Reciprocity and Reparations

Image by Scott from Pixabay

A not-so-new concept has rippled across conservation efforts in recent years: reciprocity.

It refers to an ethical principle of balanced, mutual exchange. Reciprocity is a philosophy guided by interconnectedness, where all life is regarded as kinand the Earth as its nurturing mother.

The word carries a sincere magnetism, and it’s easy to see why.

Reciprocal relations have guided Indigenous, land-based cosmologies around the world since the beginning of time. Many would argue they are the very building blocks of life itself: everything, human and more-than-human, living and non-living, is sustained through relationship.

And yet, the air of novelty that surrounds recent discussions of reciprocity attests to just how alienated our dominant world view has grown from this way of relating to the land.

It’s no wonder. For centuries, Indigenous cultures have been persecuted at the hands of ever-expanding empires of colonization, industrialization, capitalism, and patriarchy.

While the genocide of Native peoples across the Americas is a glaring example, legacies of cultural destruction trace back even further. Long before turning their attention to foreign territories, European powers had a violent track record of oppressing Indigenous peoples on their own continent: the ethnic cleansing of Celtic people, for instance, or the massacre of forest-dwelling cultures. Up until the 19th and 20th centuries, Indigenous European languages (Welsh, Sami, and Gaelic, to name a few) were banned entirely in public spaces.

Over time, this oppression and devaluation of reciprocal, land-based belief systems resulted in what Indigenous researcher Michael Anthony Hart (Cree) describes as the “blinding of Indigenous worldviews.”

The silencing of these cultural visions has unfolded alongside an abuse of our planet’s natural resources. In abandoning principles of balanced relationship, Western society has instead shifted towards an unsustainable ideology of ownership, accumulation, and individual interest. This new emphasis is reflected not only in how we treat the land, but in how we empathize (or don’t) with each other.

That brings us to where we are today. In light of the current climate crisis, many Western scientists are looking to Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) to inform modern environmental conservation strategies– the same knowledge systems colonial powers fought for centuries to extinguish. Yet as promising as many of these initiatives are, there remains a tendency to sever traditional ecological wisdom from its broader ontology.

Doing so misses an important opportunity. A true grasp of what it means to be in reciprocal relationship with the natural world means opening the door to these wider beliefs. It also requires deep reflection. To understand what reciprocity is, we must simultaneously be willing to recognize what it is not.

In other words: if embracing reciprocal relationships is our most promising path forward, what is it that needs to be left behind?

Image by JB from Pixabay

What reciprocity isn’t: transactional, hierarchical, conditional.

What’s more, its implications reach far beyond land and resource management. Reciprocity traces back to the very nature of relationship. It is a natural law of care and kinship– not just for one’s own corner of life, but for all existence.

This is a radical reappraisal for Western value systems, which have reflected a clear erosion of kinship over the last several centuries. Our social, economic, and cultural ideologies favor a detached brand of individualism– one where everything is a resource and everything is expendable. Human beings, it’s worth noting, are no exception.

“When we look at how capitalism works, at its economic exploitation, we can also talk about it as a lack of reciprocity,” reflects Dr. Kyle Powys Whyte in We Are the Middle of Forever, a compilation of interviews with Indigenous Americans about the climate crisis published in April 2024.

“Is it spoken of as a violation of reciprocity? There are people that use that terminology, but I think we can use it a lot more commonly, so that Indigenous values can be demonstrated as what are targeted by different systems of power.”

Our current systems of power reinforce and reward greed at the expense of kinship. In forgetting our place in the wider web of life, we have become desensitized to the habitual disrespect, desecration, and harm of the land and each other.

One only needs to look around to realize that this is not the natural order of things.

Image by Matthias Böckel on Pixabay

At its core, reciprocity is love.

While this definition might feel elusive, it lays a clear path forward: if we are to restore a balanced, integrated relationship with the surrounding world, we must find the courage to love more, and to allow that love to naturally unfurl outward, beyond our individual relationships and communities.

Real change, therefore, lies in strengthening and expanding our vision of community. If we are taught to turn our backs on each other, consciously or unconsciously, then of course we will do the same to our rivers and rainforests.

The key is in resisting the impulses that send us further into isolation. While it may be tempting to withdraw from the chaos and instability of the current sociopolitical climate (I speak from personal experience here), it is essential that we keep our eyes as wide open as possible to the shifting realities of the present.

“You have to allow yourself to let go of isolation and feel the interconnected community that we are, as a human race,” says Steven Pratt.

Read the full story, published July 30 2024, on Symbiotica.