Kadabendag: The Role More‐than‐Human Persons Play in Anishinaabe kikendassowin

Abstract This article develops an Anishinaabe theory of moral education. It examines how Anishinaabe kikendassowin (“Anishinaabe teachings”) serve as a curriculum for forming learnings into right relationship and reciprocal consent with more‐than‐human persons. Focusing on manitokewin (“invoking manitoog”), the manitoog (“spirits; more‐than‐human persons”) most commonly encountered are described as pawakanag (“dream images”). The central question is: What does it mean to educate for right relationship and consent in Anishinaabe thought? I develop a hybrid Anishinaabe ethno‐metaphysics of manito (“spirit; other‐than‐human person”). I argue that land, animals, and other beings are literal persons within a context of stewardship, and that moral and ecological obligations arise from this framework. Anishinaabe kikendassowin teaches that learners must obtain the manito's consent through pawadjigewin (“dreaming”) and by observing the Seven Grandfather Teachings in the Great Law, which forms the curriculum of Anishinaabe moral education. I show how law and transgression organize the Anishinaabe world, where causality is primarily personal and relational. Finally, I examine how performative dreaming enables educational transformation and propose that pawadjigewin, when practiced correctly, models the original act of creation by Kije‐Manito (“Spirit of Mercy”). This account offers a method for relational formation and challenges educational theories that treat land and other animate beings as resources rather than as persons.