Our Mission
The mission of Tender Fire is to strengthen relationships between humans and 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.
We strive 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.
We are committed to contributing to ending scarcity fabricated under the patriarchal capitalist system by collaborating on solutions that help people find nourishment through reciprocal connection to ecosystems and building loving relationships that create abundance for all living beings.
Values
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
Devotion to all Life – honouring all living beings, their ancestors and descendants, and the Third Body that connects all things and binds us together.
Equanimity – meeting life's cycles, complexities, and transformations with balance, presence, and care.
Joy – cultivating awe, delight, gratitude and celebration in being alive and together.
Recognition of place and lineage - of one’s location relative to lineage, place, Country, Cosmos, Community, and Family
Respect for Traditional Custodians, demonstrated through tangible actions, and care for Country in ways that honour the wishes and responsibilities articulated by Traditional Custodians for those who come to live here.
Guiding Principles
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 life experience. At their core, these principles conflict with our current economic models of commerce.
This business is birthed into a system in which it does not exactly fit.
In this system we recognise 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?”.
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 holistic good.
