“If you never take the first one, you'll never take the last. ... And oftentimes people will say, like, oh, well, that's fine for Native people because you inherited those ways of being. I'm sorry, but ethics don't come with a chromosome. They come with relationship, attention to your teacher, to the land.”
The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens · October 2026
Nate Hagens asked whether wisdom in Indigenous cultures is tied to restraint. Kimmerer described the "honorable harvest," including the rule never to take the first one you find, as a concrete conservation ethic that anyone can learn by paying attention to the consequences of taking too much.
Transcript
Yes, exactly.
I forgot who told me, but wisdom in many different indigenous cultures is correlated with restraint. There's a high correlation there. Does that rhyme with what you just said?
…as you see them, you can take them. Oh, you pay them the respect by waiting. And it's inherent conservation ethic. If you never take the first one, you'll never take the last. Do we start to understand why 80% of the world's biodiversity is in Indigenous homelands? We do governed by such rules. Yeah. These are very concrete, actionable ethics. And we say then, well, where did they come from? And oftentimes people will say, like, oh, well, that's fine for Native people because you inherited those ways of being. I'm sorry, but ethics don't come with a chromosome. They come with relationship, attention to your teacher, to the land. Where did the honorable harvest come from? Why is it almost universal? It comes from recognizing your mistakes. We're all human people. Haven't we all taken too much at some point? And then we pay attention to the consequences.
And if we look at all the elders of your tribe and others, well, all tribes, we have a pattern recognition of all the historical mistakes. And that is knowledge that's passed down over time. Well, this segues with my work, which is the entire progress illusion isn't because of technology and money…
Absolutely. Absolutely. And, you know, when that notion of learning from your mistakes requires humility. It requires wisdom, right? It requires, or at least is embedded in this kentric worldview that says it's not all about me. It's about all my relatives as well. Those are sacred words. We say…
So before we sat down, you told me that your tribe, Potawatomi, had a prophecy or stories about when there would be, I forgot the words you used, a great simplification and the things that would need to be done, like some advice.
More from The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens
