Imagine an economy in which the currency is not money, but gifts. Imagine appreciating with gratitude and reciprocity what our environments provide. Imagine understanding all that surrounds us as kin, to nurture and be nurtured. How would that change our worlds, our futures?

Such are the questions posed by people like Potawatomi ethnobotanist Robin Wall Kimmerer. In her latest book, The Serviceberry, she recalls teachings from her community, which includes the plants she studies. She notes how these relatives, “instead of changing the land to suit their convenience, they changed themselves”, how “eating with the seasons is a way of honouring abundance, by going to meet it when and where it arrives.”

Her observations—and her invitation to rethink our outlook on, and interactions with, nature—echo the photographic works of Amber Bracken, Stephanie Foden, Alex Jacobs-Blum, and Josée Pedneault. Their projects reflect a multiplicity of ways reciprocal relationships with nature are expressed and the worlds they sustain, from learning wonder and restraint while searching for blueberry patches, to living with and in defense of the unique and diverse landscapes that nourish us. From recognizing a river, such as the Mutuhekau Shipu/Magpie River, to have legal personhood, to acknowledging the depth of our connections to the natural realm, how we are of rivers, lands and skies.