Background art by Olly Costello

This year’s theme: Cooperation

Every year, the Annual Gathering invites our region to reflect on a theme. The themes from the previous three Gatherings were Formation (2021), Belonging (2022), and Kinship (2023). This year, the theme is Cooperation.  

What is cooperation?

You may remember cooperation as a core value from grade school, or associate it with cooperative businesses models and economics. But cooperation has much greater cultural depth, and profound ecological importance. It’s the most fundamental behavior in nature and an ancient human practice. Cooperation is the brilliant way that our planet—a diverse, interdependent, vibrational, cyclical, beautiful community of life—persists.

The most fundamental, natural practice

Corn, beans, squash — The Iroquois and the Cherokee called corn, bean, and squash “the three sisters” because they nurture each other like family when interplanted together.

“Of all the wise teachers who have come into my life, none are more eloquent than the Three Sisters, who wordlessly in leaf and vine embody the knowledge of relationship. Alone, a bean is just a vine, squash an oversize leaf. Only when standing together with corn does a whole emerge which transcends the individual. The gifts of each are more fully expressed when they are nurtured together than alone. In ripe ears and swelling fruit, they counsel us that all gifts are multiplied in relationship. This is how the world keeps going.” — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass

Cooperation is not unique to humans. It’s not even unique to animals. Cooperation is fundamental to nature, down to the cellular level. All life on Earth is made up of cells that learned to cooperate billions of years ago. Together they formed multicellular organisms, increasing each individual cell’s chances of replication and survival in the process.

From these biological blocks, cooperation prevails at every level of the plant and animal kingdom: Fish help other species of fish rid each other of harmful bacteria. Bats share food to collectively survive. Predators hunt in packs. Ants divide up the chores of foraging, nest construction, defense, and raising offspring—and, incredibly, cooperation at the queen level lowers mortality of the entire colony. Phenomena such as plant eavesdropping, pollinator attraction, predator swamping, and mutualism with shared partners are examples of robust plant cooperation.

Whether between members of the same species, or between individuals of different species, cooperation is a founding principle of diversity and complexity in our world.

For humans, cooperation is ancient and rooted in many cultures

Bayanihan (Tagalog) — being in ‘bayan,’ meaning nation, town, homeland, community. Origins of bayanihan are in building and relocating bahay kubo, traditional homes. Many practices of cooperation across different cultures originated with homebuilding, barn-raising, harvesting, and increasing village resilience in coexistence with nature. (Art by @mattersmost)

Cooperation was our ancestors’ technology for resilience. Practicing group work, pooling resources, sharing responsibility and reward, making collective decisions to benefit both the collective and the individual, and practicing a reciprocal culture within human communities and with the land have been evident in practices and values around the world for thousands of years.

Cooperation in Ancient Cultures and Languages

Below is a partial list of terms and practices of cooperation we’ve come across from diverse cultures. Expand each term for a short description of its meaning and origins.

  • "Everyone/all work together"

  • Family of 600 languages spoken by the Bantu peoples of Central, Southern, Eastern and Southeast Africa

    Literal: “I am because you are”

    Common humanity, oneness, you and me both. Origins are from the phrase "Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu,” which literally means that a person is a person through other people

  • Indigenous language of the coastal tribes of Eastern Tanzania

    Literal: “Familyhood”

    Economic togetherness, self-reliance, community strength and independence

  • Indigenous language of Hawaiʻi

    Literal: “Many hands working together”

    Pooling and sharing of resources, familial and community cooperation—which extends to nature. Also, hands-on healing, which employs the mana (divine energy) of spirit in fire, water, wind, stone, plants, animals and humans

  • Indigenous language of the Andes

    Literal: “Communal work”

    Communal work in the Andes that favors the whole community—often around agriculture and seasonal migration

  • Indigenous language of the Andes

    Literal: “Reciprocity, mutualism, interconnectedness”

    Ongoing cycles of reciprocity to exchange comparable work or goods; since pre-Inka times, ayni helped communities accomplish monumental projects such as water management systems and diversified agriculture to feed millions

  • Indigenous language of Brazil

    Literal: “A meeting place; an opportunity to work together toward a common goal”

    Collective mobilization, a group of neighbors who work together to create something that benefits all

  • Indigenous language of northern islands of the Philippines

    Literal: “Being in bayan” (nation, town, homeland, community)

    Communal unity, work, and cooperation to achieve a goal; origins in building and relocating bahay kubo, traditional homes in rural communities

  • Language of Indonesia

    Literal: “Joint bearing of burdens”

    The idea that society is collective, consensual, and cooperative. Practices include Kerja Bakti, or traditional cooperative labor to clean neighborhoods, build houses and irrigation, clear fields, etc., as well as communal celebration

  • Literal: “Communal work with neighbors”

    Mutual aid to carry out a project, such as building a house or completing harvest, through recruiting family networks and village neighbors

  • Literal: “Circle of people,” “Spirit of cooperation”

    The spirit of a neighborly and connected village; the importance of mutual support, unity, and cooperation within a community

  • Literal: “Communal work”

    Working together to do something that one would not be able to do alone; often to build or maintain homes; origins in Slavic and Baltic peasant villages

  • Literal: “The spirit of will to work together for a better community”

    An organized form of communal, voluntary work. For example, in the spring, when the sun melts away the last bits of snow, Norwegians get together to clean up their neighborhoods

We are losing our cooperative ways

“The fantastic structure fell, leaving grotesque profits and poverty plenty, and starvation, empire, and democracy staring at each other across world depression. And the rebuilding, whether it comes now or a century later, will and must go back to the basic principles of reconstruction in the United States during 1867-1876—land, light, and leading for slaves black brown yellow and white...” — W.E.B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America 1860-1880

The antithesis of cooperation is oppression, and the roots of oppression in America run deep. Beginning with the genocide of Indigenous peoples; then with the enslavement of Black people; followed by outright racist policies, rampant capitalism, and continued imperialism today, this legacy of oppression is centuries long.

In the food system, industrial agriculture, long supply chains, and consolidation of power have been common for 100 years. Today, 20 percent of farms control nearly 70 percent of US farmland, four meatpackers slaughter 85 percent of beef, and four companies control 63 percent of the retail market. This consolidation of power greatly compromises the health and sustainability of people and planet.

As we distance ourselves from cooperation, we lose diversity. We erode democracy. We feed our separation. We press on with unfettered capitalism and extraction, dependent on a system that extinguishes life in all forms as well as the memory of who we are: a collective.

Deep cultural transformation is needed

From our friends at Food Culture Collective. Art by Anjali Kamat

“To ensure that life flourishes on this planet, and to feed our collective liberation, we can’t just focus on piecemeal technical solutions. We have to transform the cultures that feed the systems and relationships that shape our lives. Change the culture to change the systems.” — Food Culture Collective

To return to cooperative systems, we first need deep cultural transformation. We need to change our basic habits and patterns of disconnecting from each other, and reconnect with our relational instincts. We need to embody the ancestral wisdom within us, and give power to our gut knowing. We must lean into our commitment to our shared world and future, before we're able to be successful with cooperation as a tool for economic liberation.

Centering Kumeyaay voices

Cultivating a cooperative food system in any region is not possible without deeply partnering with, learning from, and respecting the original stewards of the land. Living in harmony with nature, honoring ancestral wisdom, and ensuring that wealth and prosperity are shared are all values deeply held and long practiced by Indigenous communities. Excluding Indigenous peoples from leading the way in shaping food systems across the world has cost the world dearly. Taking steps to repair relationships and return power to Tribes in every community—the Kumeyaay, Luiseño/Payómkawichum, Cahuilla, and Cupeño/ Kuupangaxwichem in our region—is essential.⁣⁣

Cooperation as a tool for economic liberation

If we can center cooperation in both our culture and our systems—how we govern; share resources; feed, house, and care for our communities—we can truly reimagine our present and future reality.

We have a model for doing this in relatively modern times: Throughout the twentieth century, Black communities in the South were successful in creating and maintaining cooperatively owned enterprises that not only provided economic stability and independence, but also developed human and social capital. These ventures were seeded by cooperative actions undertaken by their ancestors even while enslaved.

In creative and courageous resistance to total exploitation, Black cooperative ventures included grocery stores, gas stations, credit unions, insurance co-ops, housing co-ops, cooperative farming, and more. Through cooperation, communities also raised money to build schools, hosted study groups and classes, organized for civic action, provided mutual assistance, and taught cooperative economic theory.

In recent generations, other refugee and immigrant communities—impacted by the ripple effects of U.S. militarization in their homelands—have similarly implemented cooperative alternatives for collective survival, including family associations, rotating credit practices, child and elder care, cooperative farming, and more.

In every era of human history, cooperation has emerged as our best collective survival strategy—and it can be more. By divesting from our current imperialist and capitalist systems, and deeply investing in nurturing circular, cooperative systems with the abundance of our communities, we have a chance to forge a new reality.

Cooperation leading us into the future

“The next stage of human economy will parallel what we understand about nature. It will call forth the gifts of each of us; it will emphasize cooperation over competition; it will encourage circulation over hoarding; and it will be cyclical, not linear.” — Charles Eisenstein, Sacred Economics

With ancestral stories of cooperation and ideas for cooperative ways of working together emerging every day, we have a chance to live into community, solidarity, and democracy in a world that bitterly needs it. Within us lies everything we need for the deep, embodied work of collective transformation. Connected, we draw from this well of innate power and knowing.

We look forward to connecting with you more on Cooperation this October!

Learn more about Cooperation