Acknowledgement

Gratitude and Reciprocity is an ethic that was brought into our awareness by the Botanist and Indigenous Scholar Robin Wall Kimmerer in her book “Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teaching of Plants”. In it, Kimmerer shares a great deal of insight from Indigenous teachings and the life sciences on how to be in right relationship with land and communities of human and non-human persons. We give thanks for this wisdom and use it as a guide in how to operate our farm and lead our lives as newcomers and settlers on Turtle Island.

We farm and live on land that is covered by the Williams Treaties and is the traditional territory of the Anishinaabe peoples, the Wendat, and the Haudenosaunee confederacy. Like many treaties across Canada, the Williams Treaties of 1923 barred Indigenous communities from freely accessing their lands and leading their traditional ways of life. Through decades of work from First Nations, both federal and provincial government have made small steps to make amends by making formal apologies and financial settlements, but much work still lies ahead towards reconciliation.

We uplift the Dish With One Spoon Wampum Belt treaty that the Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabe peoples have been upholding for centuries. The treaty uses the metaphor of the dish as the land and all the resources that reside within it, and one spoon, representing all the peoples who call these lands home who are called to peacefully and sustainably cooperate.