Quotes About Interdependence

Only with severe need did the hyphae curl around the alga; only when the alga was stressed did it welcome the advances. When times are easy and there's plenty to go around, individual species can go it alone. But when conditions are harsh and life is tenuous, it takes a team sworn to reciprocity to keep life going forward.

we make a grave error when we try to separate individual well-being from the health of the whole.

Children hearing the Skywoman story from birth know in their bones the responsibility that flows between humans and the earth.

Let us pledge reciprocity with the living world.

What I'm looking for, I suppose, is balance, and that is a moving target. Balance is not a passive resting place - it takes work, balancing the giving and the taking, the taking out and the putting in.

What would it be like to be raised on gratitude, to speak to the natural world as a member of the democracy of species, to raise a pledge of interdependence?

Black ash and basket makers are partners in a symbiosis between harvesters and harvested: ash relies on people as the people rely on ash. Their fates are linked.

They taste good together, and the Three Sisters also form a nutritional triad that can sustain a people.

but by the rules of reciprocity none can take more than she gives.

The young and the old are linked in one long breath, an inhalation that calls for reciprocal exhalation, nourishing the common root from which they both arose. New leaf to old, old to new, mother to daughter—mutuality endures. I am consoled by the lesson of lilies.

The berries trust that we will uphold our end of the bargain and disperse their seeds to new places to grow, which is good for berries and for boys. They remind us that all flourishing is mutual. We need the berries and the berries need us. Their gifts multiply by our care for them, and dwindle from our neglect. We are bound in a covenant of reciprocity, a pact of mutual responsibility to sustain those who sustain us. And so the empty bowl is filled.

In reciprocity, we fill our spirits as well as our bellies.

The trees act not as individuals, but somehow as a collective.

a back strong enough to carry a load for others.

we make a grave error if we try to separate individual well-being from the health of the whole.

how their friendship was medicine for each other.

The earth, that first among good mothers, gives us the gift that we cannot provide ourselves. I hadn't realized that I had come to the lake and said feed me, but my empty heart was fed. I had a good mother. She gives what we need without being asked.

We tend to respond to nature as a part of ourselves, not a stranger or alien available for exploitation.

map of balance and harmony.

The shape of the water is changed by the moss and the moss is shaped by the water.

With their tobacco and their thanks, our people say to the Sweetgrass, "I need you." By its renewal after picking, the grass says to the people, "I need you, too." Mishkos kenomagwen. Isn't this the lesson of grass? Through reciprocity the gift is replenished. All our flourishing is mutual.

The essence of the gift is that it creates a set of relationships. The currency of a gift economy is, at its root, reciprocity.

Pecans have learned that there is strength in unity

Through reciprocity the gift is replenished. All of our flourishing is mutual.