Traditional Ecological Knowledge × 8 Petals
TEK8 Learning Lotus
Eight petals of Indigenous knowledge — eight dice — eight dimensions of learning. The TEK8 framework anchors every Farmcraft session, every build challenge, every research question.
Developed by tek8.org as a bridge between Traditional Ecological Knowledge and modern STEAM education.
D2 — Coin / Yield
Financial Sovereignty & Cooperative Economics
The coin is the smallest die — the binary. Yes or no. Invest or not. The D2 petal asks: who controls the value of what we produce? In Farmcraft, this is the economics of agriculture — not just growing food, but owning the supply chain from seed to market.
Farmcraft Connections
100-to-400 STEAM Pipeline
Big Mama Healing Teas: $100 in seeds and supplies becomes $400 in finished product sold through community networks. The land literally producing wealth, owned by the community that tends it.
Potlatch Economics
In Coast Salish tradition, wealth is measured not by what you accumulate but by what you give away. The potlatch redistributes surplus. Our Farmcraft farm models this: the yield is shared.
Cooperative Economics (Ujamaa)
Building on Kwanzaa's fourth principle: collective economics. The farm is not a private enterprise — it is a commons. Players share resources, knowledge, and harvests.
Food as Currency
Before coins, food was value. Camas cakes, dried salmon, Salish blankets — these were trade goods with standardized value. Our Minecraft farm includes a trading post demonstrating food-as-currency.
How This Applies to Farmcraft Challenges
Every build challenge has a D2 question: Who benefits from this crop/textile/building? Who owns the means of production? How is the yield distributed?
D4 — Fire / Craft
Cooking, Preserving, Making & Transforming
Fire is the transformative element. The tetrahedron — the simplest 3D shape, and the shape of flame. D4 is about taking raw materials and making them into something new. In the kitchen, in the workshop, in the forge. Fire is the oldest technology.
Farmcraft Connections
Three Sisters Recipes
Succotash, hominy, cornbread, bean stew — the Three Sisters are not just crops, they are a cuisine. Cooking them together creates complete proteins. The recipe is the technology.
Food Preservation
Drying, smoking, fermenting, canning — Indigenous peoples preserved food for winter through sophisticated techniques. Salmon jerky, dried camas cakes, smoked berries. Fire is central to most preservation methods.
Fire Management
Controlled burning was the primary land management tool of Pacific NW peoples. Fire maintained camas prairies, cleared underbrush, promoted berry growth, and recycled nutrients. Fire as agricultural tool.
Fiber Processing
Cedar bark is steamed to soften it. Bent-wood boxes require fire-heated steam. Wool is washed with hot water. The craft of textiles depends on fire's transformative power.
How This Applies to Farmcraft Challenges
Challenge 1: cooking and preserving crops. Challenge 2: processing fiber through heat and craft. Challenge 3: timber working and construction techniques.
D6 — Earth / Garden
Soil Sovereignty, Composting, Permaculture & Seed Saving
The cube — the most stable solid, the shape of foundations. D6 is the earth beneath our feet. In Farmcraft, this is the garden itself: soil health, composting, seed saving, permaculture design. The earth petal asks: what is the condition of the ground we stand on?
Farmcraft Connections
Soil Sovereignty
You cannot have food sovereignty without soil sovereignty. In Tacoma, the ASARCO smelter plume contaminated 1,000 square miles of soil. Growing food here requires understanding what is in the ground — and who put it there.
Composting
Returning nutrients to the soil. Salmon carcasses fertilize the forest. Leaf litter feeds the understory. Compost is the original closed-loop system. Our Minecraft farms include composters and nutrient cycling.
Seed Saving
Seeds are sovereign technology. Saving seeds means independence from seed corporations. Indigenous seed keeping maintained crop diversity for millennia. Our farm includes a seed library/vault.
Permaculture Design
Bill Mollison credited Indigenous land management as the foundation of permaculture. The Three Sisters IS permaculture — a 5,000-year-old design pattern. Polyculture, companion planting, guild building.
Three Sisters Polyculture
Corn, beans, squash — the original companion planting guild. Corn provides structure, beans fix nitrogen, squash shades soil. More nutrition per acre than any monoculture.
How This Applies to Farmcraft Challenges
The D6 petal is the heart of Challenge 1. Every crop question starts with the soil. What grows here? Why? What does the earth need?
D8 — Air / Gather
Foraging, First Foods, Seasonal Rounds & Camas
The octahedron — eight faces, the shape of a diamond turning in the wind. D8 is air, breath, the invisible medium that carries scent, sound, and pollen. The gather petal is about reading the landscape with all senses, not just sight.
Farmcraft Connections
Foraging & First Foods
Before agriculture, there was gathering — but gathering is its own form of cultivation. Coast Salish peoples managed berry fields, camas prairies, and wapato wetlands through fire, weeding, and selective harvest. Gathering is gardening at landscape scale.
Seasonal Rounds
The annual cycle of movement following food resources: spring shoots and greens, summer berries and camas, autumn salmon and roots, winter stored foods and ceremony. The calendar is the menu.
Camas: The Keystone Food
Camas prairies were the breadbaskets of the Pacific NW. Maintained by annual burning, harvested by community labor, processed in communal earth ovens. Camas was so important that its loss triggered wars (the Camas Prairie War of 1878).
Salmon as Gathering
Salmon are not farmed — they are gathered from the river by right and by relationship. Fishing weirs, dip nets, reef nets — these technologies are gathering tools, not farming tools. The salmon choose to come.
How This Applies to Farmcraft Challenges
Gather before you garden. Know what the land already provides before you plant. Every Farmcraft session starts with observation.
D10 — Chaos / Play
Slahal, Game-Based Learning, Minecraft as Play
The decahedron — ten faces, the shape of probability itself. D10 is chaos, chance, the roll of the dice. Play is not the opposite of work; it is where innovation emerges. The chaos petal asks: what happens when you stop planning and start playing?
Farmcraft Connections
Slahal (Bone Game)
The oldest continuously played game in North America. Two teams, two bones (one marked, one plain), songs, and probability. Slahal teaches reading opponents, managing risk, and collective strategy — skills that transfer directly to competitive gaming.
Game-Based Learning
Minecraft IS the game. But within Minecraft, we embed learning through play: survival mode resource management, creative mode design challenges, multiplayer collaboration. The game is the pedagogy.
Minecraft as Play
The free-play session in the Crystal Cycle is sacred time. No goals, no rubrics, no assessment. Just exploration, experimentation, and the joy of building. This is where the best farm designs emerge — from unstructured play.
Probability & Strategy
D10 is the probability die. In Farmcraft, this connects to crop yield probability, weather risk, pest management — the gamble of farming. Every season is a roll of the dice.
How This Applies to Farmcraft Challenges
Farmcraft IS a game. Competitive Minecraft farming is play with stakes. The D10 petal reminds us that learning happens through play, not despite it.
D12 — Ether / Music
Drumming, Songs, Acoustic Ecology & Soundscapes
The dodecahedron — twelve faces, the shape of the universe itself (according to Plato). D12 is ether, the medium through which all vibration travels. Music is the invisible architecture of community. The ether petal asks: what is the soundtrack of this place?
Farmcraft Connections
Drumming & Slahal Songs
In Slahal, the singing team provides the energy. Songs are strategy — they confuse opponents and rally teammates. The drum is the heartbeat of the game. We open and close each session with rhythm.
Acoustic Ecology
What does a healthy farm sound like? Birdsong indicates biodiversity. Silence can mean chemical contamination. Running water means healthy watersheds. Sound is data about ecological health.
Soundscapes in Minecraft
Minecraft has sophisticated ambient audio — different biomes have different soundscapes. Our Crystal Cycle Step 2 (MUSIC) asks players to stop and listen to both the real world and the virtual one.
Songs as Knowledge Systems
Many Indigenous knowledge systems encode information in songs — plant identification, navigation routes, seasonal calendars, medicinal recipes. A song is a database you can carry in your body.
How This Applies to Farmcraft Challenges
Every session opens and closes through D12. Music bookends the cycle. The ether petal holds the space within which all other petals operate.
D20 — Water / Journey
Food Sovereignty, Canoe Culture & Water as Relative
The icosahedron — twenty faces, the shape that most closely approaches a sphere. D20 is water, the element of flow, adaptability, and life itself. In Hawaiian, Wai means water and Waiwai means wealth. Water IS value. The journey petal asks: where does the water flow, and what does it carry?
Farmcraft Connections
Food Sovereignty as Journey
Food sovereignty is not a destination — it is a journey. It means the right of peoples to define their own food systems. For Indigenous communities, this journey includes reclaiming ancestral foods, seeds, and land management practices.
Canoe Culture
The canoe is the vehicle of the journey. Coast Salish canoe culture connected communities across the Salish Sea — for trade, ceremony, warfare, and food gathering. The canoe journey is the original supply chain.
Wai & Waiwai
In Hawaiian, Wai = Water, Waiwai = Wealth/Value. Water is the original currency. Clean water is the foundation of all agriculture. The Puyallup River, fed by Mount Tahoma's glaciers, is the water source that makes our farming possible.
Hydroponics & Water Farming
Growing food in water, without soil. At MADF Rising Roots, hydroponics is the answer to contaminated soil from the Tacoma Smelter Plume. Water farming is both ancient (wapato, rice paddies) and cutting-edge (vertical farms).
Salmon & the Water Cycle
Salmon carry ocean nutrients upstream into the forest. Their bodies feed the trees that shade the streams that cool the water that the next generation of salmon needs. Water, salmon, and forest are one system.
How This Applies to Farmcraft Challenges
D20 is the adventure die — the big roll. In Farmcraft, it represents the bold research question, the unexpected discovery, the journey that changes everything.
D100 — Order / Map
Counter-Mapping, Phenology Wheels, Data Sovereignty & OCAP/CARE
The percentile die — two D10s combined, representing the full spectrum of possibility from 01 to 100. D100 is order, structure, the framework that makes chaos meaningful. The map petal asks: whose story does the map tell?
Farmcraft Connections
Counter-Mapping
Colonial maps erased Indigenous place names, territories, and land use. Counter-mapping restores them. Our Minecraft world is itself a counter-map — it places Indigenous knowledge at the center of the landscape, not the margins.
Phenology Wheels
Circular calendars showing when plants bloom, fruit, and seed; when animals migrate, nest, and hibernate; when rains come and rivers rise. Phenology wheels are Indigenous data visualization — thousands of years of observation encoded in a wheel.
Data Sovereignty (OCAP/CARE)
OCAP: Ownership, Control, Access, Possession — principles for Indigenous data governance. CARE: Collective benefit, Authority to control, Responsibility, Ethics. Our research follows these frameworks: the data about Indigenous crops belongs to Indigenous communities.
Minecraft as Mapping Tool
Our WKit plugin projects real geographic coordinates into Minecraft space. The Mount Tahoma summit is at MC coordinates (0,0). Tacoma is built at its real latitude/longitude. The game world IS a map.
How This Applies to Farmcraft Challenges
D100 is the documentation die. K-W-L charts, build logs, research notes, crop calendars — all the ways we make sense of what we learn and ensure it is not lost.
The Lotus in Action
Every Farmcraft session activates multiple petals simultaneously. The Crystal Cycle rotates through all eight. The build challenges emphasize different combinations. The lotus is not a checklist — it is a living system.