Summary

Kimmerer compares the economy of the Serviceberry’s ecosystem to the modern human economy, wherein the labor of human beings is transformed into the production of commodities. However, she notes that rather than restoring and renewing the source energy, like the Serviceberry, the human economy’s methods of production drain resources and destroy the environment. She compares the ecosystem of the Serviceberry to a mother feeding their baby: it is something that is done as a gift, out of love, with no expectation of payment in return. She suggests that the gifts of the earth to humans should be viewed in this way, as the gifts of a mother to a child. She suggests that love, in the human world, functions the way the Sun does in the natural world.

Considering once again the basket of Serviceberries she is picking, Kimmerer compares how she...