Kimmerer Gift Economy

In The Gift of Strawberries, Kimmerer draws attention to a disconnect between modern society and the natural world and uses the concept of a gift economy to demonstrate the relationships that gifts create and how they reinforce connection to the earth and each other. There is an emphasis on the gifts that the earth provides and how putting a price on them disconnects a person from the relationship between themselves and the earth. Kimmerer draws back to her dads shortcake from her childhood, explaining how she never put store bought strawberries in her dads cake, “I don’t believe we ever put those farm berries in Dad’s shortcake. It wouldn’t have felt right” (Kimmerer 25). If the berries were bought, instead of picked from Kimmerers backyard,

When a gift gets turned into profit, it loses its connection to the earth. Kimmerer uses the concept of a “gift economy” and gives examples on how this concept creates relationships.. She explains that gifts are not free, “Gifts from the earth or from each other establish a particular relationship, an obligation of sorts to give, to receive, and to reciprocate” (Kimmerer 25). Reciprocation does not always have to be through something physical, it can be given through things like love, care, and attention. She talks about how herself and siblings would pick strawberries to make a shortcake for their dad on fathers day, “My father loves wild strawberries, so for fathers day my mother would almost always make him strawberry shortcake. we kids were responsible for the berries” (Kimmerer 24). At the end of the anecdote, she acknowledges the connection the earth has to her gift, stating that the physical parts of the shortcake didn’t come directly from her, “the gift of berries was from the field itself, not from us” (Kimmerer