The Honorable Harvest

The phrase the Honorable Harvest was articulated by [[robin-wall-kimmerer|Robin Wall Kimmerer]] — Citizen Potawatomi botanist, author of [[braiding-sweetgrass|Braiding Sweetgrass]] — to name a set of practical-ethical guidelines for taking from the more-than-human world. Kimmerer presents these as a synthesis of widely-shared principles across multiple indigenous traditions of the eastern North American woodland (Anishinaabe, Haudenosaunee, and others) and beyond, articulated for an audience including non-indigenous readers who need teaching the principles describe.

The guidelines

[[robin-wall-kimmerer|Kimmerer]] presents the Honorable Harvest in a list that she explicitly notes is not a recipe but a way of being. The principles, in the form she gives them in chapter 18 of [[braiding-sweetgrass|Braiding Sweetgrass]]:

Know the ways of the ones who take care of you, so that you may take care of them.

Introduce yourself. Be accountable as the one who comes asking for life.

Ask permission before taking. Abide by the answer.

Never take the first. Never take the last.

Take only what you need.

Take only that which is given.

Never take more than half. Leave some for others.

Harvest in a way that minimizes harm.

Use it respectfully. Never waste what you have taken.

Share.

Give thanks for what you have been given.

Give a gift, in reciprocity for what you have taken.

Sustain the ones who sustain you and the earth will last forever.

Each line carries multiple practical implications. Ask permission is not metaphor: [[robin-wall-kimmerer|Kimmerer]] describes the practice of approaching a stand of plants, asking, and listening — sometimes for hours, sometimes longer — for an answer that may be yes, no, not yet, not from this part of the patch. The harvester who has not learned to listen does not get to harvest.

What the principles presuppose

The Honorable Harvest is not a set of rules that can be followed without the orientation that produced them. They presuppose:

• The personhood of what is being taken from. A plant or animal or river is a person who can be addressed, can give consent, can refuse, can be thanked. The animist ontology is the substrate.
• Relationship over transaction. Taking is part of a continuing relationship with a particular place and the beings in it; one is not a stranger taking from a generic resource but a known relative engaged in a known exchange.
• Time. The relationship requires duration. The harvester does not arrive new each year; they have been there before, will be there again, and the patch’s flourishing across years is part of what they are paying attention to.
• Restraint as the foundation. Take only what you need and never take more than half are not technological optimizations; they are the practices that make the continuing relationship possible.

The platform’s interest

The Honorable Harvest is one of the most lucid practical articulations [[0mn1one|the platform]] has of what abundance for every form of life would actually look like in the texture of daily life. [[mission-district-sf|The mission]]‘s commitment to regeneration depends on the recognition that takingmust be conducted in a way that sustains the beings taken from. The Honorable Harvest names that practice precisely.

Three particular contributions:

1. A teachable form. [[robin-wall-kimmerer|Kimmerer]]‘s articulation has the rare quality of being teachable to non-indigenous practitioners without flattening or appropriation. She is generous about offering the teaching widely, while clearly naming the indigenous traditions it derives from.
2. A standing critique of industrial extraction. [[industrial-agriculture|Industrial agriculture]], fossil-fuel extraction, fast fashion, fast food — all violate the Honorable Harvest at every step. The guidelines name what is wrong with these systems with greater precision than most ethical or environmental literature manages.
3. A direction for the regenerative economy. A regenerative business model, by these guidelines, takes only what is given, never takes more than half, harvests in a way that minimizes harm, shares, gives thanks, and reciprocates. [[0mn1one|The platform]]‘s directory, with its substrate-builder / circulator / knowledge-care / aligned-service tiers, is in part an attempt to make visible the operations that practice this and the operations that violate it.

Honest about appropriation

A note for clarity. Indigenous teaching is not a free-take resource for non-indigenous extraction. [[robin-wall-kimmerer|Kimmerer]] has been generous about sharing the Honorable Harvest with wider readers; the principles are now in print and discussed widely. But [[0mn1one|the platform]]‘s posture is to name the source — these are indigenous teachings, articulated by a Citizen Potawatomi scholar — rather than absorb them into a generic regenerative-ethics framework. The teaching has a lineage; using the teaching responsibly includes naming the lineage.

See also

Auto-generated from this entry’s typed relations: frontmatter, grouped by relation type so the editorial signal isn’t flattened.

• Subset of: [[indigenous-foodways]]
• Parallels: [[spirituality]] · [[animism]]

Sources

1. Robin Wall Kimmerer. [[braiding-sweetgrass|Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom]], [[braiding-sweetgrass|Scientific Knowledge]], and the Teachings of Plants. Milkweed, 2013. (Chapter 18, The Honorable Harvest.) Source class: book / primary articulation.
2. [[robin-wall-kimmerer|Robin Wall Kimmerer]]. [[gathering-moss|Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses]]. Oregon State University Press, 2003. Source class: book / earlier work.
3. [[linda-hogan|Linda Hogan]]. Dwellings: A Spiritual History of the Living World. Norton, 1995. Source class: book / Chickasaw poet’s parallel articulation.
4. [[vine-deloria-jr|Vine Deloria Jr.]] God Is Red. Fulcrum, 1972 (rev. 1994). Source class: book / Native theological articulation.
5. [[enrique-salmon|Enrique Salmón]]. “[[kincentric-ecology|Kincentric Ecology]]: Indigenous Perceptions of the Human-Nature Relationship.” Ecological Applications 10 (2000). Source class: scholarly article.

Lenses still to grow

• Specific tribal practices of the Honorable Harvest — the Anishinaabe [[wild-rice|wild rice]] harvest, Haudenosaunee maple sugaring, the various salmon ceremonies of the Pacific Northwest, etc.
• The Honorable Harvest and modern food systems — what the principles imply about supermarket food, factory meat, industrial fishing, etc.
• Asking permission as practice — the actual phenomenology of attending and listening for the answer.
• The Honorable Harvest in non-indigenous practice — how non-indigenous practitioners can engage the teaching responsibly, and where the line is.