"Kinship and Reciprocity"

Reciprocity Mandala: Credit & Link

The title of this post comes from Robin Wall Kimmerer's scholarship and advocacy. "Kinship and reciprocity" are central to Kimmerer's body of research and her writings.  An artist influenced by Kimmerer created the Reciprocity Mandala. The mandala shows how animals, plants, and all of nature are inextricably intertwined, connected and interdependent. Our relationships with plants, animals, and the earth are reciprocal (mutually beneficial) and not transactional or one way. 

 

Kimmerer, as some of you may know, is the author of Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants.  She is a Potawatomi botanist, noted story teller, gifted teacher, and directs the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry. The April 2025 issue of Time magazine named her one of the 100 most influential people of 2025.

Here's how Chief Seattle, a mid 19th century leader of the Suquamish and Duwamish tribes in the Puget Sound, expressed our relationships with the Earth. His words are another expression of "kinship and reciprocity." These are attributed to his 1854 speech.. 

This we know: All things are connected like the blood that unites us. We did not weave the web of life, We are merely a strand in it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves.

At our May 5th Chalice meeting we discussed Kimmerer's 2019 keynote address entitled "Reciprocal Healing: Fostering Kinship and Reciprocity." Here's a link to the 52 minute address. Chalice is a small group of fellow Unitarians Universalists who meet twice a month during the church year and less often during summer time. Tom concluded our meeting with Susan O'Connell's poem, Wild Reciprocity. 

Wild Reciprocity

Remember your youth,
did you hear
the voices of Earth
with your animal body?

Did your senses respond
to Earth’s creativity
bursting with honeycomb and clover,
her purple lupine color rising up
through fields of yellow mustard?

Did you hear green sea songs
running before white cresting waves,
salty mist whispers,
or a foghorn’s call?

Today, can you imagine
being deep in a lush forest
home of monarch butterflies, sap, and ants,
all dreaming of life?

Sensuality stretches her limbs
offering her vibrant palette,
nudging our hearts to open
like orange poppies in the sun.

Still, seasons pass away
and we walk with them.
Earth continues to bestow her gifts
despite our arrival at the twilight of life.

And today,
if we really listen, we might hear
the tremulous tattered voices
of forests just now razed
somewhere on earth.

Muddied water seeps and pools
on hard fallow ground
once carpeted with ferns,
white lilies and feathers.

When we witness wastelands
we have created or allowed
can we feel grief for wild ones
ripped from their homes?

If we allow ourselves
to feel the pain of these losses
we might find our hearts
beat red, responsive still.

Raven and Owl witness
our past and future deeds
what might they teach us?

What ripens within and around
when our healing words and deeds align
and become woven like tree roots
inside our hearts?

Perhaps seeds of compassion
will nourish a greening canopy
of inclusion, as we respond
to the call of Earth.

Hawk cry pierces sky
telling us the time is now.
Will we answer the call
of wild reciprocity?

The poem expresses some of Kimmerer's messages: humans are deeply connected to nature, Earth's health and welfare and ours are co-dependent and intertwined,  need to listen to nature, nature as a teacher, and notably grief's role in restoring nature and our relationships to the natural world. Kimmerer writes:

"Joanna Macy writes that until we can grieve for our planet we cannot love it – grieving is a sign of spiritual health. But it is not enough to weep for our lost landscapes; we have to put our hands in the earth to make ourselves whole again. Even a wounded world is feeding us. Even a wounded world holds us, giving us moments of wonder and joy. I choose joy over despair.”

Kimmerer often refers to "The Great Turning", popularized by Joanna Macy. "The Great Turning"  refers to a required paradigm shift from an industrial growth society based on ever-increasing corporate profits  to a life-sustaining civilization that prioritizes ecological and social well-being. Ninety-five year old Joanna Macy, now retired, describes herself as an eco-philosopher and is the author of 12 books. She is a scholar of Buddhism, systems theory, and ecology. Joanna is recognized for her active promotion of  peace, justice, and sustainability. Here's a link to her website.

Here's more messages that remain with me from Kimmerer's 2019 keynote address and from additional online research about her. Here's a link to her website 

• Time is circular rather than a linear progression. Seasons, life cycles, and historical narratives are parts of a continuous, interconnected whole. 
• Western science and indigenous knowledge are both valuable to understanding the climate change, our world and our lives. While Western science brings reasoning needed for problem solving, indigenous knowledge offers badly needed understanding of relationships and emotions.
• Reciprocity and kinship rejects the idea that human beings are supreme and put on earth to dominate and use all other resources. Kemmerer considers supremacy of humans as the "disease of human exceptionalism", and is a fundamental problem and challenge we face. In contrast, indigenous wisdom tell us that human beings are "the younger brothers of Creation." We say that humans have the least experience with how to live and thus the most to learn—we must look to our teachers among the other species for guidance. Their wisdom is apparent in the way that they live. They teach us by example. They've been on the earth far longer than we have been, and have had time to figure things out." We need to listen to this wisdom.
• Accompanying exceptionalism is "species loneliness.... a deep, unnamed sadness stemming from estrangement from the rest of Creation, from the loss of relationship. As our human dominance of the world has grown, we have become more isolated, more lonely when we can no longer call out to our neighbors." 
• A  profound cultural shift in our relationships to the world is needed. Kimmerer writes: "We need to restore honor to the way we live, so that when we walk through the world we don’t have to avert our eyes with shame, so that we can hold our heads up high and receive the respectful acknowledgment of the rest of the earth’s beings.”  

Kimmerer’s kinship and reciprocity aligns with Aldo Leopold’s (1887-1948) Land Ethic® . The Wisconsin conservationist, philosopher, scientist , ecologist, and forester is considered the father of the modern conservation movement. His 1948 The Sand County Almanac, published by his son a year after Leopold’s untimely death, is considered a landmark in the American Conservation movement. I purchased my copy in the early 1970s.

 

Like Kimmerer, Leopold’s views of  “community”  include not only humans, but all other parts of the Earth: soils, waters, plants, and animals. To Kimmerer and Leopold the relationships between people and land are intertwined and care for people cannot be separated from care for the land. Furthermore, both Kimmerer and Leopold  call us to act based on a moral code that recognizes our interconnected caring relationships with the land and all that is Earth.

I am fortunate to live across the street from Lake Wingra and the UW-Arboretum. The Arboretum’s mission embraces Leopold’s Land Ethic and carries on his legacy. The Sandhill Cranes have returned and once again grace my life and our neighborhood. Here's the colt and one of the adults. I'm surprised at how close I can get to the family as they calmly feed or stroll across Wingra Park.

 

 Robin Wall Kemmerer highly regards gardening.  She writes:

 “A garden is a nursery for nurturing connection, the soil for cultivation of practical reverence. And its power goes far beyond the garden gate – once you develop a relationship with a little patch of earth, it becomes a seed itself.”

Volunteers continued to care for the little patch of Earth known as Prospect Gardens. Work sessions were held on May 26th and June 3rd. On the 26th the remaining prairie plants were planted plus some weeding. 

Here's Crew Chief Becky approaching the Gardens. She walked from her home and figured out how to transport the plants. Now that's creative problem solving! 

Four other volunteers plus me joined Becky. Thank you Becky, Percy, Meg, Peggy, and Laura for once again tending Prospect Gardens. Your support of Prospect Gardens benefits nature, neighborhood residents and users of the Southwest Path. Kemmerer reminds us that the power of gardening "..... goes far beyond the garden gate." 

On June 3rd Operation Fresh Start (OFS) crews returned to tend the Gardens. OFS is a non-profit that supports young adults on the path towards self-sufficiency through education, employments training and  mentoring. Here's a link to OFS website

Isaiah is straddled on the left railing and Jay on the right one. Niyah and Kaya (with a hat) are in the middle. In front of Niyah is Ollie. Taylor and Ian,  Crew Leaders (staff members) are on the lower right. 

We formed a circle before working and following Taylor's instructions, shared our names, made a brief statement about our emotional state, and did a physical movement. I shared "tree in spring", a Qigong movement. Then, everybody, except me, did 10 pushups. 

Cutting back Bishops Weed was the major task. I also cut back one of the overgrown Forsythia and pruned one of the Elderberry bushes.  

Here's Kaya pausing from pulling Bishops Weed. She was well prepared for working outdoors: net attached to her hat that protected her face, gloves, and two little portable fans that provided some close body breezes. Way to go Kaya! 

Ollie and Niyah teaming to remove Bishops Weed from the Fox side of the Gardens. Whatever they were listening to on their headsets did not interfere with the task at hand.

Isaiah and Jay (on the right side of the picture) working on the Regent Side of the Gardens. Jay's face has a hint of his expansive smile and how his face lights up when he smiles. 

Thank you Niyah, Kaya, Ollie, Isaiah, and Jay. I enjoyed our short time together, your youthful energy, and appreciated how diligently you worked. May all your efforts toward being self-sufficient adults, with the support of OFS, be fruitful. Thank you Taylor and Ian for your good work and for being role models for the young adults. 

Thank you Maddie Dumas, Stormwater Vegetation Coordinator, Madison Engineering Division, for providing access to OFS crews. Last but not least, thank you John Toso, also from City Engineering, for the crew that picked up the two large piles of plant material from the two work sessions.

I end with this Alberto Rios poem, another expression of kinship and reciprocity. 

      We Are of a Tribe

We plant seeds in the ground

And dreams in the sky,

 

Hoping that, someday, the roots of one

Will meet the upstretched limbs of the other.

 

It has not happened yet.

We share the sky, all of us, the whole world:

 

Together, we are a tribe of eyes that look upward,

Even as we stand on uncertain ground.

 

The earth beneath us moves, quiet and wild,

Its boundaries shifting, its muscles wavering.

 

The dream of sky is indifferent to all this,

Impervious to borders, fences, reservations.

 

The sky is our common home, the place we all live.

There we are in the world together.

 

The dream of sky requires no passport.

Blue will not be fenced. Blue will not be a crime.

 

Look up. Stay awhile. Let your breathing slow.

Know that you always have a home here.