The Honorable Harvest — Sacred Protocols for Taking from the Earth
Robin Wall Kimmerer's documentation of the Anishinaabe Honorable Harvest protocols provides the most rigorous articulation of Indigenous ecological ethics — a set of principles for taking from the earth that, if followed globally, would end ecological destruction.
The Honorable Harvest, as documented by Robin Wall Kimmerer (Potawatomi) in Braiding Sweetgrass, includes these principles: ask permission before taking; take only what you need; never take more than half; take only what is given; minimize harm; use everything that you take; give thanks for what is given; share; give a gift in reciprocity for what you have taken; give back more than you take. These are not romantic ideals but practical protocols that Indigenous peoples have applied to food harvesting, hunting, fishing, logging, and mining across thousands of years. Taken together, these protocols cap how much is removed and require something given back, so a harvested stand or herd is always left able to renew itself. The contrast with industrial resource extraction — which follows none of these principles — makes the cause of ecological crisis perfectly clear.
Take only what you need, and leave the rest for the seven generations to come.
Ecologist Carl Folke's research on sustainable resource management confirms that traditional ecological knowledge systems in Indigenous communities globally have maintained resource yields for thousands of years in regions where post-contact industrial practices depleted the same resources within decades.
Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants
Written about in
- What Native American wisdom says about land and belonging
A short list of rules for taking: ask first, take only what is given, never more than half, use all of it, give something back. It turns gathering into a relationship with terms.