Mission Statement:

The mission of Tender Fire is to strengthen or re-establish relationships between humans and the rest of the living world using collaborative approaches. Our work focuses on solutions to the harm caused by inadequate fire practices and the divergence of our food and natural systems. The business strives to continue learning about and integrating ways to uplift Indigenous voices, practices, and culture from which many of the business values are derived. We strive to center our practice in right perspective, right speech, compassion, and equanimity. It is the mission of the business to expose false scarcity fabricated under patriarchal and capitalist systems by helping collaborating on solutions for people to find nourishment by foraging, resting, and finding connection in novel reciprocal ecosystems that rely on loving relationships to create abundance for all living beings.

• Integrity to basic kindness and compassion in all things

• Openness – with what one is feeling or observing, to learning from others, to being wrong and making mistakes

• Adaptation to best suit the work to the goals

• Dedication to the work

• Devotion to all Life – all living things, their ancestors and descendants, and to the Third Body that is the connected relationship between the whole of all things that ties us all together.

• Compassion

• Equanimity

• Joy

• Recognition of one’s location relative to lineage, place, Country, Cosmos, Community, and Family

• Respect for Traditional Owners, shown in tangible ways, and for Country in ways that Traditional Owners would wish from a new permanent resident here.

These guiding principles provide the framework under which all the work of the business will be accomplished. These are not always tangible guidelines. These principles are nuanced, and at times complex. They embody all the complexities and messiness of real, deep, and nourishing human relationships. This business is built on relationships, and as such, it’s guiding principles focus on how to best be in relationship with others and with the wider living world. These principles have emerged from personal philosophies developed through my own life experience. At their core, these principles conflict with our current economic models of commerce. This business is being birthed into a system in which it does not exactly fit. In this system I recognize the need for monetary income, but ultimately the core principle is one of only having enough to be well and happy, and to gift away any excess to help feed all the other systems that support healthy community. In this, it’s important to always question what we can do without, so that we can give more to community, to loved ones. The question is always “how can I give more?” rather than “how can I get more?”. Patriarchal thinking might skew this to framed “I need to get more so I can give more”, but this is a circular logic that circumvents and undermines the true guiding principal of this business enterprise. The intention in this core principle is to support the growth of entire community and ecological systems together by learning how to find stability in a balance between a monetary economy and a gift economy. This business will not focus on never-ending growth but instead will find a way to form a network of functioning size that is relatively stable, while supporting the growth of other independent enterprises that are likewise working for wholistic good.