we take a closer look) symbiosis, interdependence, and cooperation are in fact the norms when it comes to relationships between various organisms in nature. Capitalism (and its ugly offspring "consumerism") are systems of thought that do not align with natural law. They amount to ways of perceiving and interacting with the world that result in parasitic and not symbiotic relationships with each other (as humans) and with the rest of nature as a whole. At the foundation of capitalism in today's world is Fiat Currency (a monetary system that perpetuates debt and forever expands the gap between the 'haves' and the 'have nots'.)
Reducing our dependence on such vulnerable, unsustainable and toxic centralized systems is imperative if we want to help to co-create a regenerative future. Even if it is in baby steps, it moves one further towards aligning with Mother Earth and also being prepared for potential emergencies that could affect centralized systems. We can do this on the level of individual households and then scale it up from there to increase the resilience and preparedness of our local communities.
Thus, if we wish to leave a world worth living in for our children, we must abandon ideologies and belief systems (such as capitalism and statism) that teach people that the acquisition of material wealth, competition rather than cooperation, and the endless commodification of aspects of nature is what we should strive for as individuals, organizations and nation-states. It is impossible to cling to unnatural concepts like capitalism while simultaneously claiming to care about the future of our children, the integrity of the ecosystems and while claiming to want to help create a more sustainable and equitable society in the here and now.
I propose that investing our time and energy in humanocentric systems of thought (whether they be theologically, 'Darwinsitically', 'capitalistically' or otherwise defined) is a path of stagnation which comforts our ego but does not honor the truth of what we have learned about nature in the past century, nor does it serve to unlock our true potential as human beings.
In an excellent post on “Kindness as a Radical Act” Dana O’Driscoll wrote:
“I’d argue that in an age where the norm is to take whatever you can get at the expense of others (both humans and the biosphere), kindness is a radical and powerful act.
But what do I mean by kindness? I would argue that true kindness is a value that we choose to bring to our interactions that involves showing care, consideration, generosity, and attending to the needs of others. It is the opposite of narcissism. Asia Suler has identified that there is a difference between being nice and being kind. She argues that being nice is something that people label you with—a value for women, especially, that focuses on you being agreeable, pleasant, bland and/or not upsetting the applecart. She argues that being kind is a different kind of thing—in this case, it is something that we choose to portray, an inner goodness that we cultivate and offer to the world ourselves, not the labels others give us. I like this definition of kindness—real kindness—as opposed to being quiet and agreeable. And that means that sometimes it is the kind thing to do to speak up or take a different path than the norm. I love this concept–I want to be kind because I feel it is the right thing to do, particularly in this dark age. I want to live the values that I think the world needs more of.
I was talking about these thoughts with a friend of mine who is a fellow professor at the same university where I teach. She just published a book on her research in refugee camps in Ethiopia, and one of the things she discovered was that while the conditions of these camps were awful, one of the most powerful lessons she saw was in this communal kindness that people had: in spite of the terrible daily life conditions, people worked hard to treat each other with care, consideration, and generosity. They took an unbearable situation and made it bearable simply by attending to others’ needs. That in the face of so many challenges and inhumanity, they remembered their humanity.”
In other words, they embrace the gift economy.
Dana continues by saying
“Kindness is a virtue that I believe we all can strive for. It is certainly one that I work hard at in my own life—to bring kindness into my interactions with all beings. This might mean doing something like moving the worms from the sidewalks, attending to the needs of a stray cat, lending money to a stranger, or even honoring the paper wasps. Kindness is about kinship, relationships, and connection. I don’t think you can have kin without being kind.
I think there’s a deep power in language, and looking at the history (etymology) of the term “kind” and “kindness” offers more insight into the importance of kindness in building kinship relationships with all beings. While there are two meanings of “kind,” the meaning we are focusing on today goes the whole way back to proto-Germanic *kundi- which refers to “natural” or “native” as well as *kunjam “family” or “kin.” These terms made their way into Old English, where “(ge)cynde” was tied to “natural, native, innate,” and the “feeling of relatives for each other.” Meanwhile, in the year 1300 CE, we see the term kindness referring to “courtesy, noble deeds” but also in Old English, “kindness” tied also to “nation” or “produce, an increase.”
So in this etymology, we see that the foundation of kinship is based on kindness and that being kind and being kin are actually the same thing. We treat those who are our family, relatives or kin. It is important to note that for a growing number of people, including those who are druids, animists, and nature-centered folks, this kinship is not limited to human beings. We can be kind to all beings on the land, in our human and bio communities, and through that kindness, build respect, mutuality, and connection. But the other fascinating thing about this etymology also links the abundance of the natural world to this kindness. This to me demonstrates what Tyson Yunkaporta in Sand Talk describes as the custodial relationship that humanity should have with the earth.”
These ancient roots of the word kindness and kinship spring fourth from the inherent dynamics of the living gift economy of the Earth. In other words, kindness and kinship, as human choices and states of being translate into producing units of currency in the Gift Economy. Unlike Fiat currency, CBDCs or cryptocurrency, units of currency in the Gift Economy can be cultivated to grow exponentially by anyone and everyone, in any and every situation.
Kindness may be difficult to embody in some situations, but it is always possible as a choice, and kinship, the reciprocal relationships we build with other beings in and around our community (human and non-human) is something we can rely on when times are tough and (in some extreme situations) money may have very little or no perceived value at all. Kinship, kindness and the goodwill between beings these choices and states of being generate are a form of spiritual and practical currency of the Gift Economy which cannot be taken from you and can be carried with you always.
Through embracing humility, kindness, animism and reverence, rather than self-importance and anthropocentrism we can lend our sentience and free will towards a meaningful path of symbiogenesis between humanity and the many other beings who call this living planet home. I feel this new path (defined by humility, symbiosis and cultivating an animist worldview) can serve to align us with a way of living that nourishes the living world that sustains us and encourages the unfolding of ever higher expressions of human potential in the process.
As the Monster Of Modernity accelerates what has been called the profitable apocalypse, those who have always sought to look up to centralized institutions to tell them who they are and how to live often feel that they are without sociocultural identity.
Others see this process of the removing of the mask that had been covering the depravity of the dominant institutions and modern industrial exploitative culture on Earth as an opportunity to participate in active ethnogenesis, co-creating a divergent regenerative culture and planting the seeds for parallel societies in the composted failures of the anthropocentric systems that brought us to where we are today.
The digital/industrial age of people swiping pieces of plastic in order to move some data around on a computer (aka “money”) and get some "food" handed to them (which sat around for several months and went through 5 middlemen in-between the farmer and them) is offering us an opportunity to take an honest look at where we are headed, see the inevitable trajectory towards catastrophe (if we stay in this path), and make a different choice before it is too late.
These times are inviting us to dig deep and become our best selves. We are being invited to forge alliances beyond borders and connecting in a way that transcends arbitrary statist borders with those that share a vision of regeneration, integrity and aligning with the inherent abundance of the Living Earth, severing our ties to that which no longer serves us and leaving this world more beautiful and free than it was when we got here for the next generation.
Many centuries ago in a time before centralized money systems there were indigenous peoples living in connection with the land and each other. While some of these ancient peoples utilized various forms of barter and trade there are also examples of ancient cultures (from several different continents) that not only did not use money.. they apparently did not use "barter" and "trade" as a regular means of commerce either. These cultures were described as operating on a mostly "gift based economy". The innate characteristics of this 'gift economy' would have been effective at mitigating manifestations and behaviors of the ego (like greed, thievery or deceit etc.) because in those tightly knit communities such behavior was easily detected and the individual responsible would have been ostracized (thereby forcing the individual to change their ways or have to fend for themselves). While there would have inevitably been those who sought self interest and greedy behavior in money-less societies.. it would seem to me that they would have a lot less motivation and rewards for doing so in such a situation.
The following images are pages from The Serviceberry : Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World By Robin Wall Kimmerer that offer insights into Gift Economics
“In the Anishinaabe worldview, it’s not just fruits that are understood as gifts, rather all of the sustenance that the land provides, from fish to firewood.
Everything that makes our lives possible-the splints for baskets, roots for medicines, the trees whose bodies make our homes, and the pages of our books—is provided by the lives of more-than-human beings. This is always true whether it’s harvested directly from the forest or whether it’s mediated by commerce and harvested from the shelves of a store-it all comes from the Earth.
When we speak of these not as things or natural resources or commodities, but as gifts, our whole relationship to the natural world changes.
In a traditional Anishinaabe economy, the land is the source of all goods and services, which are distributed in a kind of gift exchange: one life is given in support of another. The focus is on supporting the good of the people, not only an individual.
Receiving a gift from the land is coupled to attached responsibilities of sharing, respect, reciprocity, and gratitude of which you will be reminded.
This kind of gratitude is so much more than a polite “thank you.” Not an automatic ritual of “manners,” but a recognition of indebtedness that can stop you in your tracks—it brings you the realization that your life is nurtured from the body of Mother Earth. With my fingers sticky with berry juice, I’m reminded that my life is contingent upon the lives of others, without whom, I simply would not exist. Water is life, food is life, soil is life-and they become our lives through the paired miracles of photosynthesis and respiration. All that we need to live flows through the land. It is not an empty metaphor that we call her Mother Earth. Food in our mouths is the thread that connects us in a relationship simultaneously spiritual and physical, as our bodies get fed and our spirits nourished by a sense of belonging, which is the most vital of foods.
I have no claim to these berries, and yet here they are in my bucket, a gift.
This pail of Juneberries represents hundreds of gift exchanges that led up to my blue-stained fingers: the Maples who gave their leaves to the soil, the countless invertebrates and microbes who exchanged nutrients and energy to build the humus in which a Serviceberry seed could take root, the Cedar Waxwing who dropped the seed, the sun, the rain, the early spring flies who pollinated the flowers, the farmer who wielded the shovel to tenderly settle the seedlings. They are all parts of the gift exchange by which everyone gets what they need.
Many Indigenous Peoples, including my Anishinaabe relatives and my Haudenosaunee neighbors, inherit what is known as “a culture of gratitude,” where lifeways are organized around recognition and responsibility for earthly gifts, both ceremonial and pragmatic. Our oldest teaching stories remind us that failure to show gratitude dishonors the gift Enumerating the gifts you’ve received creates a sense of abundance, the knowing that you already have what you need. Recognizing “enoughness” is a radical act in an economy that is always urging us to consume more. Data tell the story that there are “enough” food calories on the planet for all 8 billion of us to be nourished. And yet people are starving.
Imagine the outcome if we each took only enough, rather than far more than our share. The wealth and security we seem to crave could be met by sharing what we have. Ecopsychologists have shown that the practice of gratitude puts brakes on hyper-consumption. The relationships nurtured by gift thinking diminish our sense of scarcity and want.
In that climate of sufficiency, our hunger for more abates and we take only what we need, in respect for the generosity of the giver. Climate catastrophe and biodiversity loss are the consequences of Gratitude and reciprocity are the currency of a gift economy, and they have the remarkable property of multiplying with every exchange, their energy concentrating as they pass from hand to hand, a truly renewable resource.
Can we imagine a human economy with a currency which emulates the flow from Mother Earth?
A currency of gifts?
When I speak about reciprocity as a relationship, let me be clear. I don’t mean a bilateral exchange in which an obligation is incurred, and can then be discharged with a reciprocal “payment.” I mean keeping the gift in motion in a way that is open and diffuse, so that the gift does not accumulate and stagnate, but keeps moving, like the gift of berries through an ecosystem. We ecologists think about the currency of ecosystems in terms of biogeochemistry—the cycling of life’s materials, between the living and the not.
The berries make a satisfying “plunk” in my bucket. It’s worth thinking about what they are made of as the pail gets heavier. Those Serviceberries contain both elemental materials, like carbon and nitrogen, and the energy stored in the sweet sugars. To understand this natural economy and apply it to our own, we have to remember that materials and energy move differently through an ecosystem.
Materials like carbon and nitrogen and phosphorus-the essential elements of life-cycle through an ecosystem, endlessly changing form as they are passed along. Let’s follow the carbon in that Saskatoon. The leaves of the tree drew carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, which they made into sugar via the brilliant mechanism of photo-synthesis..
..My son-in-law Dave teaches high school economics, and the first principle his students learn is that economics is about decision making in the face of scarcity. Anything and everything in a market is implicitly defined as scarce. With scarcity as the main principle, the mindset that follows is based on commodification of goods and services.
I’m way past high school, but I’m not sure I grasp that thinking, so I fill a bowl with fresh Service berries.
As the berries plunked into my bucket, I was thinking about what I’d do with them all. I’d drop some off for friends and neighbors, and I’d certainly fill the freezer for Juneberry muffins in February. This “problem” of deciding what to do with abundance reminds me of a report, shared by Lewis Hyde in his essential book The Gift, that linguist Daniel Everett wrote as he was learning from a hunter-gatherer community in the Brazilian rainforest.
He observes that a hunter had brought home a sizable kill, far too much to be eaten by his family.
The researcher asked how he would store the excess. Smoking and drying technologies were well known; storing was possible. The hunter was puzzled by the question— store the meat? Why would he do that? Instead, he sent out an invitation to a feast, and soon the neighboring families were gathered around his fire, until every last morsel was consumed. This seemed like maladaptive behavior to the anthropologist, who asked again: given the uncertainty of meat in the forest, why didn’t the hunter store the meat for himself, which is what the economic system of his home culture would predict.
“Store my meat? I store my meat in the belly of my brother;” replied the hunter.
I feel a great debt to this unnamed teacher for these words. There beats the heart of gift economies, an antecedent alternative to market economies, another way of “organizing ourselves to sustain life.” In a gift economy, wealth is understood as having enough to share, and the practice for dealing with abundance is to give it away. In fact, status is determined not by how much one accumulates, but by how much one gives away. The currency in a gift economy is relationship, which is expressed as gratitude, as interdependence and the ongoing cycles of reciprocity. A gift economy nurtures the community bonds that enhance mutual well-being; the economic unit is “we” rather than “I,” as all flourishing is mutual.
Anthropologists characterize gift economies as systems of exchange in which goods and services circulate without explicit expectations of direct compensation. Scientist and philosopher Marshall Sahlins names generalized reciprocity as the heart of a gift economy, which functions most effectively in small, close-knit communities. 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 in “enoughness” and accountability in distributing the gifts of the Earth.
If the community is flourishing, then all within it will partake of the same abundance or shortage-that Nature provides.
In a gift economy, the currency in circulation is gratitude and connection rather than goods or money. A gift economy includes a system of social and moral agreements for indirect reciprocity, rather than a direct exchange So, the hunter who shared the feast with you today could well antic-
ipate that you would share from a full fishnet or offer your labor in repairing a boat in the future.
The prosperity of the community grows from the flow of relationships, not the accumulation of goods.
When the natural world is understood as a gift instead of private property, there are ethical constraints on the accumulation of abundance that is not yours to own.
Gifts are not meant to be hoarded, and thus made scarce for others, but given away, which generates sufficiency for all.
Gift economies, from the informal to highly ritualized protocols, are known from traditional Indigenous communities around the world. Gatherings of our Potawatomi people often include a
“giveaway,” a ceremony meant to reinforce relationships through gift giving. In the western world, someone celebrating a life event might expect to receive gifts, but in our way the equation is reversed. The ones who have been blessed with good fortune share that blessing by giving away.
Well-known examples of gift economies include the potlatches of Pacific Northwest peo-ples, in which gifts circulate in the group, solidifying bonds and redistributing wealth. Traditional potlatches are gift-giving celebrations, in which possessions are given away with lavish generosity to mark meaningful life events. The ceremonial feasts display the wealth of the givers, enhance that is not yours to own. Gifts are not meant to be hoarded, and thus made scarce for others, but given away, which generates sufficiency for all.
Gift economies, from the informal to highly ritualized protocols, are known from traditional Indigenous communities around the world.
The gifts received are likely to be given away at the next ceremony, keeping wealth in motion and cementing mutual bonds. This ritualized redistribution of wealth was banned by colonial governments, under the influence of missionaries in the 18oos. Potlatches were seen as contrary to “the civilized values of accumulation” and undermined the notions of individual property and advancement essential to assimilation to the colonial agenda.
These traditional values of relationship and reciprocity continue to resonate in contemporary Indigenous economics, as Dr. Ronald Trosper, a Salish-Kootenai economist has documented in his book Indigenous Economics: Sustaining Peoples and Their Lands. Making good relationships with the human and more-than-human world is the primary currency of well-being. These relational values shape current agreements regarding a diversity of tribal economic needs from timber prosperity gained through sharing of the commons, underpin the history of colonization in this country. The whole enterprise of dispossession and assimilation of the original peoples was designed to eradicate the notion of land as a source of belonging and to replace it with the idea that land is nothing more than a source of belongings. This required a narrowing of the definition of well-being, from common wealth to individual wealth, from abundance to scarcity.
You don’t have to participate in a potlatch to experience the gift economy; when you open your awareness and give them a name, you can see gift economies all around you.” - Robin Wall Kimmerer (from “The Serviceberry : Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World”
We can glean some additional illuminating historical perspective on how central the Gift Economy worldview was a foundational aspect of the traditions, beliefs, moral compass and ways of interacting with other humans in some indigenous cultures by taking a look at the first hand observations of French military officers and Jesuit Priests and how they viewed a number of the peoples of the Eastern Woodlands of Turtle Island (such as the Huron/Wendat and Mi’kmaq) when they arrived there and mingled in their communities in the 1600-s.
Also, perhaps more importantly, and more tellingly, we can glean illuminating insights via taking a look at how some of the indigenous inhabitants of the Eastern Woodlands viewed the European interlopers, their economic model and their society.
The following are excerpts from two books ( 1491 and The Dawn Of Everything ) which provide illuminating cultural and historical context that helps us to see the clear delineation between a community and culture operating on the Gift Economy, vs one operating on the fiat currency/scarcity economy.
In the most direct way, the generosity and liberty made indigenous villages into competitors for colonists’ allegiance. Colonial societies could not become too oppressive or stingy, because their members — surrounded by examples of well fed peoples living a free life — always had the option to vote with their feet. It is likely that the first British villages in North America, thousands of miles from the House of Lords, would have lost some of the brutally graded social hierarchy that characterized European life. But it is also clear that they were infused by the generous, democratic and informal brashness of Native American culture. That spirit of gift economics and liberty alarmed and discomfited many Europeans, toff and peasant alike. But it is also clear that many others found it a deeply attractive vision of human possibility.
Historian Cornelius J. Jaenen reported in an account to his American years, that the Huron, could not understand why:
‘one Man should have more than another, and that the Rich should have more Respect than the Poor. ... They brand us for Slaves, and call us miserable Souls, whose Life is not worth having, alleging, That we degrade ourselves in subjecting our selves to one Man [a king] who possesses the whole Power, and is bound by no Law but his own Will.... [Individual Indians] value themselves above anything that you can imagine, and this is the reason they always give for’t, That one’s as much Master as another, and since Men are all made of the same Clay there should be no Distinction or Superiority among them.’ [Emphasis in original.]
The essayist Montaigne had noted the same antiauthoritarian attitudes a century earlier. Indians who visited France, he wrote, “noticed among us some men gorged to the full with things of every sort while their other halves were beggars at their doors, emaciated with hunger and poverty. They found it strange that these poverty-stricken halves should suffer [that is, tolerate] such injustice”
The leaders of Jamestown tried to persuade Indians to transform themselves into Europeans. Embarrassingly, almost all of the traffic was the other way — scores of English joined the locals despite promises of dire punishment. The same thing happened in New England. Puritan leaders were horrified when some members of a rival English settlement began living with the Massachusett Indians.” (source)
When Europeans arrived to Turtle Island, they encountered very different societies than those they were accustomed to. Those societies had very different cultures, each with their own intellectual tradition.
The collision of two completely separate intellectual traditions led to the creation of an indigenous critique of European society, which Graeber and Wengrow call The Indigenous Critique.
The Indigenous Critique refers to critiques of European society which were developed by Turtle Islanders.”
In a book called “The Dawn Of Everything” Elizabeth Whitworth explains:
“In the late 1600s, European colonists in North America became engaged in philosophical discussions with the indigenous peoples of that land. Some of the indigenous people and the colonists learned to speak one another’s languages fluently. Graeber and Wengrow explain that the native North Americans had strong philosophical traditions and skilled orators who challenged European colonial officials in debates.”
In some cases, indigenous intellectuals travelled to Europe in order to study and understand feudal society. One such person was a Huron-Wendat leader named Kondiaronk, also known as Le Rat, who seems to have impressed everyone he ever met with his great brilliance.
Whitworth continues:
“In New France, Wendat leader Kandiaronk raised scathing critiques of European social customs and values, particularly criticizing monarchical rule, social hierarchies, emphasis on the accumulation of wealth and materialism, and punitive justice systems. These descriptions then made their way back to Europe, where they were widely distributed among the intellectual class and, Graeber and Wengrow argue, became the inspiration for much Enlightenment thought.
One of the major cultural differences the Europeans and indigenous people found they had was the notion of gift economics, equality and its connection to freedom. Indigenous ideas about sharing abundance with those in need, equality and freedom directly conflicted with the European notions of selfish materialism, social status and a natural hierarchy.
Beyond the emphasis of the indigenous critique on the immorality of the hierarchical and involuntary governance structures (Statism) that was prevalent in Europe (and being imported to Turtle Island with the settlers/colonial peoples) many of the people who called Turtle Island home were also very critical of the lack of compassion, generosity and charity which was ubiquitous in the European’s way of living.
After visiting France and then returning to the Eastern Woodlands of Turtle Island Kondiaronk (the Wendat chief described above) offers this distillation of the indigenous critique:
“I’ve spent six years thinking about the state of European society and I still can’t think of a single one of your ways that isn’t inhumane, and I sincerely believe that it can only be because you stick to your distinctions of ‘mine’ and ‘yours’.
I affirm that what you call money is the devil of devils; the tyrant of the French, the source of all evil; the scourge of souls and the slaughterhouse of the living. To imagine that one can live in the land of money and preserve one’s soul is like imagining that one can preserve one’s life at the bottom of a lake. Money is the father of luxury, lasciviousness, intrigue, deceit, lies, betrayal, insincerity, all the worst behaviors in the world. Fathers sell their children, husbands their wives, wives betray their husbands, brothers kill each other, friends are false, and all for money. In light of all this, tell me that we Wendat are not right to refuse to touch or even look at money?”
Kandiaronk continues, explaining human qualities valued by the Wendat by saying:
“Over and over I have set forth the qualities that we Wendat believe ought to define humanity – wisdom, reason, equity, etc. – and demonstrated that the existence of separate material interests knocks all these on the head. A man motivated by interest cannot be a man of reason. “
Kandiaronk’s view was that the greed, poverty, and crime found in French society arise from lust for money (an expression of their scarcity based economic model). By refusing to deal with money (and instead continuing to develop a reciprocal connection to nature’s gift economy), the Wendat were able to live in freedom and equality (with enough to share with those in need).
Kandiaronk:
“Do you seriously imagine, he says, that I would be happy to live like one of the inhabitants of Paris, to take two hours every morning just to put on my shirt and make-up, to bow and scrape before every obnoxious galoot I meet on the street who happened to have been born with an inheritance? Do you really imagine I could carry a purse full of coins and not immediately hand them over to people who are hungry; that I would carry a sword but not immediately draw it on the first band of thugs I see rounding up the destitute to press them into naval service?”
At that time, the region that came to be known as New France (now Ontario, Quebec and part of the US) was inhabited largely by speakers of Montagnais-Naskapi, Algonkian and Iroquoian (Potawatomi) languages. Those closer to the coast were often fishers, foresters and hunters, though most also practiced horticulture (and regenerative agro-forestry); the Wendat (Huron), concentrated in major river valleys further inland, growing maize, squash and beans around fortified towns.. with advanced regenerative agroforestry food production systems further beyond their three sisters fields.
..While French assessments of the character of (what they described as) ‘savages’ tended to be decidedly mixed, the indigenous assessment of French character was distinctly less so.
Father Pierre Biard, for example, was a former theology professor assigned in 1608 to evangelize the Algonkian-speaking Mi’kmaq in Nova Scotia, who had lived for some time next to a French fort.
Biard did not think much of the Mi’kmagq, but reported that the feeling was mutual:
“They consider themselves better than the French: “For,” they say, “you are always fighting and quarrelling among yourselves; we live peaceably. You are envious and are all the time slandering each other; you are thieves and deceivers; you are covetous, and are neither generous nor kind; as for us, if we have a morsel of bread we share it with our neighbor.” They are saying these and like things continually.’“
What seemed to irritate Biard the most was that the Mi’kmaq would constantly assert that they were, as a result, ‘richer’ than the French. The French had more material possessions, the Mi’kmaq conceded; but they had other, greater assets: ease, comfort and time.
Twenty years later Brother Gabriel Sagard, a Recollect Friar,” wrote similar things of the Wendat nation. Sagard was at first highly critical of Wendat life, which he described as inherently sinful (he was obsessed with the idea that Wendat women were all intent on seducing him), but by the end of his sojourn he had come to the conclusion their social and economic arrangements were in many ways superior to those at home in France.
In the following passages he was clearly echoing Wendat opinion:
“They have no lawsuits and take little pains to acquire the goods of this life, for which we Christians torment ourselves so much, and for our excessive and insatiable greed in acquiring them we are justly and with reason reproved by their quiet life and tranquil dispositions.”
Much like Biard’s Mi’kmaq, the Wendat were particularly offended by the French lack of generosity to one another:
‘They reciprocate hospitality and give such assistance to one another that the necessities of all are provided for without there being any indigent beggar in their towns and villages; and they considered it a very bad thing when they heard it said that there were in France a great many of these needy beggars, and thought that this was for lack of charity in us, and blamed us for it severely.’
(source)
So as you can see, some of the people of the eastern woodlands had a worldview colored, informed and given structure/purpose by the Gift Economy of nature and the Creator (which they could, and we can, observe all around us in the workings of a forest ecosystem). The indigenous people of that region’s view starkly contrasted the view of the European scarcity economic model. We can also see from the journal accounts of the Europeans above that what they were observed about how the indigenous people of that area produced not only enough food for themselves, but an abundance of food (through applying biomimicry to create advanced regenerative agroforestry food production systems along with their three sisters fields.) and then shared it freely with those in need.
With all of that being said, I do not think we should romanticize past place based cultures and so I share the following to provide a more balanced view of pre-statist cultures and what they can teach us.
Pre-European invasion cautionary tales where some ancient Turtle Islanders fell prey to Wendigo thinking and experimented with Empire and “Civilization” and had to grow through their own stages of cultural adolescence :
Placing any culture, group of people or individual on some pedestal as pure is unhealthy. I feel we should be vigilant to make sure we are not romanticizing their past nor romanticizing the potential of their worldviews to provide solutions to the present challenges we face.
In the interest of presenting a brutally honest and balanced view of the ancient cultures of this land, here are a few cautionary tales offered to us by pre-colonial Turtle Island cities.
Firstly, the story of Cahokia presented by my friend Justin McAffee.
In his post above, Justin emphasized that Cohokia stands alone as an example of when indigenous people built a city state and then consciously abandoned those “civilized” ways, however, I think there are two other cautionary tales of large indigenous communities of pre-colonial Turtle Island (with perhaps similar scale population density and complexity in their hierarchical structures, caste systems, the use of violent coercion by a centralized “government” body and other “civilized” features) I feel are worth mentioning as well.
Firstly, ancient city of Temlaxam (which existed in the territory of the Gitanyow, Gitxsan, Nisga’a and Ts’msyen, First Nations people in the “Skeena” region in what is now called northern “BC”, “Canada” and existed over 4000 years ago).
Temlaxam, which extended more than 80 kilometres downstream from the confluence of the Skeena and Bulkley rivers, is said to have been so extensive that “the birds, exhausted, fall to the ground before they are able to traverse the whole city,” according to the adaawx. The name of the walled city, which featured networks of streets and longhouses, translates to “where life is good.”
I do not know how big and how many people live in a city where birds are too exhausted to fly from one end to the other, but that sounds substantial.
Well like Cohokia, Temlaxam became a cautionary tale. Its occupants’ mistreatment of the natural environment was blamed for geological and other disasters, including a catastrophic landslide some 3,500 years ago. The residents dispersed, some becoming the Gitanyow, Gitxsan, Nisga’a and Ts’msyen, also known as Tsimshian — First Nations that still share similar languages today.
Beyond the adaawx and some archeological evidence, little is known about the lost city aside from the ancient food forests that the smaller decentralized communities that separated from it created in subsequent centuries (some of which still persist today).
This lends credence to your description of the viability of “walking away from civilization” .. “into smaller villages, the forest, on the land.”.
I offered additional archeological, botanical and ethno-linguistic evidence pertaining to that ancient city in my article on Hazelnuts, which you can find here: https://gavinmounsey.substack.com/p/hazelnut-she-is-the-evoker-of-wisdom . Hazel was one the main food producing trees that the successor (smaller communities) of the ancient city of Temlaxam cultivated in their food forest designs.
For more info on that ancient “BC” city:
- https://thetyee.ca/News/2024/12/04/Hazelnuts-Reveal-Secrets-Ancient-BC-City/
- https://www.jstor.org/stable/483299
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Secondly, I think the Choco Canyon Civilization is worth mentioning in this context as well.
The Choco Canyon Civilization (or “phenomenon” as archeologists sometimes refer to it) cultural, social, and architectural developments of the Ancestral Puebloans in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, between roughly 850 and 1250 AD. This period saw the construction of large, sophisticated complexes, including the famous great houses, roads, slave storage structures, elitist hierocracies, caste systems and evidence of extensive trade networks and structures (often slavery required) ceremonial practices.
Some estimate that ten thousand plus people lived in that city (though modern researchers seem to like to keep downplaying that number as they do not like what the rise and fall of that city represents in relation to their fallacious eurocentric story of sociological evolutionism).
Lyla June explains the story of Chaco Canyon better than I ever could, so i`ll quote her below and link some pertinent articles highlighting the relevance to this concept of “walking away from civilization” and intentional collapse.
“Chaco Canyon is revered as this great archaeological site – but if you really dig into it, we had caste systems there, we exhausted the land, we manipulated the water, we had running water there – which isn’t necessarily bad – but we weren’t honoring the way it wanted to flow. And Creator sent us a drought. And it was the youth of Chaco Canyon who decided that we were going to not live that way anymore. And so when the drought came it gave us the courage to change. And we left; we abandoned it.
Our people then had caste systems and slavery there and didn’t manage their land well. A lot of Diné people won’t go to Chaco Canyon for that reason. A lot of tourists go to see the archaeological site, but we as Diné never go back because that’s a place where we messed up.
And as Diné people, we’re not supposed to go back there. We say, That era is over. And so from that fire was born a new society.”
-Lyla June ( from https://esperanzaproject.com/2019/native-american-culture/lyla-june-on-the-forest-as-farm/ )
For more info on Choco Canyon:
- https://bioneers.org/lyla-june-interview/
- https://forthewild.world/podcast-transcripts/lyla-june-on-lifting-hearts-off-the-ground-147
In closing on this section that pertains to how people with blood indigenous to Turtle Island have had their own missteps into the degenerative ways of “civilization”, here is are two quotes. First a quote from an Diné anarchist which speaks to how just because one is born with blood indigenous to a specific land, does not mean they are going to choose actions that respect that land, their fellow beings nor the ways of their ancestors.
“THERE’S A MONOLITHIC ASSUMPTION ABOUT INDIGENOUS POLI-tics. Particularly that we all care about the Earth. This assumption establishes Indigenous identity as a virtue. But there are Indigenous fascists, capitalists, conservatives, socialists, anarchists, nihilists, extractivists etc. Some spend more time than others (particularly academics) mired in arguments of what system is best for Indigenous “futurity” or “survivance.” Largely ignoring that the origin of the assumption must be contended: the imposition of colonial politics. Anthropological and social assertions of Indigenous “politics” steeped in the stench of the progressivisms of modernity, have dominated how we think about social organizing today. Many Indigenous organizations measure their accomplishments based on how well they’re recognized, funded, and included in colonial order.”
- Klee Benally (1975-2023) from his book from “No Spiritual Surrender: Indigenous Anarchy in Defense of the Sacred”. Klee was a Diné, an Indigenous activist, author and musician.
“Just as dogmatic knowledge written down in sacred texts whose vagaries only evoke a dead past no longer visible has no ability to generate knowledge or wisdom without being relived and rehydrated into living experiential relevance as actively taught by those who have done so during the present, seeds must be constantly renewed by replanting in the present before they lose the “memory” of what they can do in order for them to truly continue as seed-making plants.
Without the interest, culturally embedded cognizance, reverence for that understanding, and a new generation with really old ancestral instincts to deliberately and spiritually care enough to do the practical hard work of what it takes to renew both the seeds and the cultural knowledge that parallels the seeds, both the seeds and a people’s culture become a husk of form with no existence. One is not real or even possible without the other. That’s why they say that a memory of having descended from dead indigenous ancestors does not make you indigenous just because you genetically descend from them; it’s how you match their expertise at living well, friendly to the fate of the ground that feeds you today and how you grow the seeds of cultural food they’ve left you that keeps both you and the seeds alive and makes you the candidate for the possibility of being indigenous.”
- Martín Prechtel (from his book “The Unlikely Peace at Cuchumaquic”)
The institutions and social structures that are common in modern day society are based on domination, competition, fear and egotism and not on nurturing. The shift in perspective offered here is to review everything in terms of nurturing, or to phrase it another way, in terms of gift giving. The thread of gift giving and receiving begins in every life in the biological and emotional needs provided by mothers. We are born into a world and showered with gifts.. love, attention, nourishment and beauty all around us. As time goes on in the individual life and in the existence of institutions and social structures, this thread is altered, turned back upon itself, we are programmed to compete, and our innocence and giving nature is used and abused for domination.
The capitalist market needs scarcity to maintain the level of prices. In fact when there is an abundance of products scarcity is often created on purpose. An example of this is the plowing under of 'overabundant' crops (which may happen even when people are standing by who are hungry). On a larger scale scarcity is created 1. by the channeling of wealth into the hands of the few who then have power over the many; 2. by spending on armaments and monuments which have no nurturing value but only serve for destruction and display of power; and 3. by privatizing or depleting the environment so that the gifts of nature are unavailable to the many. The exchange paradigm (which includes concepts like “capitalism” and it’s ugly offspring “consumerism”) is a belief system which validates this kind of behavior.
When we take a step back and discard all the programming we can see that almost everything from nature to the dynamics of many ancient cultures can be viewed as gift-giving in some form. We can closely observe the many facets of nature in our garden that involve cycles of gifts beings given between organisms and then imagine ways we can emulate these circles of gifts in our daily lives and even in the structure of our larger society.
Another way to look at a manifestation of a “gift” based economy is the system of exchange between organisms that takes place in the soil of a mature forest eco-system. You could describe it as a “soil-stock market” (in which many different individuals make deposits and invest their time and energy and then at some point they are gifted a return on their investment in the form of nutritious food). The soil is a nexus for a constant exchange of the gifts offered by countless species that all do their part to give to the living soil. The cycle of gifts continues as the living soil offers its gifts to the plants and fungi which in turn offer their gifts of nourishment to countless species that in turn deposit nutrients back into the soil to complete the cycle of gifts. Mature eco-systems are so resilient and productive because they are nurtured by myriad cycles of gifts that flow between the species that call that place home. Each being offers it’s own unique gift and in some way contributes to the health of the collective.
Fungi offer powerful examples of gift economics in nature.
We can learn from our wise and talented elders in the Fungi Queendom and use our gifts to accelerate the breakdown and transformation of that which is dead and dying through embodying grace as we bear witness to that which is coming to an end.
Each of us is capable of emulating our ancient elders and becoming the bridge between death/disintegration and life/renewal. Through embracing the way of the fungi we are invited to face the crumbling empire before us with unflinching honesty... we are invited to send out ‘hyphae of hope’ (with our hearts, our words and our actions) so that we may myceliate every situation, relationship, system and community we engage with compassion, solidarity and integrity to transmute pain into wisdom, stagnation into fertile nutrients for new ideas and tyranny into freedom.
In doing so, we can provide medicine for the land, medicine for the people and medicine for the soul... making the way for the seeds of new life and a new civilization to begin to set down roots.
Beyond just invigorating and nourishing poetry for the senses, I find saving seeds from long lived perennial food and medicine producing plants and trees (such as Goji Berry vines, Echinacea flowers, Wild Apple Trees, Camellia Sinensis or ‘Green Tea’ bushes, Paw Paw trees, Elderberry Shrubs, Blueberry Bushes, Serviceberry Trees and White Pine Trees) to be especially rewarding as it serves to nurture my hope for a brighter tomorrow.
Last year, I was saving seed from our 7 year old (third generation) Goji Vine and as I held a handful of the seeds I imagined how much abundance the vines that could grow from those seeds could produce in their lifetime. If one was to quantify that abundance in terms of fiat currency value, the numbers are quite staggering. If one was to add up all the potential Goji berries that could be grown in the long life of a handful of seeds (that likely contains well over one hundred seeds) that fiat currency value would easily surpass one million dollars (and that is just in the first generation of those seeds living one lifetime and producing for many different people).
If one was to extrapolate what latent fiat currency value is in that handful of seeds if one calculated for each person who is growing a vine, also saving seed, and sharing seed (and others doing the same), after a few years you will find yourself dealing in numbers that look like the combined portfolio assets of Blackrock and The Vangaurd Group.
That is of course, latent value assessible by many in the context of communities filled with people embracing a Gift Economy model with their heirloom seeds, but it is nevertheless a real potential for cultivating True Wealth that can be tapped into through nothing more than a handful of seeds and a heartful of love.
That is not to say I think we should prioritize things based on their fiat currency value (as many things, and some of the most nourishing and important things in life cannot be quantified in that way) nor is it to say I think we can starve the beast of the multi-generational plutocracy that has gone by many names with nothing more than a handful of Goji Berry seeds, it is just a thought experiment intended to illustrate the immense untapped potential in a handful of seeds.
In James Corbett’s excellent recent article titled How Vanguard Conquered the World he wisely stated:
“..the fundamental solution to the problem of Vanguard and BlackRock will not come from some outside force. It will come when we withdraw our wealth from their system.”
I agree whole heartedly, and I would like to expand on that by saying:
It will come when we withdraw our wealth from their system 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐢𝐧𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐚𝐝 𝐢𝐧𝐯𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐢𝐭 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐋𝐢𝐯𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐄𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐡 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐢𝐧 𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐥𝐨𝐜𝐚𝐥 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐦𝐮𝐧𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐞𝐬.
Now imagine how those numbers would play out if you were talking about a handful of Malus Sieversii, Serviceberry, Oak or Pinus strobus seeds (both would produce trees that would each have the potential to live and produce food and medicine for hundreds of years).
These are worth more to me than all the jewels, gems, silver and gold on Earth!
I would also argue that they are just as (if not more) beautiful visually. Also, you cannot eat gold, diamonds, sapphires or rubies... nor can you plant them in the ground and increase their value 100 fold (sometimes in a single season) while also producing oxygen, building precious soil in the process and simultaneously increasing your health/emergency preparedness.
When these seeds shown in the picture above are combined with act of composting, it means you are contributing towards the fabric of an ancient, living, decentralized economic model. We invest our time and materials and the ‘asset managers’ and ‘investment strategy team’ (comprised of myriad bacteria, fungi and decomposing insects) invest molecules of biological currency for us, storing those units of currency in the form of fertile soil. We can then withdraw from our account through using the ‘key code’ that is embodied in a living heirloom seed we plant in that soil (which unlocks it’s potential and allows us to withdraw part of our savings account in that living soil/seed bank in the form of life giving food, medicine, oxygen and poetry for the senses).
Composting is medicine for the land and medicine for the soul. It offers us a tangible way to connect with and give back to the living planet that sustains us all. It also a form of wealth that necessitates ecological literacy.
One of the interesting things about acts like composting and saving heirloom seeds from plants you grow yourself each year, is that it is an act that provides an impetus to become decreasingly selfish and greedy while becoming increasingly generous, ecologically literate and kind.
It is a process that begets attentiveness, presence and gratitude. This act evokes hope for tomorrow while compelling you to embrace gift thinking (as you almost always save more seeds than you could use yourself, and your love for those little living embryos moves you to find people that would appreciate them as gifts and share)
Then imagine how the latent money value would add up if you took those handfuls of seeds and layered those species in with others like Elderberry, Blueberry, Paw Paw, Echinacea, Serviceberry trees, Maple trees, nut trees (like hickory) and oak trees and then you inoculated fallen logs with medicinal fungi… and imagine you saved seeds from those crops and gathered knowledge from your experiences cultivating them together as part of a symbiotic ecosystem, shared those seeds and knowledge, and helped others to do the same. You would quickly be dealing with numbers that surpass the entire fiat currency economy currently in play on Earth.
That is the untapped potential in cultivation models that are described under the umbrella term Regenerative Agroforestry
These are some of the reasons why I included a collection of ideal plant/tree species lists for designing a Food Forest, specific to each cold hardiness in my first book.
Here are a few pics of pages from my book (Recipes For Reciprocity : The Regenerative Way From Seed To Table) pertaining to Food Forest design.
For additional Book Recommendations and info on Food Forests check out :
https://recipesforreciprocity.com/book-recommendations/
When we choose to give back to the living planet that sustains us and share the resulting abundance, the rewards increase exponentially and continue to give back year after year. These are the intrinsic characteristics of a Gift Economy. We can nurture and become part of the web of that cycle of gifts and abundance through investing in the Earth with our hands and our hearts and then sharing the resulting abundance freely.
Let’s invest in a future where food, health, and happiness are abundant and common place. We can make the choice to truly care for our body and in the process give back to the earth that gives so much to us. Each of us can do this by planting and maintaining a regenerative food garden or food forest of our own.
If we combine Regenerative Agroforestry (Food Forest design) with seed saving (and seed sharing) we can create such overwhelming abundance and resilience in each of our communities that we will no longer be susceptible to the economic warfare tactics of the plutocracy and we will plant the roots for a way of living that will render their centralized parasitic systems obsolete so we can one day leave them behind.
Such is the power of saving (and sharing) heirloom seeds, learning from the genius of Creator’s design that is embodied in a functioning ecosystem and investing in the living economy of the Earth with our hands and our hearts. This simple act is an investment that provides exponential gifts in one’s life (and in one’s community).
For this reason (and many others) my second book will focus on long lived perennials well suited for food forest design.
For more on that, check out the post below:
Related posts:
Saving Seeds to Save The Future
The act of saving seed from your heirloom garden crops is an act of love and hope for tomorrow. Not only does this act save one money and ensure food security for one's household (and local community) but, it also offers one the unique sense of satisfaction that comes from the knowing that each successive year seeds are saved the varieties of seeds are …
Thank you Gavin. Beautiful words so true to read and reflect.Sharing this in the hopes that it plants some seeds.
Love saving and getting new seeds. I get some for my garden as an annual ritual on the end of January. I am thinking of doing wildflowers in one garden section this season.