Our gift was time and attention and care and red-stained fingers.Heart berries, indeed.
Tying in the central theme heavily here; Reciprocal gift giving between the land, her childhood, and her family. The appreciation for natural life and beauty runs deep and ties into family history and creation belief.
The pair of wool socks that I buy at the store,red and gray striped, are warm and cozy. I might feel grateful for thesheep that made the wool and the worker who ran the knitting ma-chine. I hope so. But I have no inherent obligation to those socks as acommodity, as private property. There is no bond beyond the politelyexchanged “thank yous” with the clerk. I have paid for them and ourreciprocity ended the minute I handed her the money. The exchangeends once parity has been established, an equal exchange.
The next step to the theme of this paper; That consumerism, or just plain old capital consumption and exchange is inferior to the natural exchange that can occur between people. This feels as though the transaction is a cold middleman between two distant people.
From the viewpoint of a private property economy, the “gift” isdeemed to be “free” because we obtain it free of charge, at no cost. Butin the gift economy, gifts are not free. The essence of the gift is that itcreates a set of relationships. The currency of a gift economy is, at itsroot, reciprocity. In Western thinking, private land is understood to bea “bundle of rights,” whereas in a gift economy property has a “bundleof responsibilities” attached.
Central critique of Western circulation of gifts and exchange.
Her final gifts, our most revered plants, grew from her body.The strawberry arose from her heart. In Potawatomi, the strawberry isode min, the heart berry. We recognize them as the leaders of the ber-ries, the first to bear fruit.
This is the large-picture aspect of the central theme of the story. A warm gift from a tragic story. Ties in with family story of poverty if decided to focus solely on that.
you don’t feel the warm feathers cool in your hand and know that a lifehas been given for yours, when there is no gratitude in return—thatfood may not satisfy. It may leave the spirit hungry while the belly isfull. Something is broken when the food comes on a Styrofoam traywrapped in slippery plastic, a carcass of a being whose only chance atlife was a cramped cage. That is not a gift of life; it is a theft.
Well-put and thought-provoking ideas on the exchange of the natural world and people, with the real idea that people are unable to see the value in the exchange when they themselves are removed from it.
1 his is parnllel to fhc rccog·nition that no theory ofc:0111 ..l •· d. . ' • pos1t10n by itselfc,1 s to the producuon of music:, or of ,irt.