For The Wild - ROWEN M WHITE on Seed Rematriation and Fertile Resistance ⧸193

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00:00:27.060 Hey, for the wild community, Ayanna here. Before we begin this episode, I want to take a moment

00:00:34.800 to thank our friends at Mountain Rose Herbs for supporting this podcast. Some of you may know that

00:00:40.480 my journey with the show, which used to be called Unlearn and Rewild, started with my awakening to

00:00:46.140 the plant world through herbalism and my first plant teacher, the late Cascade Anderson Geller.

00:00:52.380 So it feels close to my heart that seven years later, Mountain Rose is by our side.

00:00:58.280 Mountain Rose Herbs offers high-quality, organic, and sustainably harvested herbs, spices, teas, essential oils, and botanical goods.

00:01:07.360 Beginning in 1987, Mountain Rose Herbs made it their mission to provide plant lovers with exceptional organic botanicals harvested with the utmost respect for the places they grow and the people who grow them.

00:01:20.240 Mountain Rose Herbs is generously offering For the Wild listeners 10% off of their next purchase

00:01:26.340 by using discount code WILD10 at checkout. You can learn about Mountain Rose Herbs and

00:01:32.480 their offerings at mountainroseherbs.com. Welcome to For the Wild podcast. I'm Ayanna

00:01:45.400 Young. Today, we're joined by Rowan White, a seed keeper farmer from the Mohawk community

00:01:51.740 of Akwesasne, and a passionate activist for indigenous seed and food sovereignty.

00:01:58.200 Rowan is the educational director and lead mentor of Sierra Seeds, an innovative land-based

00:02:04.740 educational organization located in Nevada City, California. She is the national program

00:02:10.500 coordinator for the Indigenous Seed Keeper Network, which is an initiative of the Native

00:02:15.040 American Food Sovereignty Alliance, a non-profit organization aimed at leveraging resources to

00:02:20.760 support tribal food sovereignty projects. Rowan is also the chair of the board of directors of

00:02:26.660 Seed Savers Exchange, the largest public access seed bank in North America. Follow her journeys

00:02:33.440 at sierraseeds.org. Well, welcome to the show, Rowan. I am so grateful for this time that we

00:02:44.900 have together to explore the many threads you're weaving through this beautiful work of seed

00:02:49.840 sovereignty. And like I mentioned earlier, the little time I was able to spend with you and

00:02:55.400 your family on your farm has stuck with me. And I am just so personally excited to connect with

00:03:03.400 you today. So thank you so much for being with us. Oh, thank you. Thank you for the invitation.

00:03:09.080 Well, before we dig into your initiatives with Sierra Seeds and Indigenous Seed Keeper

00:03:16.200 Network, I'd like to just offer you the space to share a bit about your background and where

00:03:22.180 you're coming from today. And what is the winding path that initially sparked your interest in

00:03:27.920 cultivating new and ancient relationships with native seeds? Yeah, it's been a long and beautifully

00:03:34.800 winding road that the seed path has offered me. I grew up in a multitude of places. As you mentioned

00:03:41.340 before, I'm Mohawk. My parents are from a place called Akwesasne, which is right on the New York

00:03:46.800 Canadian border. Our family was deeply impacted by all of the aspects of colonization and

00:03:52.440 acculturation in the last century. And so I grew up not really deeply connected to the land or

00:03:58.520 to food and seeds so much. But I did hear great and beautiful stories of, in particular,

00:04:04.900 my great grandparents, Rina and Alex White. And then also on the other side, a beautiful woman

00:04:11.160 named Anna Jacobs, who used to grow these big legendary gardens that would feed their people 1.00

00:04:15.940 and their families. But I grew up always with an affinity for being outside, for having my hands

00:04:21.220 and the earth, for doing things out in the woods. And I found myself at 17. I had left home and I

00:04:29.720 had found myself on an organic farm that was associated with the college that I was attending

00:04:34.800 in Western Massachusetts. And that was when my apprenticeship began. That was when the seeds

00:04:41.660 really spoke to me. I have a very visceral memory of being in the greenhouse and for the first time

00:04:50.020 watching seeds that my hands had planted sprout into these beautiful double leaves and then grow

00:04:55.960 into these vibrant plants. And my mentor, Nancy, at the time, she had witnessed really my joy and

00:05:02.940 my enthusiasm and my wonder and had entrusted me with a really beautiful project, which a previous

00:05:09.400 intern and student had initiated on the farm, which was this heirloom tomato project where there

00:05:15.040 were over 50 different heirloom tomatoes being grown on the farm. And she showed me the seed

00:05:21.580 catalogs with all these pictures of tomatoes that were not only just round and red, which is what I

00:05:27.520 had grown up eating, but tomatoes that were the full spectrum and prism of the rainbow in all

00:05:33.600 shapes and sizes. And I remember very specifically being that 17-year-old young woman, really

00:05:41.280 searching for a sense of purpose, for a sense of place, reading through those stories and

00:05:46.120 making that connection 23 years ago, that not only did seeds have a particular place of origin,

00:05:55.160 a lineage, a legacy of origin, but that there was this intimate and beautiful and diverse and

00:06:02.220 magical connection that seeds had with people, that people and seeds were intimately in relationship

00:06:08.860 for many, many, many generations.

00:06:12.180 And as a Mohawk woman,

00:06:13.780 I remember sitting there on this dusty farmhouse floor

00:06:16.400 in New England and looking at all these packs of tomato seeds

00:06:20.320 and these little fuzzy time capsules

00:06:22.360 and thinking as a Mohawk woman,

00:06:26.380 what were the seeds and foods that fed my ancestors?

00:06:29.540 It was a cornerstone moment in my life

00:06:31.360 of really having that epiphany

00:06:33.500 and grappling, I think, with simultaneously

00:06:37.060 the joy and wonder of agricultural biodiversity and the legacy of plants and humans co-creating

00:06:45.280 in the agricultural realms. So there was this joy on one hand, and then there was this

00:06:49.820 spring of grief and sadness and anger and all sorts of other emotions of being a young

00:06:56.500 indigenous woman who had no understanding and no relationship to the foods that really were

00:07:02.980 our birthright that were promised to us in so many ways through our cultural teaching 0.55

00:07:08.500 that I had somehow lost connection with that.

00:07:11.640 And so it really opened up a wellspring of that spectrum of emotion from joy to grief

00:07:17.080 and really led me again on this path for 23 years in a continual relationship with that

00:07:24.640 inquiry of who were the foods and seeds that fed my ancestors and how can I be in right

00:07:29.680 relationship to them and rehydrate these original agreements that I have with these ancestral seeds

00:07:35.740 so that way I will have something of meaning and substance to hand down to my children and be a good

00:07:42.720 responsible descendant in that way. I've grown a garden every season for 23 years now and I always

00:07:50.360 tell people that I apprenticed myself to the seeds and I apprenticed myself to the seasonal cycles

00:07:56.220 And while I've been growing a garden for over two decades, I feel like the garden really

00:08:02.220 has been growing me as a woman and took me through a very unconventional rites of passage

00:08:08.140 into understanding who I am as an Indigenous woman in this modern time.

00:08:14.240 Rowan, I have chills as you've been transporting us with you back to your younger self, finding

00:08:22.880 purpose with the seeds and your stories. Thank you so much for sharing some of those intimate

00:08:30.220 moments of your past. And I was imagining your garden while you were speaking, and I am happy

00:08:36.460 that we were able to introduce this conversation like that. So thank you so much. Now, since the

00:08:43.660 birth of agriculture on Turtle Island, it seems that seeds have been freely passed down through

00:08:49.800 the hands of the generations, accompanied by ceremony and prayer and reverent seed cultures

00:08:55.800 and sustainable food-growing practices. And then colonization and the forced assimilation in the

00:09:03.580 U.S. has waged a war against these traditional foodways through violent means, such as scorched

00:09:09.480 earth policies, the capitalist culture of severance, and a forced extractive agricultural

00:09:15.660 model. With these eras of disruption in mind, how can we understand the seeds that sustain us today

00:09:22.920 as sacred gifts from Indigenous and ancestral seed keepers? I think it's important to remember

00:09:29.260 that each one of us, and I say this often, and I have had it said to me often by elders,

00:09:35.600 is that each one of us descends from people who have been in an intimate and reciprocal

00:09:41.420 relationship with plants and seeds since the dawning of time. I descend from people who

00:09:48.000 speak very beautifully and lovingly of our sustainers, our original sustainers, our corn

00:09:55.180 and beans and squash and a multitude of other plants and seeds that have been with us since

00:10:00.160 our creation story and have a very beautiful place in our cosmology. What's important to

00:10:05.600 remember, and I think it harkens back to when I had my aha moments of reintroducing myself to seed

00:10:11.660 is that each one of us has these agreements, these covenants, the sacred marriage, so to speak,

00:10:18.780 that our ancestors came into agreement with a long, long time ago. And those agreements

00:10:24.080 are written in our blood and our bones. And they do run like wild rivers and they

00:10:29.060 awaken and rehydrate in some unlikely places. And so I think what's beautiful now is that we're at

00:10:37.260 a time when we are coming into a great awakening of not only the legacy that Indigenous peoples

00:10:44.200 have created here on Turtle Island, the beautiful tapestry of kinship routes and trade routes and

00:10:51.880 traditional foodways. And we see that awakening with the food sovereignty movement and people

00:10:56.620 understanding that the dismantling of the food system was a very specific and manufactured way

00:11:02.760 to try and disempower the people. Because our understanding of who we are and where we draw

00:11:08.020 our strengths and our spiritual power, it comes from the land underneath our feet. And it comes

00:11:12.820 from the foods that grow within that land. And those foods and those medicines, they go into

00:11:17.620 our body and inform us and animate us in a way that allows us to be our true selves. And the

00:11:24.460 powers that be, whether it was 300 years ago during the Revolutionary War when my people,

00:11:31.680 our cornfields, were being burnt very purposefully to disempower our Haudenosaunee Confederacy as it

00:11:38.140 related to the history and the dynamics in the Revolutionary War, or whether it's today with

00:11:43.720 inequities that we see in the food system that are still present today that make access to healthy

00:11:49.200 traditional foods difficult for many Native and communities of color. And so I think we are seeing

00:11:56.700 a great awakening right now of people recognizing that revitalizing food and revitalizing our

00:12:03.320 relationship to seed and to land is an integral part of the re-indigenizing that's happening.

00:12:09.760 And it also is an inextricable part of vibrant cultural revitalization. Food and seed and land

00:12:18.180 are at the center of the wellspring of culture.

00:12:21.080 It's our relationship to the land and to our foods

00:12:24.300 and to nourishing ourselves and sheltering ourselves

00:12:27.200 as a people that have created the multitudes

00:12:31.180 of different beautiful cultures

00:12:32.540 that exist here on Turtle Island and beyond.

00:12:35.440 And so if we are moving forward with a vision

00:12:38.360 of health and sustainability and sovereignty

00:12:41.180 and agency within our indigenous communities,

00:12:44.700 I see no better path than to go back to these roots, go back to the relationship to our seeds and to our food and to reinvigorate those.

00:12:55.580 And I think that we've been seeing also a number of people and organizations and entities that are outside of our Native communities who really want to support and practice allyship in this movement towards reconciliation, reparations and rematriation towards Indigenous peoples.

00:13:14.700 being able to be in relationship again with our original earth with our motherland

00:13:21.560 in a piece on your blog seed songs you share quote as it has been told to me by my elders

00:13:30.260 the seeds are a reflection of the people when the seeds are weak and struggling it means our

00:13:36.420 communities and nations and people are struggling and when our seeds are strong it means our

00:13:41.300 nations and communities and people are strong and in good health, end quote. Yeah. And across the

00:13:46.980 so-called US, we know that seeds are struggling from the growing commodification and privatization

00:13:54.360 of seeds, the industry now controlled by just four corporations to genetic erosion and biodiversity

00:14:00.300 loss. And the American food landscape is increasingly dominated by hybrid and genetically

00:14:06.160 engineered seeds. So I'm thinking back to this principle that seeds are a reflection of people

00:14:12.060 and wondering what messages or cultural stories we're being asked to hear in the seeds we sow

00:14:17.620 today. Yeah, it's a powerful statement. I think about it a lot. I have a lot of wise elders and

00:14:23.500 mentors who continue to share that message with me and it anchors me back to the work time and

00:14:29.740 time again. We all descend from people who have had at one point a culture of belonging that

00:14:35.280 surrounds the way in which we nourish ourselves. There's this myth of self-sufficiency or the

00:14:41.320 homestead that really, I think, is perpetuated even within organic gardening circles that

00:14:47.280 one person can live on 40 acres and be able to sustain themselves. But it really does come back

00:14:53.240 to, in order to feed and nourish ourselves, it relies on us working collaboratively and

00:14:58.480 cooperatively in community, not only at the local level, but at the regional level.

00:15:03.480 And when we talk about seeds being a reflection of the people, it is the fact that our life is intimately intertwined with their well-being.

00:15:11.620 That goes back again to this concept of original agreements that we agreed to take care of the seeds and the seeds agreed to take care of us.

00:15:18.500 And we came into this beautifully reciprocal relationship for a long time.

00:15:23.240 And unfortunately, in the modern times, whether it's by violence or by choice, many humans have abdicated their responsibility and their relationship to seeds, to other entities, including corporations and larger industrial food chains.

00:15:40.160 And I think we're at a time right now where this collective amnesia, this collective forgetting of those agreements has reared itself into a system of nourishment that at its core is fundamentally broken, is fundamentally doing quite the opposite of nourishment.

00:15:58.520 It's actually poisoning our people.

00:16:00.620 It's poisoning the land.

00:16:02.940 And if you look at the landscape of seed in this country, it's increasingly more centralized,

00:16:07.840 increasingly more privatized.

00:16:10.700 We have to remember that even 150 years ago, there was no such thing as a seed company.

00:16:14.920 It was all seeds being handed down from generation to generation and village to village by people

00:16:20.220 just like you and me.

00:16:22.420 And so now we see a landscape where most farms in North America, and honestly, on the

00:16:28.500 globe, no longer practice seed stewardship as a part of a whole farm landscape and an

00:16:33.360 ecology.

00:16:34.660 And that creates an incredible vulnerability.

00:16:37.660 And right now, especially with the work that we're doing with food sovereignty, with

00:16:42.820 indigenous communities, especially in light of what's happening right now with the pandemic

00:16:47.740 and some of the supply chain issues that are happening in food and agriculture, is that

00:16:53.140 many of the seed companies are draining under the increased demand as people realize that,

00:16:59.400 oh, if we're not going to be able to get food from the stores in the way that we've had before,

00:17:03.600 maybe we need to start growing a garden. And that centralized infrastructure is draining

00:17:08.420 and buckling under the demand of the people because people have not been stewarding and

00:17:13.720 caring for seeds at the local and village level for quite a number of decades in many instances.

00:17:19.300 and so the result of that is that you have seeds that are a reflection of the people right now

00:17:26.160 in the united states in particular we have a lot of human beings who have no real deep inborn sense

00:17:33.300 of who they are as people they have a confusion about who they are this idea of a melting pot has

00:17:38.980 turned into people who yearn for a culture of belonging and a culture of connection and don't

00:17:43.420 have that. So in turn, we've created an agricultural system that mimics that, that

00:17:48.780 reflects that. If you drive across the heartland of the United States, which I've done a number of

00:17:53.520 times, you see beautiful corn mothers growing across the hills and valleys of the heartland

00:17:59.080 of what used to be prairie. And those corn mothers are increasingly hybridized and also

00:18:05.560 genetically modified. So those seeds are actually a reflection of the people in this country. And

00:18:10.820 What I say is that they're brokenhearted people planting brokenhearted seeds because they're planting seeds that look like them.

00:18:18.640 They're seeds that are a mix of tattered origins, kind of cut and spliced together, that don't have a real taproot of understanding of legacy and lineage.

00:18:27.420 And so for me, I'm always guided by the seeds in what I call seed time, in this bigger, longer game vision of the work of now, which will feed the imagination of what's possible in the future, is that we need to grow and encourage and empower the next generation of humans who love seeds as mother and love seeds as relatives, as our ancestors did.

00:18:55.120 And when we begin to cultivate that culture of reverence, where people understand the

00:19:01.520 sanctity and reverence of a handful of seeds, then I just feel like all of the other things

00:19:07.040 that we worry about now with the genetic modification and the glyphosate poisoning of

00:19:12.040 the earth, those things will be composted.

00:19:14.540 They'll be composted into the past.

00:19:16.640 They'll no longer be relevant.

00:19:18.140 And that's my approach.

00:19:19.380 And that's many of our approach in our indigenous communities is to cultivate that relationship

00:19:24.480 and that sense of connectivity to the seeds

00:19:26.920 and remind people that everyone is intimately connected to a seed.

00:19:31.100 For all of us who eat, we're all in relationship to seed

00:19:34.180 and it's whether we choose to abdicate that relationship to somebody else

00:19:38.100 or whether we choose to reclaim it and to embody it

00:19:41.260 and to re-engage it in ways that can nourish those beyond our time

00:19:46.060 in ways that we all know in our hearts is possible.

00:19:54.480 Your skin

00:19:56.780 And your sweetness

00:20:00.700 Pulls me in

00:20:06.480 Silken limbs around my waist

00:20:13.680 Welcome to this tender place

00:20:17.480 Your sweetness

00:20:19.480 Washing over me

00:20:22.680 Mesmerizing little tree 1.00

00:20:27.520 Shade your skin 0.98

00:20:34.580 And your sweetness 1.00

00:20:38.720 Booze me in

00:20:43.460 You've scattered branches on the ground 1.00

00:20:50.580 Thank you for sharing all that and I was imagining those corn mothers that I've also seen when

00:21:02.600 traversing Turtle Island and I just wanted to bring up this statistic that I was reading that

00:21:08.940 in 2019 genetically engineered seed was planted on 92 percent of U.S. corn acres and 98 percent of

00:21:17.720 U.S. cotton acres and 94% of U.S. soybean acres. So that is really staggering to see just how much

00:21:26.500 of these genetically engineered seed are being utilized and how much land is being given to them

00:21:33.920 and I also was reading that over the past century the U.S. has lost about 93% of its food seed

00:21:40.580 variety. Now that might be kind of hard to quantify but just seeing that and I'm sure it's something

00:21:46.440 close to that. It's really a wake-up call for us that this is huge. This is not a small issue.

00:21:53.320 This is something that affects all of us. So I was pretty shocked by that.

00:21:58.740 I would love to offer something because, you know, it's those statistics that I began to learn about

00:22:03.380 in my initial journey that really fueled the fire of sadness and rage and confusion about where we

00:22:10.100 had gone as a nation, as individual communities. And what I've learned, and I'm still just a

00:22:16.440 humble student of the seeds and of the corn herself, is that when we begin to put our energy

00:22:23.020 back towards these seeds and these relationships, that there's a cultural dimension of biodiversity

00:22:28.620 that exists, and it's a synergy between humans and plants. And so when we as humans begin to

00:22:34.660 tune our hearts and our minds back towards these relationships with food and seed and land,

00:22:39.980 that that spectrum of diversity will return again. And I've seen it happen. I've seen it

00:22:45.060 happen in tribal communities where certain varieties have been lost. But when other varieties

00:22:51.400 of corn were grown out in substantial and bigger quantities, in bigger acreage, as they began to

00:22:57.820 revitalize the seeds and grow them out, that certain sacred varieties actually re-emerged

00:23:03.420 from other varieties. So there's this beautiful wellspring of diversity that's always wanting to

00:23:10.360 show her face and show up on the earth, but it requires a dynamic interface with humans who see

00:23:16.600 seed stewardship as just an integral part of day in and day out, life, season after season.

00:23:22.380 And really it is that wellspring of diversity that will be our biggest ally in the face of

00:23:29.520 climate change. When we begin to see the wealth that seeds hold and the wealth encoded in the

00:23:36.040 relationships that we have to those seeds and the relationship that those seeds have to the

00:23:40.020 changing seasons year in, year out, that is going to help us ride through this storm of

00:23:46.780 climate change and give us the resilience that's needed. Because plants are so much more adaptive

00:23:52.560 than we are as humans, they adapt so much more quickly to the changing world that we live in.

00:23:58.640 So when we ally with them, and again, not only just tend and steward them, but tune our hearts

00:24:03.960 and our minds back to that seed time, to that understanding of this intergenerational legacy

00:24:09.480 work. That's going to be our greatest gift in the years ahead. And part of this pandemic and what

00:24:15.120 we're experiencing right now is climate chaos meeting late stage capitalism. And what are we

00:24:20.760 seeing is that we're seeing people remembering that seeds are vitally important and that if we

00:24:25.720 don't have seeds and gardens and a means to nourish ourselves in these ways, then times are going to

00:24:30.300 be very difficult ahead. So this is just another reseeding, I think, that is being offered in these

00:24:36.800 times for people to really recognize what's most important thank you for that balm for the heart

00:24:44.500 the brokenheartedness of i'm sure all of us hearing what's happened that's really yeah we

00:24:51.640 got to keep chugging on and knowing that revitalization is possible and speaking of

00:24:58.660 i'd like to turn to the powerful seed revitalization work you're doing with sierra seeds

00:25:04.720 and Indigenous Seed Keeper Network and other communities across the country to return seeds

00:25:10.200 to their original keepers and ancestral lands. So I'd love to hear a story of a seed restoration

00:25:16.540 initiative and how you support the work of reweaving seed back into cultural context

00:25:23.400 and tribal communities of origin, and if there are any particular protocols for this delicate,

00:25:28.940 nuanced process. Yeah, absolutely. Well, it's bridging work, right? This is intercultural work.

00:25:36.040 And part of my fascination with this growing edge of our collective work is that it grants us the

00:25:42.480 opportunity to be able to look back in time and face the adversities and the pain and the trauma

00:25:48.780 of colonization and acculturation and displacement and relocation and the traumas between different

00:25:55.340 groups of people, it gives us a really beautiful shade tree to sit under and to look at what

00:26:02.880 reconciliation and reparations can be with the seeds and the food guiding us. As a part of

00:26:08.680 Indigenous Seedkeepers Network and also my work with Sierra Seeds, we've been engaging this body

00:26:13.560 of work that we're calling rematriation. Many of you may be familiar with the idea of repatriation,

00:26:19.020 which is returning items of significance back to communities of origin, whether they be

00:26:24.960 funerary objects or cultural objects that have been taken oftentimes by violent thefts or force

00:26:31.480 and returned back. So that's been a movement that's been happening not only on Turtle Island,

00:26:36.220 but globally as part of some of the reconciliation of harms of colonization. But we've made a spin

00:26:43.520 on the word, deeply inspired by the work of Martin Praktel and his work on The Unlikely

00:26:47.860 Peace at Kuchimaquik, where he really looks at this idea of rematriation as returning things back

00:26:53.520 to the mother, returning these seeds back to their motherland, their communities of

00:26:59.640 origin, and recognizing that many tribal communities across Turtle Island, the role and responsibility

00:27:06.780 of caring for the seeds, caring for the ceremonies and songs that surround our seeds, are carried

00:27:12.560 by the women, because we're the ones who, from our hands and wounds, life grows.

00:27:16.920 And so we've looked at, in our work with Indigenous communities, in listening sessions

00:27:21.620 and conversations with them around building more capacity around food sovereignty and then in

00:27:27.980 essence seed sovereignty. We've heard a lot of needs for access to culturally significant seeds

00:27:34.620 again. When people were displaced or moved or you know all of the impacts of colonization many people

00:27:41.060 were disconnected from the land and from the seed varieties that sustained them and seeds always

00:27:47.280 have been moving and migrating. And for many reasons, seeds that are of indigenous origin

00:27:52.140 have found themselves in seed banks and universities and museums and other institutions

00:27:57.420 where they're away from their community of origin. I began to do some work alongside many of my

00:28:04.580 colleagues and compadres to begin to build bridges and build relationships of trust with these

00:28:10.400 institutions and Indigenous communities and begin to do the work, the very tender and nuanced work

00:28:17.960 of bringing these seeds back home to the people who really want to be in relationship with them.

00:28:24.320 The seeds aren't meant to be put onto a refrigerator seed vault in Iowa or in Michigan

00:28:30.820 or in Chicago or in the various places where they've ended up. We see them as living,

00:28:36.700 breathing relatives and that they are a vibrant part of our community. And so we've been taking

00:28:41.440 the steps to begin to build those relationships, to bring those seeds home. And we've been working

00:28:46.840 largely with Seed Savers Exchange, which is a large public access seed bank, but we've also

00:28:51.160 been working with the Field Museum, a number of universities, and the USDA Seed Bank to begin

00:28:56.780 this beautiful process. And we've had dozens upon dozens of varieties that have made their way home.

00:29:03.460 These homecomings have been incredibly healing. They've been emotional. Recall two Octobers ago, we were up in Taos Pueblo and we had found this Taos squash that had been somehow passed from hand to hand away from the community and had been lost to the community for quite a number of decades.

00:29:24.080 We were able to bring home a big old squash and a big sack of seeds from the Seed Savers Exchange vault there. And we had a ceremony under the mountains there at the historic Taos Pueblo. And the elders and the farmers there welcomed that squash home like a baby.

00:29:41.260 It was really emotional. It was incredibly touching to witness people receiving not just ancestral remains that had maybe been interned or dug up, but a living, breathing relative that could reconnect them and nourish their people from this moment forward.

00:29:56.160 And we've seen countless times where seeds have this speckled corn of the Ho-Chunk people in Wisconsin was returned back to the tribe of origin, back into seed keepers hands in loving ways and ways that we're having to come up with new ceremonies to welcome these seeds home and ways that we're, again, rehydrating these responsibilities of reenlivening people's understanding of what it means to be Indigenous means that we take care of our relatives that have been taking care of us.

00:30:26.160 since time immemorial. So we're actually working on a short documentary in collaboration with the

00:30:31.600 Cultural Conservancy to really document and share these stories of hope and resilience in this time.

00:30:37.320 And then we're also making available a paired action guide that will guide other communities

00:30:43.420 and other institutions who wish to engage in this work. And it really is, sometimes it's about seeds

00:30:48.620 returning back to people, but it's also evolved into the possibility of land rematriation and

00:30:55.360 reparations. So ways in which non-native landholders are thinking and brave new ways to

00:31:02.440 return stolen land to tribes of origin. And there's these unlikely relationships that are

00:31:09.680 forming from these collaborations where descendants of people who were adversarial

00:31:16.820 are now coming together in a collaborative partnership to heal and to plant seeds together

00:31:21.000 and to nourish people. And I think it's one of the more hopeful things that I've

00:31:24.220 had the opportunity to be involved in. And I think that the echo and the fragrance of this work will

00:31:30.360 continue to nourish those well beyond this time we're in now.

00:31:35.360 Wow, so beautiful. Just this deep relational tending and reconciliation and spirit work that

00:31:43.020 is rooted within seed restoration as rematriation is so deep and really powerful. And I've heard

00:31:52.500 you say before, and I love that you've said that seed work is slow work. I also love hearing about

00:31:57.680 the unlikely allyships forming. Yeah, yeah, it's intergenerational. It's so healing on so many

00:32:04.680 levels. Yeah, indeed. And you know, the thing is, is that when we engage in the relationship

00:32:11.040 of tending seed, that work at its essence is intergenerational, because seeds will outlive us.

00:32:19.320 They've been with our people against all adversities and all odds since the dawning of time.

00:32:24.320 I mean, I think about my own lineage of ancestors and the incredible adversities that they faced, whether it was diseases wiping out a large percentage of the people or having their land taken from them and relocated into different places.

00:32:40.440 But amidst all of that, there were incredibly foresighted individuals and ancestors who kept tiny little buckskin pouches of seed in safekeeping for a time that they couldn't even see on their horizon, that they knew the descendants would need those seeds and would nourish them and be a part of this bigger cultural matrix that we're woven into through our cosmology.

00:33:05.020 My work and the work of Indigenous Seedkeepers Network, it pays homage and is just an extension

00:33:10.020 of the incredible work that has been done by this grand lineage of seed keepers who

00:33:14.920 understood that the seeds would outlive them.

00:33:17.320 And so part of seed keeping is legacy building.

00:33:21.240 So it's always making sure that if you have these beautiful corn seeds or these bean seeds

00:33:25.320 that you've been gifted, part of that responsibility is to ensure that you have somebody else

00:33:30.460 around you, hopefully somebody younger than you, who understands all of the cultural nuances and

00:33:37.340 significances and aspects of keeping those seeds alive so that when we as humans, you know, our

00:33:43.040 lifespan is short, but seed work is slow work. It's intergenerational work. And so it is legacy

00:33:49.420 building, it's lineage cultivating. And part of our work is to make certain that the bundle of

00:33:56.380 seeds and wisdom and stories and cultural memory that we've been given to us in this generation

00:34:03.520 that we've tended it in such a way in our lifetime that it's a more beautiful and vibrant bundle

00:34:09.580 that we then give down to our children, right? And that's one of the core fundamental teachings

00:34:14.520 that my elders share with me is that these seeds actually don't belong to us. We borrow them from

00:34:19.700 our children. That's how we say it. So we are actually borrowing these seeds from future

00:34:24.080 generations. And we have to tend them in such a way that we understand that, that we have to make

00:34:29.860 sure that they're in really good shape for those yet to come. And so that's part of us being good

00:34:34.620 ancestors, good future ancestors, and also responsible descendants is making certain that

00:34:39.600 all of that work that our ancestors did against incredible adversities isn't all for nothing,

00:34:45.960 that we would be that generation who wouldn't allow that chain of stewardship to fall to the

00:34:50.560 ground and fall unnoticed, that we would honor it and care for it in that way.

00:34:54.460 May we take it from the ground

00:35:01.600 Look around, see what we've found

00:35:09.600 May we take it from the land

00:35:21.020 And give it back, hold out your hands

00:35:39.600 Oh, the quiet, immaculate ones

00:36:01.620 Concealed in their cloaks of green

00:36:06.700 Drawing the light from above and below

00:36:18.580 Nourishing everyone you've ever known

00:36:28.920 oh gosh so so important so beautifully said

00:36:58.800 Rowan, thank you. And as you've been describing, seeds are so incredibly dynamic. And I think

00:37:06.220 similarly, we need to consider the constantly shifting field and changing landscape upon

00:37:12.180 which this work of seed rematriation rests. Whether it be indigenous folks working to

00:37:18.840 revitalize their heritage seeds on another tribe's homeland, or farmers on settler

00:37:24.260 descendant cultivating native seeds on occupied land. And there seems to be an incredibly rich

00:37:29.840 border in this work where ancient ways meet and mingle with the new. So I'm wondering if you have

00:37:36.300 anything to share from your practice at Sierra Seeds on this dance that honors both your own

00:37:41.360 traditional lineage and the history of the land or its own wild expression. Yeah, absolutely. I mean,

00:37:49.100 I think change is the only constant, right? And as a student of the seeds, I'm a student of

00:37:54.840 adaptation and innovation and creativity. Seeds are that talisman of adaptation and creativity

00:38:01.780 embodied, right? And so as we apprentice ourselves to them and allow them to guide the work,

00:38:08.040 I think we would be remiss to not only think about the ways in which the cultural memory and the

00:38:14.060 teachings that our elders and ancestors have taught us about how to take care of these seeds,

00:38:19.100 but we would be remiss if we didn't look to all of the tools that we have at our fingertips in

00:38:25.200 this modern time. I think that we have an opportunity right now to remember that we're

00:38:30.980 always in a change process, especially in agriculture. There's changes always happening

00:38:34.780 every single season and all the time. And so it's thinking about what's in the best interest of our

00:38:40.060 seeds and our people and what tools do we have now that we can adapt. We've been experimenting a lot

00:38:46.580 with irrigation practices here that allow the inherent strengths within the seeds to

00:38:52.840 come forth, right?

00:38:53.920 So when we baby seeds or when we give them too much water or too much nutrients, we actually

00:38:59.640 don't draw on their inherent strengths to adapt and to acclimate to the conditions that

00:39:04.520 we have.

00:39:05.000 And so we've been playing around a little bit with implementing some different ways

00:39:09.260 of growing and irrigating our crops.

00:39:11.460 So that way they are the most tenacious and resilient, kind of in the face of what we

00:39:15.900 see on the horizon where we may have lack of access to water. We may need to be continuing

00:39:21.540 to grow on marginal lands given land access issues. And so how are we making certain that

00:39:28.620 we're really working in collaboration with the plants themselves and the practices that we use

00:39:34.760 to make sure that we're really relying on those inherent strengths in the land and the seed and

00:39:40.340 that synergy that they have instead of, again, going the way of industry, which is incredibly

00:39:45.280 high input agriculture. But I think that there's new iterations of it. And I think that this

00:39:50.580 younger generation that's getting involved in the food sovereignty movement has an incredible

00:39:55.120 capacity to dream and to vision and to use their inherent creativity as young folks

00:40:00.460 to think about, again, new ancient ways of growing and nourishing our communities

00:40:04.960 with the tools at hand. I mean, I even just see, aside from practical components of agriculture,

00:40:11.080 Or I see the way in which social media is being used to do community organizing around food, the way in which cultural memory and knowledge is shared through unconventional means.

00:40:20.200 I think we're at a really exciting time in the world to really think about how old meets new and future.

00:40:27.040 Seeds remind us of that because seeds are always becoming something new again every season.

00:40:31.420 They're not a stagnant, static entity.

00:40:34.300 Every year they're adapting and changing slightly to adapt to the new conditions of the time.

00:40:38.360 And so that's always why I talk to my students and people around me about thinking like seeds and really leaning into that idea of seed time, because it isn't.

00:40:48.860 I think sometimes in heirloom seed preservation or conservation circles, oftentimes it's people trying to always keep the seeds into the snapshot of what it was 50 years ago or 75 years ago or 100 years ago.

00:41:02.040 instead of embracing this more dynamic participatory restoration of seeds where

00:41:07.580 seeds are always their faces are always changing they're always continuing to be renewed based on

00:41:14.640 the environment that we're living in and so I think we're at a really important time and we

00:41:19.760 really need that younger generation of creative innovative thinkers to be involved in this work

00:41:24.960 absolutely and I'm happy you spoke to the evolution of seeds and not trying to restore

00:41:34.820 or go back in time but instead dancing with what is now and I think about that a lot with

00:41:42.280 forest restoration with the native species nursery that I'm building out here in the

00:41:47.540 redwoods and so much of restoration ecology at least the academic restoration ecology is

00:41:52.740 trying to put things back in time to a time that somebody is picking you know like it's really

00:42:00.160 interesting and then trying to fit into that little box but climate isn't what it was 100

00:42:05.680 years ago climate isn't what it was 50 years ago and it probably won't be that another 50 years so

00:42:10.680 there is a lot of evolution and change that I think we need to ride with because we can't be

00:42:17.000 in control of this we can't control seed we can't control weather patterns as much as

00:42:22.140 we try, some of us try. And so I appreciate you speaking to that because yeah, there needs to be

00:42:30.060 flexibility and deep listening and slowness. And I'm definitely seeing that a lot in my forestry

00:42:37.080 work. And it's a bit frustrating to push up against the normalized industrial commercial

00:42:44.020 model of reforestation and just how seeds are being worked with and cloning. And it's pretty

00:42:51.280 frustrating and so what you're saying gives me a lot of revitalizes my spirit like okay we got

00:42:57.400 this we just need to we keep needing to come back scale back come back to the land keep rethinking

00:43:03.500 so yeah i do want to talk a bit about the patenting and biro piracy of the food seed crop

00:43:10.840 and i was recently reading about a case in toton de peck miha indigenous community in the mountains

00:43:19.760 of eastern Oaxaca, Mexico, where they grow a variety of maize known as oloton. And this variety

00:43:27.260 has the ability to grow in nutrient-poor soil by extracting nitrogen from the air through its aerial

00:43:33.360 roots. And in recent years, scientists have been trying to determine whether this trait can be bred

00:43:40.060 into commercial corn, and if successful, a viable commercial application of the maize now heralded

00:43:46.600 as the corn of the future. And this case raises the alarming phenomenon around the commercialization

00:43:53.360 and exploitation of crops that have been nurtured by Indigenous peoples for thousands of years.

00:44:00.100 So I would really like if you could speak to some of these challenges facing the Indigenous

00:44:04.380 seed sovereignty movement and the critical work of safeguarding agricultural heritage

00:44:09.300 against patenting and biopiracy. Yeah, absolutely. And that's a big part of why

00:44:16.080 Indigenous Seakeepers Network banded together in the first place. You know, that network is built

00:44:21.540 upon, again, countless, countless generations of people doing the work on their lands and in their

00:44:27.720 communities. And it really became apparent in the last couple of decades that there are powers that

00:44:33.980 be that seek to extract and engage in biocolonialism and take not only seeds and foods, but

00:44:42.420 also cultural, Indigenous, traditional ecological knowledge, and privatize that and patent that

00:44:47.980 and commodify that, not to the benefit of the communities of origin, but much to the opposite

00:44:52.960 of that. A big part of our Indigenous Seedkeepers Network is to come together in solidarity,

00:45:00.060 cross-tribes, an intertribal network, largely here in the United States, but we've been

00:45:05.220 collaborating with an emerging network in Canada and then have also been invited to the table in

00:45:10.340 Mexico and Central America as well to speak about resilient seed systems and the need for advocacy

00:45:16.980 against biocolonialism and biopiracy. We've been brainstorming quite a number of ways in which we

00:45:24.060 can come together in solidarity in the face of that. And it's a multitude of fronts, right? So

00:45:29.460 that's why we need a diversity of people involved. It's not just the farmers and seedkeepers, but

00:45:34.560 it's also attorneys and public speakers and thought leaders and politicians and teachers

00:45:40.600 and parents.

00:45:41.280 It's just such a diversity of people who we need on this front, on this seed revolution

00:45:46.400 front, because we need to cultivate seed literacy, but we also need that advocacy.

00:45:52.320 So we've been working with a number of entities within our Indigenous communities who either

00:45:57.240 have felt the threat of seeds being taken away from their communities to be commodified

00:46:03.640 or even potentially patented to those who are just starting to learn about this and wanting to know

00:46:10.300 how to protect their seeds from that potentially in the future. So we've been creating a number

00:46:16.760 of different tools around templates and frameworks for tribal ordinances. What can tribal communities

00:46:22.340 do at their governmental level to protect their seeds? So there's that happening. There's advocacy 0.97

00:46:28.060 that's happening at the state level with United States government representatives and congress

00:46:32.720 people to put bills through to basically acknowledge the fact that we don't see ourselves

00:46:38.840 as tribal communities as having sole proprietorship over seed.

00:46:41.840 We don't have a relationship, a proprietary relationship to seeds, but this is one of

00:46:45.880 a collective inheritance, right?

00:46:47.380 So we're attempting to create some frameworks that acknowledge that and that can actually

00:46:52.400 hold water in bigger courts and working with organizations such as the Open Source Seed

00:46:58.480 initiatives to potentially flip certain tools that are actually used in the patenting and

00:47:04.620 commodification of seed. There's something that's called a bag tag. So when there's a genetically

00:47:09.340 modified seed that has a license attached to it, just by opening that bag of seed, you've agreed

00:47:14.820 to the immense fine print that's on the license of that seed. And so we actually have been creating

00:47:20.760 seed packets for Indigenous Seed Keepers Network, which actually flips it completely on its head,

00:47:25.880 which has an agreement, a bag tag agreement that's written onto the seed packet that says by nature of opening the seed packet, you agree to not engage in any form of commodification, privatization, patenting, and any other non-consensual form of modification of these seeds.

00:47:45.280 So we're trying to get creative in the face of kind of the unspeakable things that are happening to seed to really protect these seeds as well.

00:47:52.760 And I think the big first step is creating literacy at the community level about, you know, what are the risks and what are the threats and then what are some creative means by which we can band together as a community, as a region, and then as a national network to advocate for our basic birthrights to be able to save, share and trade seed as well as be able to take care of those seeds who are our relatives and our ancestors.

00:48:17.600 yeah the consolidation of seeds we're witnessing today is an increasingly urgent matter in the face

00:48:25.760 of our earth changes and we know that biodiversity not monoculture has always been the cornerstone

00:48:33.560 of a resilient healthy food system and that this will allow us to weather warming temperatures

00:48:38.000 and climate uncertainty but taking this one step further i'd love if you could talk more about

00:48:44.260 the importance of preserving biodiversity in the living context, which you'd mentioned before in

00:48:50.000 our conversation, or on a local level for climate change resilience, as opposed to, say, storing

00:48:55.760 seeds within private collections or seed banks or refrigerated banks, like you were talking earlier.

00:49:01.880 In other words, why does biodiversity require radical, abundant redistribution rather than

00:49:07.800 private withholding or stockpiling? Yeah, that's a great question. My simple

00:49:13.940 answer that, and then I'll sort of elaborate on it, is that every garden is a seed bank. You know,

00:49:18.940 every piece of land that holds wild and cultivated plants is a vibrant living seed bank. And that's

00:49:25.000 the way it has been since the dawning of time, that these seeds are in a constant relationship,

00:49:30.420 not only with the land and the elements there, but the people who've stewarded them.

00:49:34.300 And that's of vital importance, that cultural memory as it relates to biodiversity and those

00:49:39.620 relationships as it relates to biodiversity is critical. There's a mentor and colleague of mine,

00:49:46.000 Virginia Nazaria, who wrote really just some signature pieces on cultural memory and biodiversity,

00:49:51.280 talks about this idea of sensuous conservation, which means that people are intimately connected

00:49:59.060 to the seeds and to the foods through their emotional landscape. So it basically comes back

00:50:04.240 to this premise that we love the seeds in the same way that we love our children. The smells

00:50:09.560 of them remind us of home. The taste of them reinvigorates our purpose for caretaking them,

00:50:15.720 that there's this other element of responsibility that gets activated by the multisensory

00:50:21.020 nature of the way in which we engage these foods when they're in our day-to-day life, right? And

00:50:25.860 Wendell Berry might use this quote often. He says, we exploit what we merely value,

00:50:31.260 but we defend what we love. And I think that when we begin to have a culture and grow the culture

00:50:38.560 in a way that we see every garden as a seed bank and we begin to reestablish that relationship back

00:50:44.820 in our daily life, we begin to grow a culture of people who love the seeds as mother and will

00:50:50.280 defend them against all odds. And so that to me, I think is that form of living seed bank,

00:50:57.780 that the way that they stay protected is in our relationship to them and in their relationship to

00:51:03.420 the land, as opposed to this false sense of security of putting seeds into the, you know,

00:51:08.860 the tundra at Svalbard, you know, beneath the permafrost in this faraway location. Farmers

00:51:14.980 have always kept aside little caches of seed in pots or in baskets, all kinds of ways in jars and

00:51:21.860 and various things, but the ways in which we have always stewarded seeds in ways that

00:51:27.420 create vibrant and vital agriculture that nourishes people is by growing them out and

00:51:33.540 ensuring that we have a relationship to them encoded in our stories. They become encoded in

00:51:38.720 our songs. They become encoded in our ceremonies. They become encoded in motifs and visual art

00:51:45.720 motifs that are on pots and baskets and in our day-to-day life. And that's the real security.

00:51:51.920 That's real seed security and seed sovereignty is when our seed banks are alive and thriving

00:51:57.160 all around us. And that's the vision that I hope for. We need to get out of that mentality that

00:52:03.400 seeds are static, that we can just put them in a jar and set them on a shelf and leave them.

00:52:08.300 No, they're a living, breathing entity that we have to be in constant communication with.

00:52:13.500 And our elders told us this, that if we began to forget and abdicate our relationship to

00:52:18.020 those seeds, that those seeds would go away, right?

00:52:20.240 That they were a gift from creator since the dawning of our creation stories.

00:52:23.500 And if we were to forget about them, then they would go away, right?

00:52:27.200 And so many of my ancestors and elders petitioned long and hard after the hard times of relocation

00:52:33.980 and displacement to ensure that those seeds would continue to stay with us and continue

00:52:38.380 to care for us and that we made promises back to them that we would take care of them.

00:52:43.500 too and engage that reciprocity with them. So that's my invitation for all those who are

00:52:49.480 listening is find simple ways in which you can re-engage your relationship to seed because you're

00:52:55.680 in a relationship to seed and she never forgot about you. If you have a full belly of food,

00:53:00.700 she didn't forget about caring for you. And so what are the small and beautiful ways in which

00:53:04.980 you can re-enliven and reconnect? And oftentimes ancestry is a good place to start. You know,

00:53:10.720 that same question I stated in the beginning was who are the foods and seeds that fed your

00:53:15.180 ancestors? It's oftentimes a really beautiful springboard to a really beautiful and nourishing

00:53:20.040 relationship that will, again, live beyond your own time. So beautiful. Thank you, Rowan.

00:53:27.660 And to stay a bit on this topic, I know that much of your work exists within this larger paradigm

00:53:34.480 of food sovereignty, like we've been speaking. And a critical piece of the puzzle that I'm

00:53:39.260 curious to ask you about is how we might create more sustainable, regenerative economic models

00:53:45.580 that support the decentralization and democratization of seeds. Do you have any

00:53:50.720 thoughts to share around the revitalization of a trade economy, maybe, that might restore the

00:53:56.000 currency of kinship and connection? Yeah, it's a big part of our growing edge,

00:54:00.900 especially right now. We're actually, through the Indigenous Seed Keepers Network, we're running a

00:54:05.620 seed drive right now where we're gifting thousands and thousands of seed packets back out to

00:54:09.680 indigenous communities to really support the hope and resilience gardens that are emerging in this

00:54:14.720 time of uncertainty. And it really is perhaps fast tracking an idea that we've been kind of

00:54:21.340 slow simmering for a while, which is that trade routes and kinship routes have existed on Turtle

00:54:27.120 Island since the dawning of time, that seeds have moved from places like Oaxaca all the way,

00:54:32.740 up to just north of Winnipeg and into Maine. And it's an amazing, intricate migration path that

00:54:38.900 seeds have taken. And so we are working as a network to begin to build the foundation of

00:54:44.820 capacity for local and regional seed hubs to emerge that would be based from a cooperative

00:54:50.540 model. So working together at the regional level to grow seed, to share it with others in our region

00:54:56.520 and to share it at a local level and recognizing that, again, it's much easier for me to envision

00:55:03.480 a group of people growing out a multitude of varieties with grace and ease versus kind of the

00:55:10.420 every man for themselves model, which is I were to caretake 200 different seed varieties on my

00:55:15.740 own home farm by myself, that would take up all of my hours and all of my days. But if I had 20

00:55:22.540 people who would do it with me, and each of us grew 10 varieties, and then we shared them amongst

00:55:27.180 each other. We have so much more capacity when we band together in collaboration, in that collective

00:55:33.100 effort. That existed here. That existed here. It was the dawning of agriculture on Turtle Island.

00:55:38.680 And so what we're doing is trying to revitalize that and re-engage that by helping to build

00:55:43.660 capacity, by leveraging resources, fundraising, and getting the tools and the seeds and access

00:55:50.200 to land, to people who need it, to be able to produce larger amounts of seed that then can be

00:55:55.280 shared in community. So we've been seeing a lot of seed giveaways, a lot of ways in which we're

00:56:00.140 doing these seed drives to take money out of the equation. I don't think seed companies and

00:56:05.520 commodification of seed is the way forward, actually. I think there is a deeper gift and

00:56:10.480 trade economy that can be revitalized that has existed way, way longer than the commodification

00:56:15.620 of seed, which, again, I'll remind you, it's been under 200 years that seed companies and

00:56:21.780 the commodification of seed has existed.

00:56:23.620 And before that, it was a complex and beautiful trade network.

00:56:26.880 And I think what it reminds us of is that we currently exist in an economy, in a capitalist

00:56:33.880 economy that's based on scarcity.

00:56:36.300 And what we can envision when we say, in seeds we trust, right, when we understand the wealth

00:56:42.160 of seeds and the wealth of the land, is that we root our regenerative economy in an understanding

00:56:47.620 of abundance as opposed to scarcity. Because seeds themselves are the talisman of that.

00:56:53.700 One seed turns into a hundred, and then a hundred of those will turn into thousands.

00:56:58.260 So the nature of life herself on earth is actually rooted in exponential abundance. But we have this

00:57:05.120 manufactured economic system that is rooted in scarcity. And so when we can root

00:57:11.840 our Indigenous economy or our natural economy back into the true nature of life or self,

00:57:18.420 which is ever generous and benevolent. And then I think we can create a cooperative and collective

00:57:23.600 economy that isn't exploitative and extractive. And in fact, we'll just continue to share

00:57:30.560 nourishment and abundance with everyone. And that's what food justice looks like.

00:57:36.000 And that's why we need communities of color and Indigenous leaders to be at the forefront

00:57:40.400 of food justice work, because they have a more intact understanding and memory of what that

00:57:45.000 might look like. Yes, absolutely agree with you. Well, as we begin to come to a close on this

00:57:54.580 conversation, which I don't want to end, I do have a few other thoughts for you. I really love

00:58:01.120 hearing about your visions for a different type of future than the current trajectory. And it really

00:58:09.700 does give me a lot of food for thought. And in one of your blog pieces, you share this word from

00:58:16.300 the Bureau of Linguistic Reality, who we've had the pleasure of having on the show before. And

00:58:21.680 the word is qui seed. I think I'm pronouncing it right, which means a seed that due to social

00:58:28.380 trauma stays consciously dormant, not out of oppression, but rather due to a deep intuition,

00:58:34.420 which senses not to seed until it finds itself in a fertile, fecund environment, end quote.

00:58:41.300 So I'd love to hear more on how we can understand the unfolding of seeds in their own time

00:58:47.500 and the role we play as humans in preparing a soft home to receive them. And then maybe as a

00:58:54.460 second part to that question, how do we become more human, more ourselves when we step back

00:59:00.540 into accountability and honor our consensual contract with the land? It's a gorgeous question.

00:59:07.240 And I think what it comes back down to is starting small like a seed, right? It's like starting with

00:59:12.620 ourselves. You know, I think sometimes when we look at the landscape of change and the process

00:59:17.780 of change, sometimes we can get really either paralyzed or distracted, I think, by the bigness

00:59:24.040 of what has to happen, you know, in a change-making landscape. And we sometimes forget our own

00:59:29.180 personal agency and that we're a collection of little things, that if we make small, subtle

00:59:34.520 changes into the way that we move in the world, that that has such a more powerful, is so much

00:59:41.180 more of a powerful change agent than, you know, trying to rally and change like NASCAR dads and

00:59:48.500 soccer moms, you know, like, it's just like, how do we start with ourselves and then have that

00:59:53.400 change echo outward. That's why I think asking ourselves those questions around what is our

00:59:59.680 personal responsibility to seed and how have we abdicated that in the past and how can we reclaim

01:00:05.840 that and re-engage it, even if we are not gardeners or farmers or landholders, even if we live in an

01:00:12.040 apartment in New York City, like what does that mean? And what small things can we do in our life

01:00:16.240 that retune the way that we look at the world and re-engages that more reverent nature? And again,

01:00:23.080 And it might be starting from a place of connection and lineage and ancestry and coming into a deeper connection there.

01:00:30.800 In my work at Sierra Seeds, we've been working to create beautiful learning spaces where people of the same heart and mind can come together across a multitude of different cultural backgrounds to talk about these things, to engage.

01:00:45.920 You know, what does it mean to be a seed keeper?

01:00:48.020 What does it mean to care for seeds?

01:00:49.420 What does it mean to create seed literacy in our communities?

01:00:53.080 whether it's through the actual saving of seeds themselves or through making art or poetry or creating curriculum for our students or, you know, whatever that might look like, what role do you play in generating increased seed literacy in our community?

01:01:08.540 And so I think, again, starting small, but I think through the power of cultivating creative, supportive learning spaces where we can normalize this kind of conversation, I've been at a number of different conferences and spoken publicly where normalizing the spiritual and cultural nature of agriculture has been well received.

01:01:27.460 And people have come to me and thanked me and a number of my colleagues for normalizing the spiritual and cultural nature of agriculture, because oftentimes in Western culture, everything is so compartmentalized, right? And it's so reductionist. It's so boiled down to just science.

01:01:45.480 And so ways in which we can enliven this aspect of ourselves that does have a cultural and spiritual connection to land and seed. And it's a healing that needs to happen in order for us to really reseed what the food landscape can look like.

01:01:59.320 yes I'm with you Rowan there is so much to chew on here that you have given us and I personally

01:02:10.600 feel really connected to everything that you've been sharing and with the seeds they've been

01:02:15.540 calling me a lot yeah I'm just grateful for you for holding so many aspects of this work together

01:02:25.280 So thank you again for your work and for sharing this time with us today on For the Wild.

01:02:31.080 Oh, my pleasure.

01:02:32.300 What an honor.

01:02:35.660 Mighty water

01:02:37.860 I can always breathe under

01:02:43.440 Lay at the bottom

01:02:48.800 Gaze up at the sun

01:02:55.280 I can't be contained and I won't be tamed

01:03:05.200 Can't be contained and I won't

01:03:10.560 Can't be contained and I won't be tamed

01:03:15.180 Thank you for listening to another episode of For the Wild podcast.

01:03:18.880 I'm Ayanna Young.

01:03:20.820 The music you heard today was from Madeline Alana.

01:03:23.240 I'd like to thank our podcast production team

01:03:26.420 Francesca Glassbell, Hannah Wilton, Andrew Storrs

01:03:30.380 Erica Ekram, Melanie Younger

01:03:32.840 and our special guest producer, March Young

01:03:35.560 If you haven't already, please rate us on iTunes

01:03:39.440 as it really helps build our community

01:03:41.400 and sign up for our newsletter at forthewild.world

For The Wild - July 22, 2020

ROWEN M WHITE on Seed Rematriation and Fertile Resistance ⧸193

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