Glossary

The way of living that honors kinship: acting toward our human and non-human relatives with the responsibilities kin owe one another (Harris & Wasilewski, 2004). It is an ethic carried out in practice: in what we take, when and where we take it, what we leave, and what we return. It is learned through story and long attention to place, and it is particular to each place (Salmón, 2000).

The state of being in right relationship, together with what flows from it. The living world gives first, and we receive its gifts with gratitude. Received well, a gift is returned in the receiving itself: the harvest that thins a stand so the rest grow stronger, the picking that lets in light and stirs new shoots. Reciprocity is not a transaction or an exchange of equivalents. It keeps the gift in motion, so that abundance and well-being flow in both directions and the health of each depends on the health of the other (Salmón, 2000; Kimmerer, 2013).

Kinship is the fact that we are related to the living world. Plants, animals, waters, soils, stones, and winds share our origins. Where kinship is recognized, the living world becomes familiar rather than remote, known the way family is known: through generations of story and life in a place (Salmón, 2000).

A state of being, not of having: the full expression of a living being’s nature, within the limits of the kind of being it is. Its meaning reaches back to Aristotle’s eudaimonia, and it applies to living beings, not to people alone. In common use, flourishing has become a synonym for thriving, prospering, and growing, words bound up with money and wealth (Spash, 2026).

KinshipNow uses flourishing in the older sense: people and the living world each fully what they are, in reciprocal relationship. As Kimmerer (2013) writes, “all of our flourishing is mutual.”

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