Becoming Kin: An Indigenous Call to Unforgetting the Past and Reimagining Our Future

by Patty Krawec

The Dish with One Spoon wampum treaty—or One Dish One Spoon, as it is also known—is an agreement between the Haudenosaunee Confederacy and the Anishinaabeg. The bowl represents the land around the St. Lawrence Seaway up into the Ottawa Valley and around both sides of the Great Lakes, reaching into the lands around them. The area described within this treaty is rich in resources. It contains the largest freshwater system on the continent and millions of acres of arable land. Between Lakes Erie and Ontario are micro-climates that permit the growing of grapes and soft fruits well above their typical range. The woodlands sheltered game, and the earliest colonists remarked on it as a paradise. The treaty, in its simplest terms, requires that those who live in this area share the resources. Although we each had our own villages and followed our own ways, we lived together in this area. The dish has enough for everyone so long as you take only what you need. And it has a spoon, not a knife, suggesting peaceable relations. As with any shared pottery, everyone who uses the bowl is responsible for keeping it clean. This idea of shared place and relationships is found in both the Haudenosaunee concept of the “good mind” and the Anishinaabe principle of the “good life”: bimaadiziwin. Both prioritize setting aside ego to focus on relationships and a balanced life.

Dish with one spoon