Giving, Receiving and Gratitude
Cascadian Midsummer June 21, 2025
Presenter: Amina Malak Otto
Welcome everyone and thank you for joining me today for what I hope will be an interesting talk on cultivating reciprocal relationships in a transactional world. I would like to start by sending deep and sincere thanks to all of you who have chosen to give me your time and attention today, to the organizers and volunteers of this incredible event who have allowed us to be here now, to all the people who have shaped my perspectives and helped me to bring these concepts into alignment, and to the very special siblings, teachers, mentors, collaborators, ancestors, friends and loved ones, some of whom are here today, who have patiently listened to me and shared their own wisdom on this topic. Thank you.
Inspired by the philosophies of Guy Debord, Robin Wall Kimmerer, and myriad other thinkers, writers, and knowledge-keepers whose works form the backbone of this talk, my own thoughts around this have been evolving and developing for years. I cannot shut up about relational networks of reciprocity, even in casual conversation, and I am ecstatic to have the opportunity to discuss it with you today. Reciprocity is a perpetual cycle, a constantly turning wheel, a dynamic, animated system that creates and sustains itself, a web, a network, a tapestry of relationships and exchanges that shape us and the world around us. I struggled to decide where to begin when I first started constructing this seminar. Where is the beginning of the circle? I apologize if some of this talk seems circular or repetitive, but such is the nature of talking about cycles.The theme of this year’s festival is very pertinent to a discussion of reciprocal relationships, for the Sacred Grove is a perfect example of reciprocity.
We have lost many of our ways of interacting not only with each other but with the natural world. We have forgotten the stories that told us how the world interacted with us, that taught us the importance of the plants and animals and elements. We have lost sight of how the world takes care of us and how we take care of it. We lost the ways we had of relating to our home and its other inhabitants and we forgot how to treat each other. Though we may no longer have the knowledge, this concept of the Sacred Grove symbolizes our indelible connection to the earth, the need to animate and interact with our natural world as equal participants in an exchange.
When we treat something as sacred, when we know its stories and what it has done for us, we see within it a kinship and value equal to or greater than our own. We honour it with offerings and thanksgiving and respect. We treasure it and we take care of it. To exploit or destroy it is unthinkable. The Sacred Grove shelters us and gives us a place to gather, to reflect, to direct our generosity and gratitude, to receive teachings and medicine, to keep the stories that show us how to be. It is where we participate in ritual that reminds us of our place in the world. We have forgotten much about our role in nature and how to interact with those non-human neighbours who shape us as much as we shape them. Within the context of the Sacred Grove I hope that this talk will provide a starting point that will help shift our perspective and reforge some of the bonds that have been sundered by the isolating forces of industry, urbanity, and a world of commodity.
What I wish to share with you today is not a new idea, in fact these notions lie at the heart of almost every ancient worldview and every surviving indigenous code of conduct today. They form the core of our earliest ways of being, of interacting with the world and each other. Vestiges of these ideas still linger in our ‘civilized’ Western rules of etiquette, and in our instinctual, intuitive tendencies in relationships. I do not purport to ‘blow your mind’ with groundbreaking new knowledge. I only hope to turn your attention to something you probably alreadyknow. To help you begin to move yourself through a world more alive and more enchanted than we are conditioned to think it is. I invite you to participate authentically and actively in this cycle of generosity, gifts and gratitude in your own life however it most behoves you. We are all nothing more or less than a sum of our relationships, and it is vital that we not only understand the importance of how these relationships operate, but also recognize how to begin to heal those which have been damaged or lost.
When I look around right now, I already see reciprocal relationships at work. I am a very fortunate member of this Cascadian Midsummer community that already operates on generosity, gifts, and gratitude. And so are all of you who sit here before me. I have benefitted enormously from the generosity of many community members here today, and without their gifts I could not do this. I have received food, shelter, miscellaneous bits of necessary equipment, knowledge, laughter, a beautiful hand-crafted staff, and excellent company all given from the hearts and hands of people at this festival. I have heard birdsong and felt both rain and sunshine on my face. I speak to you here in the presence of some of the First People, the Standing People, our earliest ancestors. I have seen shrines adorned with flowers and fire and bones and heard music and poetry. Some gifts were offered and some I asked for and received. Many other gifts, both material and intangible, have been given to me surrounding this one single weekend-long event. I feel wealthy, overwhelmed with abundance and comfort and convenience. What can I possibly give back in the face of such overwhelming generosity? I can only begin with what I always have within my power to give: a heartfelt expression of gratitude. And gratitude of the individual is where I shall begin this circle.
We are likely all aware of the difference between a reciprocal exchange and a transactional exchange, but it can be hard to pin down exactly what that difference is. Transaction and reciprocity are both forms of exchange, of moving energy andmatter from one being to another. They both fulfil needs. Each party (usually) walks away with something they desired. Transactions are reciprocal, and reciprocity is a form of transaction. How do we differentiate them? Gratitude is one of the key distinguishing factors. Gratitude is necessary for reciprocity but not transaction. A transaction is a stagnant set of scales, ostensibly equally weighted, but with a proclivity to be thrown off-balance, become one-sided, or leave one party feeling exploited. Transactions involve contracts, currency, ownership, and ‘things’ , and can be carried out between perfect strangers who remain perfect strangers afterward. A single transaction can occur in isolation and has a set end point with all loose threads neatly tied up. Reciprocity is much more dynamic and self-sustaining.
The cycle of generosity and gratitude, gifting and receiving, creating relational networks whose bonds are upheld not on transaction, but on reciprocity that fulfill a community’s needs, is just that: a cycle. A two-way thread of giving and receiving that sustains itself and does not exhaust either side, but branches and grows, operating on a network of connecting threads, creating that tapestry of reciprocal cycles: the woven fabric of community. Gratitude can be found in both the giving and receiving of gifts and moves in both directions along the exchange. It is always present in reciprocity, and it is the key to moving away from transaction. Gratitude is what we always have and what we can always give. A world devoid of gratitude is a very uncomfortable world to live in and I believe we can all feel its effects. Transactional exchange stems from the same worldview, that allows us to see the abundance of the earth as inanimate heaps of matter waiting to be transformed into ‘ wealth’ through the alchemy of capitalism. This is the same force that turns trees into ‘lumber’, land into ‘property’, and oceans into dumping grounds. It transforms what should be treated as gifts into consumable commodities and makes everything, ourselves included, an exploitable resource. Though I will not spend too much time today dwelling on this all-too-ubiquitous entity spawned from the myopia of capitalism and colonial amnesia that has shaped much of the world we know today, I will name it as Guy Debord does and call it the Spectacle. The Spectacle contains within it the mindless consumption of Windigo, the ravening avarice of Fenris-wolf, the destructive forces that do not allow creation to flourish in its wake but leave a swath of utter emptiness and depletion. It is that which separates us by encouraging to interact with images and representations instead of participating actively and authentically in our own life. The Spectacle deprives us of experiencing that which is real and a society of Spectacle cannot sustain reciprocal networks of relationships because it relies on the illusion of abundance, false needs, false promises, and a lack of vulnerability between individuals. I name it only because I refer to it briefly throughout this talk, but it is not my focus today. If you wish to hear more about Debord’s Spectacle, please come find me and I will happily pontificate. Trust is a second distinguishing factor between transaction and reciprocity which is also dissolved by Spectacle. How can one know what or whom to trust when the world is presented in images and unfulfilled promises? Transaction operates entirely on the basis that neither party can be trusted to behave with integrity. If we do not trust each other then we must protect ourselves from each other. We isolate ourselves because we do not believe that others will behave responsibly if we are generous. So we must try to control the exchange as much as possible until trust is rendered unnecessary. By drawing up contracts or using currency as a representation of value instead of giving anything that contains its own worth. By removing all spontaneity and trying to acquire as much as possible without giving too much away because you cannot trust the community to take care of you.
Transactional exchanges create distance and sterilize the interaction, depriving both parties of even a chance of demonstrating either generosity or gratitude. Reciprocity requires trust and integrity and authentic sincerity, it requires trust that generosity will be rewarded in kind and not exploited, trust that your fellow will respect your gift and treat it with honour, trust that abundance will be shared and not accumulated. A society devoid of trust cannot support reciprocity. Transaction is nothing more than the representation of reciprocity in the world dominated by Spectacle, but it cannot replace the real thing. It is an insidious substitute that unifies us only in our complete separation from each other. Our economy, and therefore our society operates on transactional exchanges that need neither trust nor gratitude. To use sociological terms, a capitalist society or‘wage economy’ is transaction-based whereas a ‘gift-economy’ is rooted inreciprocity. In the former, you must be on one side of the equation. You are either providing goods and services, or you are purchasing them. You are either producer or consumer. Supply or demand. The illusion of balance and benefit must be maintained on both sides, yet both sides are operating from a place of assumed exploitation. Both parties walk away from a complete transaction feeling that nothing is owed to the other and all ties are severed. This transactional thinking has even bled into our etiquette around gift-giving and how reciprocity is perceived in much of the Western world. Gifts come with certain immediate expectations, demands, and strings attached. ‘I gave you this, so you owe me that’. ‘What do you bring to the table?’ ‘What’s in it for me?’ A transaction is what happens when both parties are trying to exert as much control as possible over the other. They are fertile ground for entitlement and resentment, and fallow ground for relationships and fulfillment. You may be able to buy what you need with money, but isolation and separation remain in the wake of transaction. It ensures that no bonds are formed and it removes all responsibility and accountability. Genuine gratitude is rendered unnecessary in a transaction because it is never meant to continue past one completed exchange at a time. Transactions can be completed. Reciprocity can be sustained.
When viewing the concept of transaction from this large-scale perspective, it feels utterly hopeless to imagine enacting any change on how the global economy works, and in that I agree with you. But I am not here to talk about global economics. I am here to discuss relationships and how we can cultivate reciprocity when the Spectacle urges us to operate in transactions. Transaction feels uncomfortable in close relationships because it is designed to be impersonal. I think it is likely that we have all experienced the spectre of transaction in close relationships before. Parents demanding gratitude from their children for raising them. A person buying their date dinner with expectations of what will happen later on. A friend doing us a favour only to turn around and say‘you owe me’. Many of us feel uncomfortable receiving gifts because we then feel obligated or indebted to the giver. Generosity and gifts within a transactional or capitalist economy have become a manipulation tactic of which we are rightfully suspicious. Or, when a gift is freely offered, it is hoarded and kept and not used or shared as it was intended.
The world of transaction is a world not of community, respect, and relationships, but of commodity, consumption, and exploitation. The quid-pro-quo worldview has so thoroughly warped how many of us approach these essential elements of reciprocity that it is difficult to imagine how to behave generously without being viciously exploited. When the world tells you to consume, it is difficult to ignore the threat of scarcity and remember to take only what you need. How can we know how much we need when the only need we know is artificial? How can freely give when the world only tells us to take? Transaction allows us to look at each other and look at the world around us and see inanimate resources and commodities to be owned, bought, and sold instead of seeing fellow people and gifts and abundance. It allows us to assume that if we can take it, it is ours with no consequences and we can take as much as we want. More than we need. And then what we do with it is up to us and we have no responsibility because we ‘own’ it. Purchased goods, or any items acquired through transaction, tend to accumulate and not be shared among the community because the transaction stops with a single changing of hands. Transaction is a form of exchange based on fear and scarcity and manufactured need. It can create more transactions as we are told weneed more things, but it cannot truly connect us. It has no place in relationships because relationships must be reciprocal to be sustainable.
So how do we move from transactional to reciprocal? We start with reintroducing gratitude. While we cannot demand gratitude from others, we can decide to express it and begin our own cycle of reciprocal relationships. Intrinsically we feel that relationships are unsatisfying and unsustainable if they are not reciprocal, if the roles of giver and receiver are never reversed, and especially if gratitude is absent. Most of us have likely experienced that too: a romantic relationship or friendship where one party consistently puts in more effort than the other. A job where your work seems to go unnoticed and unappreciated. We feel taken for granted. Dehumanised in a way. Reduced to an inanimate resource. Without gratitude, even humans can be commodified, and on a deep level we feel how wrong that is. But just as transaction has infiltrated our perception of reciprocity, vestiges of reciprocity have anchored themselves in our social conduct despite our transactional world. We innately know the rules of giving and receiving and it affects us when they are not properly observed. Theft is a crime. When we take without giving or asking, it is wrong. When we take more than is offered, it is considered rude. There is a whole industry around thank you cards. Simple manners such as saying please and thank you demonstrate our intrinsic need to recognize a gift, service, or kind gesture with gratitude. Even something as small as holding the door for a stranger or letting someone into a lane on the highway creates a brief moment of fellowship, but if it is not returned with some acknowledgement, it wounds and enrages us.
Being kind or generous does not entitle us to another person’s gratitude or generosity, but we notice when we do not receive it back. When the relationship is not reciprocal, we feel discomfort and perceive the non-reciprocating party as ‘rude’ because they did not behave properly. We have no control over how the other party will act, and that lack of control is why trust is essential in reciprocity but not transaction. Neither party is completely in control in a reciprocal exchange and that is the beauty of it. lack of control require trust, and trust requires demonstrating responsible behaviour and integrity. Generosity in a transactional context, a context devoid of gratitude, will be abused. The generous one will be exploited and drained and depleted. Some may begin to feel entitled to the gifts being given or attempt to control the source of gifts. Entitlement, exploitation and control have no place in reciprocity, and gratitude is the first line of defense against them. It is what recognizes the other participants in an exchange and acknowledges their agency and generosity. There are ways to responsibly give and receive, to maintain the balance in a way that does not sever bonds but forms and sustains them. A freely offered gift does not mean that it does not come without expectations. I’m not talking about the transactional expectations listed above. I am referring to a set of responsibilities that lies at the core of reciprocal relationships. Gratitude is the appropriate and expected response to a gift, but for a relationship to be truly reciprocal, it has to be reciprocated with a gift. Both the gift and the giver take on a new significance to the receiver and vice versa. By offering something as a gift and receiving it as such, it ceases to be a commodity. You cannot steal or purchase that which is freely given. You cannot exploit genuine generosity. If it is not reciprocated, it is ceased.
You do not ‘take’ a gift, you ‘receive’ it. Gifts are the vectors of both generosity and gratitude, and the cycle of gifting and receiving creates a positive feedback loop that grows and sustains and creates abundance. Generosity induces gratitude and gratitude induces generosity. We are far more likely to be grateful for a gift given to us than a commodity we purchase in a transaction. We treat that gift with more respect and reverence than property that we ‘own’. So what happens when we start to tally the gifts we have already received? To show gratitude for them? We begin to behave responsibly and maintain a balance that is not determined by a single isolated transaction, but an ongoing series of equal, sustainable exchanges of gifts, given in generosity and received with gratitude.A community built on reciprocal gifting and generosity, a ‘gift economy’, is not one of boundless altruism where everyone is entitled to take whatever they want whenever they want. A reciprocal network has its own mechanisms to ensure proper conduct is maintained around giving and receiving. It is based on action and reaction, the active participation of all parties involved, and, if a member of the community does not behave responsibly, the consequences for that behaviour. Reciprocity operates for negative exchanges as well as positive. We have many familiar adages and axioms and terms that illustrate these fundamentals of reciprocity. What goes around comes around; treat others how you want to be treated; you reap what you sow; play stupid games win stupid prizes; the whole idea of karma. Hávamál says: Ey sér til gildis gjöf: A gift demands a gift in return. Physics says ‘every action has an equal and opposite reaction’
.Alchemy says ‘Humankind cannot gain anything without first giving something in return. To obtain something of equal value must be lost.’ If we are to make any use of these concepts, we must first understand how they operate when they are applied. It is not sufficient to simply write down five things we are grateful for every day and pat ourselves on the back. Gratitude remains inanimate if it is never shared, for it is itself a gift that must be`passed along, not accumulated. It is an act. Saying ‘thank you’ is like saying ‘I love you’ or ‘I’m sorry’:you have to actually mean it for it to have any value. You have to show not just tell.
Gratitude is a practice, an active force that must be demonstrated. It is a ‘choice of perspective’ to use Kimmerer’s words. Stories of the land and the beings with whom we share it can help animate that perspective, contextualise it and demonstrate it, and connect us to our immediate other-than-human neighbours. To know how to apply these concepts and receive the teachings necessary to uphold reciprocal relationships, we need stories. Stories remind us how to behave, how totreat each other, and what happens to us when we forget or deliberately break the codes of responsibility that uphold reciprocity. They inform our rituals and our beliefs, and the way we move through the world. They are essential for shaping our perspective, and much needed if we are to make a choice and shift our perception. We have myths that describe the creation of the land on which we walk, legends of the interactions and exploits of heroes and more-than-human beings who shaped our world, tales that tell us why we do things and how to do them and what not to do, stories that connect us to the landscape around us and teach us how to be in it. Let them shape you as the land has shaped them. Without stories we lack the knowledge systems necessary to engage with not only each other but with our home where the stories were made. Stories bring the world to life and infuse it with an enchantment that shows us how to interact reciprocally. The stories demonstrate proper behaviour and provide us with what we need to know. We have forgotten many of these stories but not all are lost and maybe it is time to make new ones. Make your own stories with the beings around you. Earlier this year, old grade school held a funeral for a tree that stood in the courtyard for decades. It had to be cut down because of disease and the whole community felt its loss. Students and teachers gathered around it one last time to sing the tree songs, play it music, tell it how much we enjoyed eating our snacks in its shade and clambering up its branches. We reminded the tree of how much we loved it and we mourned it when it was gone. I shed tears when I read the announcement. It was a sacred tree to all who attended the school and it is sorely missed. Learn the stories of your other-than-human neighbours and make memories with them.
Learn the stories of Sky Woman, Raven, of Thor, of Pwyll and Rhiannon, of Ra and Horus and Hathor, of Anansi, Gilgamesh, Hanuman, Coyote, Sigurd, Ainu, and Yggdrasil. Learn of the dryads and selkies and why we leave fresh milk outside our door on certain nights or what happens when a fox crosses running water in moonlight or why rowan protects us. Learn why we use tobacco and sweetgrass as offerings andwhy mistletoe is Baldur’s bane. Learn why we celebrate the flooding of rivers, the generosity of geese, the longest night and the successful harvest. Learn why that tree stands crooked on that hill or why that stone has a hole in it. Learn the stories of your home. These stories not only supply us with the knowledge of reciprocity, but with the system in which it can operate. Allow yourself to be enchanted by them. They are a strong antidote to commodification and transaction. These stories teach us about the gifts we have, how to receive them, and how to say thank you the proper way.
If you receive a gift, return it with a gift. If you go to ask for something, bring an offering. Demonstrate your gratitude with a gift of your own. We understand this deeply and almost without thinking: we expect our generosity to be met with gratitude, our gifts to be returned, not because of any sense of entitlement or ulterior motives behind the gifting, but because that is how we recognise each other as active participants in a reciprocal relationship. We feel it deeply when reciprocity is absent. As I have already said: If you are grateful for something you are far less likely to exploit it. If you receive something as a gift, you are far less likely to abuse it. If you offer a gift, you are establishing a bond and you can expect the gift to be returned. If you know the stories, you have the relationships. Genuine gratitude will lead you to return the generosity by caring for both the gift and the giver and by contributing your own gifts in a way that is appropriate to the relationship you have. If you engage in a reciprocal relationship, gratitude is the force that keeps in check the eroding forces of the Spectacle and ensures responsible behaviour. If we practice this not only in our relationships with other humans but also with the plants who give us food, shelter and medicine, with the animals who give us their lives so that we may live, with the waters that cleanse and hydrate us, with the air that fills our lungs, the land that shapes and holds us, the sunlight that warms us, we begin to see how wealthy we really are and how we belong to the earth. The Spectacle, that breeding ground of transactional relationships, both generates and sustains itself on manufactured need that can never be fulfilled. This leads to endless attempts to fulfill that false need through transaction after transaction, blinding us to gifts and depriving us of gratitude, preventing us from participating in relationships. Tyler Durden summed it most succinctly when he said, and I paraphrase, we are ‘working jobs we hate to buy shitwe don’t need. We’re the middle children of history, no purpose or place… and we’re very pissed off.’ It can feel awfully silly to be thanking the trees or the wind or your morning eggs when you are working an unfulfilling job to pay for rent and necessities. I am not saying we should all quit our jobs and live on a commune.
Reciprocity will not operate on a large scale any time soon. But perhaps it doesn’t need to. We have the choice to cultivate it in our immediate community and that has the potential to spread. Even if it doesn’t, the world is a better place for it. If we start demonstrating genuine gratitude and treating what we receive as gifts, westart to see the world around us as much more alive. By thanking the trees of the Sacred Grove, we are saying that we recognise our kinship with them and we will take care of them. By thanking the animals that give us food and companionship and their strength, we are acknowledging their gifts and promising to behave responsibly. When we give offerings in ritual or in habit, we are establishing a bond of reciprocity that will be returned. When we treat the world around us as alive and active participants in reciprocal exchange, when we know its stories, it becomes enchanted and we can feel it.
This brings us to the end of my talk today, but before we open the floor to questions, I would like to read you Robin Wall Kimmerer’s code of Responsible Harvest from her book ‘Braiding Sweetgrass’ which reminds us of the duties of reciprocal relationships and illustrates responsible behaviour, especially as it pertains to our natural world:
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 a gift.
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.
I send my thanks to you for the gift of your time, patience and attention today. I hope you have enjoyed this and learned something. I am now happy to answer any questions or respond to any comments you may have.