"Lewis Hyde has made extensive studies of gift economies. He finds that “objects . . . will remain plentiful because they are treated as gifts.” A gift relationship with nature is a “formal give-and-take that acknowledges our participation in, and dependence upon, natural increase. We tend to respond to nature as a part of ourselves, not a stranger or alien available for exploitation. Gift exchange is the commerce of choice, for it is commerce that harmonizes with, or participates in, the process of
[nature’s] increase.” Braiding Sweetgrass, p. 30