Wampum Belt. Dish with Beaver Tail (Dish with One Spoon)

Wampum belt. Dish with Beaver Tail (Dish with One Spoon). Created by Dylan Smith, 2025.

This wampum belt was made in 2025 by Dylan Smith of Shinnecock heritage (Algonquian-speaking Indigenous nation) using traditional material and techniques. It depicts the centuries-old Haudenosaunee idea of ‘one spoon, one dish’. This means that everyone uses one spoon to take their portion from the dish, representing the equal and peaceful sharing of resources.

Wampum belts have been living records of Indigenous North American histories and knowledge for centuries. The Algonquians and Haudenosaunee have used them primarily to convey certain messages or events, either personal or to the community who owned them in rituals, regalia, ceremony, condolences and diplomacy between them and with European settlers. Made from quahog (mercenaria mercenaria) clams, they are also evidence of the centuries-old exchange of these shells between coastal based Algonquians, such as the Shinnecock, and woodlands-based groups such as the Haudenosaunee. The art of wampum making has been passed down orally through generations to this day.

Wampum belt patterns contain coded knowledge. These can be ‘read’ by people of the culture that produced them. With the European colonisation of North America and later the founding of the US, historic wampum belts were removed from their original societies and entered European and US museum collections which undermined their meanings.