Host: Elizabeth Loomer
Blog post: Chris Cantwell

The “One Dish One Spoon” law discussed in the episode, which is sometimes also called the “Dish With One Spoon,” is believed to have guided indigenous understandings of resource use since at least 1142 CE. The phrase evokes an image of multiple people or communities eating out of one dish with one spoon, which sets the expectation that one party will be sure to leave enough food for the other party. This, then, applied to the ways in which communities drew upon the waters and the land.

The ”One Dish One Spoon” philosophy describes both the indigenous practice of resource use, and names specific treaties that tribes signed with each other. In 1701, for example, representatives of several Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee nations met in Montreal to sign a peace treaty that created shared hunting grounds. Indigenous oral traditions relate that a wampum, or bead, belt depicting a single kettle or dish was created to commemorate the treaty. Both the belt and the principles it embodies remain central to native communities today, as we discuss in the episode. The image below, for example, is of a t-shirt one can purchase from the Seneca-Iroquois National Museum in Salamanca, New York.