About Gift giving and Harvesting in the Garden of the Generations

Text by Teresa Distelberger and Translation by Ute Clemens-Hietsch


Recent panels at Women’s Worlds, Ottawa, July 2011

July 6 – Rematriating Western Ways of Thinking

This session explores the Indigenous concept of Rematriation which refers to reclaiming of ancestral remains, spirituality, culture, knowledge, and resources instead of the more patriarchal-associated Repatriation. Rematriation simply means back to Mother Earth, to our origins, and to life and co-creation rather than Patriarchal destruction and colonization.

July 7 – Shifting the Paradigm to a Maternal Gift Economy

This session looks at how gift-giving an economic mode — practiced in many Indigenous communities as well as in the non indigenous ‘domestic sphere’ — constitutes a deep alternative to patriarchal capitalism. Although the unilateral gift has been considered impossible, it is necessary for mothering as children cannot give back an equivalent of what they receive. Linda Christiansen-Ruffman and Angela Miles were on the panel as well but spoke extemporaneously so unfortunately we do not have their papers.


Conversation about the gift economy in Mali, Africa with Maria Diarra and Coumba Toure’, Claudia von Werlhof, glynis christine, Genevieve Vaughan and others. 2006. (.mp3) – – Click to play Part 1


3rd International Women’s Peace Conference
Listen to The Gift Economy presentations. Click to listen (mp3s)

Part 1 Part 1
Part 2 Part 2
Part 3 Part 3
Part 4 Part 4


Sustainable Cultures of Life and Gift Circulation – Background Paper 9 – by Kaarina Kailo


Photos from The AWID FORUM 2012, ISTANBUL, TURKEY
“The Gift Economy: Feminist Alternative to an Exchange Economy”
April 21, 2012