An agreement grounded in Indigenous legal traditions, the Dish with One Spoon is one of several Wampum that guides the relationship between the Anishinaabek and Haudenosaunee Confederacy. Today it is held up by Indigenous Peoples in Toronto as a peace agreement between the Anishinaabek and Haudenosaunee. The Dish with One Spoon is also widely cited (and admired) for the reciprocal responsibilities with all of creation that it foregrounds, a reading that draws on the more general metaphor of the land as a dish to be shared and cared for to ensure ongoing sustenance and life – principles that lie at the heart of Haudenosaunee, Anishinaabe and other Indigenous legal traditions.
SHARED DISH
(Or kettle or bowl)
Peaceful relations
A shared dish is a metaphor used widely in Indigenous diplomacy across the Great Lakes region and eastern North America. It appears in treaty relationships and alliances in many Indigenous contexts, including the Great Law of Peace, which unites the nations of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy through the teachings of their Peacemaker.
Once the Five Nations agreed to unite, the Roianeson [Hereditary Chiefs] sat in a circle to listen to the Peacemaker. The Peacemaker expressed this principle by passing around a bowl of beaver tail, a delicacy among the People of the Longhouse. As the leaders sat in this circle of fifty, the Roianeson took only what they needed, knowing the bowl had to complete its circle.
Keith Jameson
What is the Dish with One Spoon?
The dish can symbolize the bounty of the earth that feeds and nourishes all and the care, sharing, and cooperation necessary to ensure life continues. This is expressed in agreements to hunt together or share food resources, such as was related by Anishinaabe Wampum Keeper Miskwaake/Yellowhead in relation to fishing at Mnjikaning:
At the Narrows our fathers placed a dish with ladles around it, and a ladle for the Six Nations, who said to the Ojibways that the dish or bowl should never be emptied.
A shared meal was an embodied act involved in peacemaking.
Activity: Before All Else
Make your own Before All Else statement
This set of images below was generated in Talking Treaties workshops while listening to oral narratives and from responses to the question, What do you take into consideration before all else?
We’ll be using these image sets to respond to this guide with fewer words. If you can’t find an image you like to suit your idea, go ahead and generate your own.
Divide a page into four portions of equal size. Copy one image from the image set into each quadrant to represent your response to each of the following four prompts:
a physical element in the world that you appreciate
a quality you appreciate in others
a quality you appreciate in yourself
a feeling after making a good choice.
By your four selected images, add the following text prompts:
Consider the . . .
When we . . .
I’ll always . . .
To ensure we . . .
Now interpret the images by turning them into short statements, as in the examples below. How does it feel to say these words aloud? What does making an abstract commitment mean to you? What are the commitments we can make as individuals to the future?
The following are poems generated through a workshop with Toronto Biennial of Art staff in 2018:
Consider the foundations of building not as architecture but community
When we are fair and just. A balance.
I will always consider the strength of connections
To ensure we recentre our relationship to land as its own entity
Consider the space we live in and how our actions can create positive impact and change
When we challenge ourselves to think differently and respect differences we create greater unity and acceptance.
I’ll always advocate for love and togetherness
To ensure we work together in respect and unity
Consider the origin of the other when we ignite the flame and stoke the fire
I’ll always persevere and surprise
To ensure we collaborate, share, nourish, heal and commune
Consider the consistency of the universe
When we rely on others
I’ll always be fair to ensure we feel free
Consider our surrounding in everything we do
When we nurture and comfort
I’ll always connect completely and actively with good intentions to ensure we act with our truths
Consider the effects of one thing leaving causing another effect
When we reach across and unite
I’ll always keep true to self to ensure we take care of each other
Activity: How to Share Stuff
Take two blank sheets of paper. Divide one page into four long columns. Label the headings of each column as follows:
Shared Stuff
Take Only What You Need
Keep It Clean
Leave Some for the Future
Fill the “Shared Stuff” column with words or symbols that represent goods in life that sustain us, including common spaces and resources – for example, rare books, bike shares, wild berries, public parks, metals, seafood, office kitchens, an Elder’s time, a campground, waterfront access, intergenerational wealth, food banks.
Think up ways to apply each of the three teachings (the headings for columns two, three, and four) to each item in the “Shared Stuff” column. Explore these concepts as though you were making policies to regulate physical and conceptual commodities. Make notes in text or symbols for each item. Configure the second page into three sections in any way you wish. Each section corresponds to one of the three teachings: “Take only what you need,” “Keep it clean,” and “Leave some for the future.”
Choose one item from the Shared Stuff column to focus on in the three sections. Rearticulate the item’s management plan through symbols and illustrations, creating a step-by-step how-to visual guide for sharing. Title it. Put it somewhere you will notice it.
The first page is your working document, your source for subsequent rearticulations. Keep it for the future.
Activity (VIDEO): Dish Dances Movement Education
Explore the symbols, embodied gestures, and land-based knowledges held in the Dish With One Spoon agreement.
Activity
Dish Dance 1
Activity
Dish Dance 2
Activity
Dish Dance 3
Activity
Dish Dance 4
MINO BIMAADIZIWIN
Every Indigenous nation has its own language to describe the set of lifeways to which its citizens adhere to live ethically, as cocreative beings who support life even as their lives are supported within the creation. Mino Bimaadiziwin is the Anishinaabe term for this concept. In some dialects, you may see it expressed as bemodezewan,pimaadisiiwin, and so on. Living a “good life” is not understood by Indigenous People as a life replete with ease, excess, and luxury, as it is for most people in the developed world. Rather, Mino Bimaadiziwin describes a way of living well, so that all life forms within creation also live –and live well.
Here in Toronto, a rich biota/natural world abounding with medicines and teeming with life was consciously sustained by the various steward nations through practices that included polyculture, mindful hunting and harvesting, ceremonial observance, and controlled burns. By these means, these nations maintained the health of this land, ensuring that it remained neepawaa – a place of plenty – for thousands of years.
Activity: How to Walk Softly and Live Well
Consider Mino Bimaadiziwin, Living Well within Creation
We invite you to reflect upon what is still required to walk softly and live well. As you travel through High Park -or elsewhere - reflecting on good stewardship practices, you may also want to reflect on sacred spaces (and the respect they are owed) and issues of consent: How do you approach the land? How do you communicate your essence and intentions? How do you listen for consent? How do you know if or when consent has been granted?
Activity: Imagine Mino Bimaadziwin, the Good Life
Imagine a life infused with Mino Bimaadziwin
Create a fictional daily schedule that includes only ideal activities. Now reflect on your current daily schedule. Where, if anywhere, do you see echoes of these desires in play? Where can you make room for more? Make a to-do list of the activities in point form, including thoughts and considerations you hope to make more room for.
As a group, come into a standing circle. Swap your writing with someone else’s close by. Swap again with someone farther away. Repeat this swapping until you do not know who has your writing. Read through the list you now have in hand. If it is long, select a few points to share with the group.
A participant will read a point. If someone feels one of their points connects to this point, they speak it aloud. Only one voice speaks at a time. You can repeat your statement if it connects to another’s statement. Continues until most of the statements have been connected.
Activity: Sacred Spaces and Treaties
Are there treaties with the other-than-human world we should be aware of? Are there places that are not human territory?
Consider maintaining, protecting, and stewarding a space that is not for anyone’s material or economic use – that is, not for human comfort, gratification, profit, or habitation.
What value do you perceive in those things (items, land, resources, etc.) being left to themselves?
Can Torontonians get on board with having places free of humans?
What are some radical thoughts for land use and non-use you might have?
What can supreme protection and respect for sacred spaces mean?
How might you utilize or offer your land to nonhuman relations?
