For The Wild - ROWEN M WHITE on Seed Rematriation and Fertile Resistance [ENCORE] ⧸291

00:00:00.000 Welcome to For the Wild podcast. I'm Ayanna Young. Today we're joined by Rowan White,

00:00:12.060 a seed keeper farmer from the Mohawk community of Akwesasne and a passionate activist for

00:00:18.460 indigenous seed and food sovereignty. Rowan is the educational director and lead mentor

00:00:24.460 of Sierra Seeds, an innovative land-based educational organization located in Nevada

00:00:30.440 City, California. She is the National Program Coordinator for the Indigenous Seed Keeper

00:00:35.520 Network, which is an initiative of the Native American Food Sovereignty Alliance, a non-profit

00:00:41.100 organization aimed at leveraging resources to support tribal food sovereignty projects.

00:00:46.840 Rowan is also the Chair of the Board of Directors of Seed Savers Exchange, the largest public

00:00:52.540 access seed bank in North America. Follow her journeys at sierraseeds.org.

00:01:02.380 Well, welcome to the show, Rowan. I am so grateful for this time that we have together to explore the

00:01:09.320 many threads you're weaving through this beautiful work of seed sovereignty. And like I mentioned

00:01:15.160 earlier, the little time I was able to spend with you and your family on your farm has stuck with

00:01:21.740 me. And I am just so personally excited to connect with you today. So thank you so much for being

00:01:28.900 with us. Well, thank you. Thank you for the invitation. Well, before we dig into your

00:01:36.220 initiatives with Sierra Seeds and Indigenous Seed Keeper Network, I'd like to just offer you

00:01:41.920 the space to share a bit about your background and where you're coming from today. And what is

00:01:48.040 the winding path that initially sparked your interest in cultivating new and ancient relationships

00:01:53.000 with native seeds? Yeah, it's been a long and beautifully winding road that the seed path has

00:01:59.980 offered me. I grew up in a multitude of places. As you mentioned before, I'm Mohawk. My parents

00:02:06.520 are from a place called Akwesosne, which is right on the New York-Canadian border.

00:02:11.160 Our family was deeply impacted by all of the aspects of colonization and acculturation in

00:02:16.480 the last century. And so I grew up not really deeply connected to the land or to food and

00:02:22.920 seeds so much, but I did hear great and beautiful stories of, in particular, my great-grandparents,

00:02:29.260 Rina and Alex White. And then also on the other side, a beautiful woman named Anna Jacobs,

00:02:34.900 who used to grow these big legendary gardens that would feed their people and their families.

00:02:40.140 But I grew up always with an affinity for being outside, for having my hands on the earth, for

00:02:45.200 doing things out in the woods. And I found myself at 17. I had left home and I had found

00:02:53.140 myself on an organic farm that was associated with the college that I was attending in Western

00:02:58.640 Massachusetts. And that was when my apprenticeship began. That was when the seeds really spoke to me.

00:03:06.180 I have a very visceral memory of being in the greenhouse and for the first time watching

00:03:13.420 seeds that my hands had planted sprout into these beautiful double leaves and then grow into these

00:03:19.640 vibrant plants. And my mentor, Nancy, at the time, she had witnessed really my joy and my enthusiasm

00:03:26.680 and my wonder and had entrusted me with a really beautiful project, which a previous intern and

00:03:33.220 student had initiated on the farm, which was this heirloom tomato project where there were

00:03:38.380 over 50 different heirloom tomatoes being grown on the farm. And she showed me the seed catalogs

00:03:45.200 with all these pictures of tomatoes that were not only just round and red, which is what I had

00:03:50.680 grown up eating, but tomatoes that were the full spectrum and prism of the rainbow in all shapes

00:03:56.860 and sizes. And I remember very specifically being that 17-year-old young woman, really searching

00:04:04.680 for a sense of purpose, for a sense of place, reading through those stories and making that

00:04:10.280 connection 23 years ago, that not only did seeds have a particular place of origin, a lineage,

00:04:18.640 a legacy of origin, but that there was this intimate and beautiful and diverse and magical

00:04:25.920 connection that seeds had with people, that people and seeds were intimately in relationship for

00:04:32.340 many, many, many generations. And as a Mohawk woman, I remember sitting there on this dusty

00:04:38.620 farmhouse floor in New England and looking at all these packs of tomato seeds and these little fuzzy

00:04:44.200 time capitals and thinking, as a Mohawk woman, what were the seeds and foods that fed my ancestors?

00:04:52.560 It was a cornerstone moment in my life of really having that epiphany and grappling, I think,

00:04:59.080 with simultaneously the joy and wonder of agricultural biodiversity and the legacy of

00:05:05.820 plants and humans co-creating in the agricultural realms. So there was this joy on one hand,

00:05:11.960 and then there was this spring of grief and sadness and anger and all sorts of other

00:05:17.040 emotions of being a young Indigenous woman who had no understanding and no relationship

00:05:23.460 to the foods that really were our birthright, that were promised to us in so many ways through

00:05:30.500 our cultural teaching, that I had somehow lost connection with that. And so it really opened up

00:05:35.900 a wellspring of that spectrum of emotion from joy to grief and really led me again on this

00:05:43.160 path for 23 years in a continual relationship with that inquiry of who were the foods and

00:05:49.340 seeds that fed my ancestors and how can I be in right relationship to them and rehydrate these

00:05:55.240 original agreements that I have with these ancestral seeds so that way I will have something

00:06:01.340 of meaning and substance to hand down to my children and be a good responsible descendant

00:06:07.660 in that way. I've grown a garden every season for 23 years now and I always tell people that

00:06:14.460 I apprenticed myself to the seeds and I apprenticed myself to the seasonal cycles.

00:06:19.240 And while I've been growing a garden for over two decades, I feel like the garden really has been growing me as a woman and took me through a very unconventional rites of passage into understanding who I am as an Indigenous woman in this modern time.

00:06:35.380 oh Rowan I have chills as you've been transporting us with you back to your younger self

00:06:44.900 finding purpose with the seeds and your stories thank you so much for sharing some of those

00:06:52.480 intimate moments of your past and I was imagining your garden while you were speaking and I

00:06:58.740 am happy that we were able to introduce this conversation like that so thank you so much

00:07:05.240 Now, since the birth of agriculture on Turtle Island, it seems that seeds have been freely

00:07:11.580 passed down through the hands of the generations, accompanied by ceremony and prayer and reverent

00:07:18.060 seed cultures and sustainable food growing practices. And then colonization and the

00:07:25.300 force assimilation in the U.S. has waged a war against these traditional foodways through

00:07:29.980 violent means, such as scorched earth policies, the capitalist culture of severance, and a forced

00:07:37.180 extractive agricultural model. With these eras of disruption in mind, how can we understand the

00:07:44.520 seeds that sustain us today as sacred gifts from indigenous and ancestral seed keepers?

00:07:50.320 I think it's important to remember that each one of us, and I say this often, and I have

00:07:55.940 had it said to me often by elders, is that each one of us descends from people who

00:08:01.260 have been in an intimate and reciprocal relationship with plants and seeds since

00:08:07.280 the dawning of time. I descend from people who speak very beautifully and lovingly of our

00:08:14.860 sustainers, our original sustainers, our corn and beans and squash and a multitude of other plants

00:08:20.920 and seeds that have been with us since our creation story and have a very beautiful place

00:08:25.820 in our cosmology. What's important to remember, and I think it harkens back to when I had my aha

00:08:31.900 moments of reintroducing myself to seed, is that each one of us has these agreements, these

00:08:38.900 covenants, this sacred marriage, so to speak, that our ancestors came into agreement with a long,

00:08:45.100 long time ago. And those agreements are written in our blood and our bones. And they do run

00:08:50.780 like wild rivers and they awaken and rehydrate in some unlikely places. And so I think what's

00:08:58.480 beautiful now is that we're at a time when we are coming into a great awakening of not only the

00:09:05.280 legacy that Indigenous peoples have created here on Turtle Island, the beautiful tapestry of

00:09:12.480 kinship routes and trade routes and traditional foodways. And we see that awakening with the food

00:09:17.780 sovereignty movement and people understanding that the dismantling of the food system was a

00:09:23.800 very specific and manufactured way to try and disempower the people. Because our understanding

00:09:29.560 of who we are and where we draw our strengths and our spiritual power, it comes from the land

00:09:34.120 underneath our feet and it comes from the foods that grow within that land. And those foods and

00:09:39.440 those medicines, they go into our body and inform us and animate us in a way that allows us to be

00:09:45.880 our true selves and the powers that be, whether it was 300 years ago during the Revolutionary War

00:09:53.060 when my people, our cornfields, were being burnt very purposefully to disempower our Haudenosaunee

00:09:59.860 Confederacy as it related to the history and the dynamics in the Revolutionary War, or whether it's

00:10:06.060 today with the inequities that we see in the food system that are still present today that make

00:10:10.880 access to healthy traditional foods difficult for many Native and communities of color.

00:10:17.980 And so I think we are seeing a great awakening right now of people recognizing that revitalizing

00:10:24.400 food and revitalizing our relationship to seed and to land is an integral part of the

00:10:30.360 re-indigenizing that's happening. And it also is an inextricable part of vibrant cultural

00:10:36.860 revitalization. Food and seed and land are at the center of the wellspring of culture. It's our

00:10:44.720 relationship to the land and to our foods and to nourishing ourselves and sheltering ourselves

00:10:50.200 as a people that have created the multitudes of different beautiful cultures that exist here on

00:10:57.040 Turtle Island and beyond. And so if we are moving forward with a vision of health and sustainability

00:11:03.120 and sovereignty and agency within our Indigenous communities, I see no better path than to

00:11:10.520 go back to these roots, go back to the relationship to our seeds and to our food and to reinvigorate

00:11:18.200 those.

00:11:18.740 And I think that we've been seeing also a number of people and organizations and entities

00:11:24.260 that are outside of our Native communities who really want to support and practice allyship

00:11:30.160 in this movement towards reconciliation, reparations, and rematriation towards indigenous

00:11:37.100 peoples, being able to be in relationship again with our original earth, with our motherland.

00:11:46.400 In a piece on your blog, Seed Songs, you share, quote,

00:11:50.920 As it has been told to me by my elders, the seeds are a reflection of the people.

00:11:56.100 when the seeds are weak and struggling it means our communities and nations and people are

00:12:01.260 struggling and when our seeds are strong it means our nations and communities and people are strong

00:12:06.600 and in good health end quote yeah and across the so-called u.s we know that seeds are struggling

00:12:13.300 from the growing commodification and privatization of seeds the industry now controlled by just four

00:12:20.240 corporations to genetic erosion and biodiversity loss. And the American food landscape is

00:12:26.280 increasingly dominated by hybrid and genetically engineered seeds. So I'm thinking back to this

00:12:32.240 principle that seeds are a reflection of people and wondering what messages or cultural stories

00:12:38.360 we're being asked to hear in the seeds we sow today. Yeah, it's a powerful statement. I think

00:12:44.000 about it a lot. I have a lot of wise elders and mentors who continue to share that message with me

00:12:50.240 And it anchors me back to the work time and time again.

00:12:53.940 We all descend from people who have had at one point a culture of belonging that surrounds

00:12:58.820 the way in which we nourish ourselves.

00:13:00.820 There's this myth of self-sufficiency or the homestead that really, I think, is perpetuated

00:13:07.520 even within organic gardening circles that one person can live on 40 acres and be able

00:13:13.760 to sustain themselves.

00:13:15.040 But it really does come back to, in order to feed and nourish ourselves, it relies on

00:13:19.920 us working collaboratively and cooperatively in community, not only at the local level,

00:13:24.700 but at the regional level.

00:13:26.900 And when we talk about seeds being a reflection of the people, it is the fact that our life

00:13:31.840 is intimately intertwined with their well-being.

00:13:34.640 That goes back again to this concept of original agreements that we agreed to take care of

00:13:39.280 the seeds and the seeds agreed to take care of us.

00:13:41.520 And we came into this beautifully reciprocal relationship for a long time.

00:13:46.260 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.

00:14:03.180 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.

00:14:21.520 It's actually poisoning our people.

00:14:23.640 It's poisoning the land.

00:14:25.940 And if you look at the landscape of seed in this country, it's increasingly more centralized,

00:14:30.860 increasingly more privatized.

00:14:33.720 We have to remember that even 150 years ago, there was no such thing as a seed company.

00:14:37.940 It was all seeds being handed down from generation to generation and village to village by people

00:14:43.240 just like you and me.

00:14:45.420 And so now we see a landscape where most farms in North America, and honestly, on the

00:14:51.500 globe no longer practice seed stewardship as a part of a whole farm landscape and an

00:14:56.380 ecology.

00:14:57.740 And that creates an incredible vulnerability.

00:15:00.680 And right now, especially with the work that we're doing with food sovereignty, with

00:15:05.840 indigenous communities, especially in light of what's happening right now with the pandemic

00:15:10.760 and some of the supply chain issues that are happening in food and agriculture, is that

00:15:16.160 many of the seed companies are draining under the increased demand as people realize that,

00:15:22.420 oh, if we're not going to be able to get food from the stores in the way that we've had before,

00:15:26.260 maybe we need to start growing a garden. And that centralized infrastructure is draining and

00:15:31.840 buckling under the demand of the people because people have not been stewarding and caring for

00:15:37.240 seeds at the local and village level for quite a number of decades in many instances.

00:15:42.320 and so the result of that is that you have seeds that are a reflection of the people right now

00:15:49.180 in the united states in particular we have a lot of human beings who have no real deep inborn sense

00:15:56.320 of who they are as people they have a confusion about who they are this idea of a melting pot has

00:16:01.980 turned into people who yearn for a culture of belonging and a culture of connection and don't

00:16:06.440 have that. So in turn, we've created an agricultural system that mimics that, that

00:16:11.800 reflects that. If you drive across the heartland of the United States, which I've done a number of

00:16:16.540 times, you see beautiful corn mothers growing across the hills and valleys of the heartland

00:16:22.100 of what used to be prairie. And those corn mothers are increasingly hybridized and also

00:16:28.580 genetically modified. So those seeds are actually a reflection of the people in this country. And

00:16:33.840 What I say is that they're brokenhearted people planting brokenhearted seeds because they're planting seeds that look like them.

00:16:41.660 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.

00:16:50.440 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.

00:17:18.140 And when we begin to cultivate that culture of reverence, where people understand the

00:17:24.540 sanctity and reverence of a handful of seeds, then I just feel like all of the other things

00:17:30.060 that we worry about now with the genetic modification and the glyphosate poisoning of the

00:17:35.180 earth, those things will be composted.

00:17:37.560 They'll be composted into the past.

00:17:39.660 They'll no longer be relevant.

00:17:41.160 And that's my approach.

00:17:42.400 And that's many of our approach in our indigenous communities is to cultivate that relationship

00:17:47.480 and that sense of connectivity to the seeds

00:17:49.940 and remind people that everyone is intimately connected to a seed.

00:17:54.100 For all of us who eat, we're all in relationship to seed

00:17:57.200 and it's whether we choose to abdicate that relationship to somebody else

00:18:01.120 or whether we choose to reclaim it and to embody it

00:18:04.280 and to re-engage it in ways that can nourish those beyond our time

00:18:09.080 in ways that we all know in our hearts is possible.

00:18:17.480 Your skin

00:18:19.800 And your sweetness

00:18:23.720 Pulls me in

00:18:28.980 Silken limbs around my waist

00:18:36.720 Welcome to this tender place

00:18:40.480 Your sweetness

00:18:42.540 Washing over me

00:18:45.680 Mesmerizing little tree 1.00

00:18:50.340 Shade your skin 0.98

00:18:57.600 And your sweetness 1.00

00:19:01.680 Booze me in

00:19:06.460 You've scattered branches on the ground

00:19:13.600 Too sharp 0.92

00:19:15.680 thank you for sharing all that and i was imagining those corn mothers that i've also seen when

00:19:25.620 traversing turtle island and i just wanted to bring up this statistic that i was reading that

00:19:31.960 in 2019 genetically engineered seed was planted on 92 percent of u.s corn acres and 98 percent of u.s

00:19:41.080 cotton acres and 94% of US soybean acres. So that is really staggering to see just how much

00:19:49.520 of these genetically engineered seed are being utilized and how much land is being given to them.

00:19:57.300 And I also was reading that over the past century, the US has lost about 93% of its food seed

00:20:03.600 variety. Now that might be kind of hard to quantify, but just seeing that, and I'm sure

00:20:08.960 it's something close to that. It's really a wake-up call for us that this is huge. This is

00:20:14.420 not a small issue. This is something that affects all of us. So I was pretty shocked by that.

00:20:21.760 I would love to offer something because, you know, it's those statistics that I began to learn about

00:20:26.400 in my initial journey that really fueled the fire of sadness and rage and confusion about where we

00:20:33.120 had gone as a nation, as individual communities. And what I've learned, and I'm still just a

00:20:39.240 humble student of the seeds and of the corn herself, is that when we begin to put our energy

00:20:46.040 back towards these seeds and these relationships, that there's a cultural dimension of biodiversity

00:20:51.640 that exists, and it's a synergy between humans and plants. And so when we as humans begin to

00:20:57.680 tune our hearts and our minds back towards these relationships with food and seed and land,

00:21:02.500 That that spectrum of diversity will return again. And I've seen it happen. I've seen it happen in tribal communities where certain varieties have been lost. But when other varieties of corn were grown out in substantial and bigger quantities, in bigger acreage, as they began to revitalize the seeds and grow them out, that certain sacred varieties actually reemerged from other varieties.

00:21:27.460 So there's this beautiful wellspring of diversity that's always wanting to show her face and show up on the earth, but it requires a dynamic interface with humans who see seed stewardship as just an integral part of day in and day out, life, season after season.

00:21:45.400 And really, it is that wellspring of diversity that will be our biggest ally in the face of climate change.

00:21:53.800 When we begin to see the wealth that seeds hold and the wealth encoded in the relationships that we have to those seeds and the relationship that those seeds have to the changing seasons year in, year out, that is going to help us ride through this storm of climate change and give us the resilience that's needed.

00:22:12.840 Because plants are so much more adaptive than we are as humans, they adapt so much more quickly to the changing world that we live in. So when we ally with them, and again, not only just tend and steward them, but tune our hearts and our minds back to that seed time, to that understanding of this intergenerational legacy work, that's going to be our greatest gift in the years ahead.

00:22:36.080 And part of this pandemic and what we're experiencing right now is climate chaos meeting late stage capitalism. And what are we seeing is that we're seeing people remembering that seeds are vitally important and that if we don't have seeds and gardens and a means to nourish ourselves in these ways, then times are going to be very difficult ahead.

00:22:55.340 So this is just another receding, I think, that is being offered in these times for people to really recognize what's most important.

00:23:02.840 thank you for that balm for the heart the broken heartedness of i'm sure all of us hearing what's

00:23:12.520 happened that's really yeah we got to keep chugging on and knowing that revitalization

00:23:18.420 is possible and speaking of i'd like to turn to the powerful seed revitalization work you're doing

00:23:26.680 with sierra seeds and indigenous seed keeper network and other communities across the country

00:23:32.120 to return seeds to their original keepers and ancestral lands. So I'd love to hear a story

00:23:37.740 of a seed restoration initiative and how you support the work of reweaving seed back into

00:23:45.320 cultural context and tribal communities of origin, and if there are any particular protocols for this

00:23:51.540 delicate, nuanced process. Yeah, absolutely. Well, it's bridging work, right? This is intercultural

00:23:58.400 work. And part of my fascination with this growing edge of our collective work is that

00:24:04.200 it grants us the opportunity to be able to look back in time and face the adversities and the

00:24:11.040 pain and the trauma of colonization and acculturation and displacement and relocation

00:24:15.700 and the traumas between different groups of people. It gives us a really beautiful

00:24:21.720 shade tree to sit under and to look at what reconciliation and reparations can be

00:24:28.400 with the seeds and the food guiding us. As a part of Indigenous Seedkeepers Network and also my work

00:24:33.660 with CR Seeds, we've been engaging this body of work that we're calling rematriation. Many of you

00:24:39.640 may be familiar with the idea of repatriation, which is returning items of significance back to

00:24:45.680 communities of origin, whether they be funerary objects or cultural objects that have been taken

00:24:51.860 oftentimes by violent theft or force and returned back. So that's been a movement that's been

00:24:57.520 happening not only on Turtle Island, but globally as part of some of the reconciliation of harms of

00:25:03.800 colonization. But we've made a spin on the word, deeply inspired by the work of Martin Praktel and

00:25:09.860 his work on the Unlikely Peace at Kuchimaquik, where he really looks at this idea of rematriation

00:25:14.960 is returning things back to the mother, returning these seeds back to their motherland, their

00:25:21.860 communities of origin. And recognizing that many tribal communities across Turtle Island,

00:25:28.320 the role and responsibility of caring for the seeds, caring for the ceremonies and songs that

00:25:33.740 surround our seeds are carried by the women because we're the ones who, from our hands and

00:25:38.780 wounds, life grows. And so we've looked at in our work with Indigenous communities in listening

00:25:44.280 sessions and conversations with them around building more capacity around food sovereignty

00:25:50.080 and then, in essence, seed sovereignty, we've heard a lot of needs for access to culturally

00:25:56.760 significant seeds again. When people were displaced or moved or, you know, all of the

00:26:01.980 impacts of colonization, many people were disconnected from the land and from the seed

00:26:07.100 varieties that sustained them. And seeds always have been moving and migrating. And for many

00:26:12.880 reasons, seeds that are of indigenous origin have found themselves in seed banks and universities

00:26:18.280 and museums and other institutions where they're away from their community of origin.

00:26:23.580 I began to do some work alongside many of my colleagues and compadres to begin to build

00:26:30.180 bridges and build relationships of trust with these institutions and Indigenous communities

00:26:35.880 and begin to do the work, the very tender and nuanced work of bringing these seeds back

00:26:42.900 home to the people who really want to be in relationship with them.

00:26:46.940 The seeds aren't meant to be put onto a refrigerator seed vault in Iowa or in Michigan or in Chicago or in the various places where they've ended up.

00:26:58.480 We see them as living, breathing relatives and that they are a vibrant part of our community.

00:27:03.120 And so we've been taking the steps to begin to build those relationships to bring those seeds home.

00:27:08.540 And we've been working largely with Seed Savers Exchange, which is a large public access seed bank.

00:27:13.560 but we've also been working with the field museum, a number of universities, and the USDA

00:27:18.140 Seed Bank to begin this beautiful process. And we've had dozens upon dozens of varieties that

00:27:25.440 have made their way home. These homecomings have been incredibly healing. They've been emotional.

00:27:31.940 Recall two Octobers ago, we were up in Taos Pueblo, and we had found this Taos squash that

00:27:38.300 had been somehow passed from hand to hand away from the community and had been lost to the

00:27:45.100 community for quite a number of decades. We were able to bring home a big old squash and a big

00:27:51.040 sack of seeds from the Seed Savers Exchange vault there. And we had a ceremony under the mountains

00:27:56.420 there at the historic Taos Pueblo. And the elders and the farmers there welcomed that squash home

00:28:03.640 like a baby. It was really emotional. It was incredibly touching to witness people receiving

00:28:09.540 not just ancestral remains that had maybe been interned or dug up, but a living, breathing

00:28:14.600 relative that could reconnect them and nourish their people from this moment forward. And we've

00:28:20.100 seen countless times where seeds have this speckled corn of the Ho-Chunk people in Wisconsin 0.99

00:28:26.540 was returned back to the tribe of origin, back into seed keepers' hands in loving ways and 0.98

00:28:32.420 ways that we're having to come up with new ceremonies to welcome these seeds home and

00:28:37.400 ways that we're again rehydrating these responsibilities of re-enlivening people's

00:28:42.740 understanding of what it means to be Indigenous means that we take care of our relatives that

00:28:47.740 have been taking care of us since time immemorial. So we're actually working on a short documentary

00:28:53.240 in collaboration with the Cultural Conservancy to really document and share these stories of hope

00:28:58.840 and resilience in this time. And then we're also making available a paired action guide that will

00:29:05.140 guide other communities and other institutions who wish to engage in this work. And it really

00:29:10.260 is, sometimes it's about seeds returning back to people, but it's also evolved into the possibility

00:29:16.820 of land rematuration and reparation. So ways in which non-native landholders are thinking and

00:29:23.340 brave new ways to return stolen land to tribes of origin. And there's these unlikely relationships

00:29:32.120 that are forming from these collaborations where descendants of people who were adversarial are

00:29:40.160 now coming together in a collaborative partnership to heal and to plant seeds together and to nourish

00:29:44.700 people. And I think it's one of the more hopeful things that I've had the opportunity to be

00:29:48.920 involved in. And I think that the echo and the fragrance of this work will continue to nourish

00:29:54.800 those well beyond this time we're in now. Wow, so beautiful. Just this deep relational

00:30:02.380 tending and reconciliation and spirit work that is rooted within seed restoration as

00:30:09.420 rematriation is so deep and really powerful. And I've heard you say before, and I love that you've

00:30:16.960 said that seed work is slow work. I also love to hear about the unlikely allyships forming.

00:30:23.020 Yeah. Yeah. It's intergenerational. It's so healing on so many levels.

00:30:28.820 Yeah, indeed. And the thing is, is that when we engage in the relationship of tending seed,

00:30:36.260 that work at its essence is intergenerational because seeds will outlive us. They've been

00:30:43.160 with our people against all adversities and all odds since the dawning of time. I mean, I think

00:30:48.040 about my own lineage of ancestors and the incredible adversities that they faced, whether

00:30:55.280 it was diseases wiping out a large percentage of the people or having their land taken from them

00:31:01.400 and relocated into different places. But amidst all of that, there were incredibly foresighted

00:31:07.760 individuals and ancestors who kept tiny little buckskin pouches of seed in safekeeping for a

00:31:14.980 time that they couldn't even see on their horizon, that they knew the descendants would need those

00:31:20.480 seeds and would nourish them and be a part of this bigger cultural matrix that we're woven into

00:31:26.200 through our cosmology. My work and the work of Indigenous Seedkeepers Network, it pays homage

00:31:31.700 and is just an extension of the incredible work that has been done by this grand lineage of

00:31:36.620 seed keepers who understood that the seeds would outlive them. And so part of seed keeping is

00:31:42.900 legacy building. So it's always making sure that if you have these beautiful corn seeds or these

00:31:47.860 bean seeds that you've been gifted, part of that responsibility is to ensure that you have somebody

00:31:53.060 else around you, hopefully somebody younger than you, who understands all of the cultural nuances

00:32:00.060 and significances and aspects of keeping those seeds alive so that when we as humans, you know,

00:32:05.880 our lifespan is short, but seed work is slow work. It's intergenerational work. And so it is

00:32:12.100 legacy building, it's lineage cultivating. And part of our work is to make certain that the bundle

00:32:18.820 of seeds and wisdom and stories and cultural memory that we've been given to us in this

00:32:26.100 generation, that we've tended it in such a way in our lifetime, that it's a more beautiful and

00:32:31.600 vibrant bundle that we then give down to our children. And that's one of the core fundamental

00:32:36.980 teachings that my elders share with me is that these seeds actually don't belong to us. We borrow

00:32:42.300 them from our children. That's how we say it. So we are actually borrowing these seeds from future

00:32:47.080 generations and we have to tend them in such a way that we understand that, that we have to make

00:32:52.880 sure that they're in really good shape for those yet to come. And so that's part of us being good

00:32:57.640 ancestors, good future ancestors, and also responsible descendants is making certain that

00:33:02.620 all of that work that our ancestors did against incredible adversities isn't all for nothing,

00:33:08.960 that we would be that generation who wouldn't allow that chain of stewardship to fall to the

00:33:13.580 ground and fall unnoticed, that we would honor it and care for it in that way.

00:33:27.640 Look around, see what we've found

00:33:32.640 May we take it from the land

00:33:44.020 And give it back, hold out your hands

00:33:57.640 O'er the quiet, immaculate ones

00:34:24.020 Concealed in their cloaks of green

00:34:29.780 Drawing light from above and below

00:34:41.580 Nourishing everyone you've ever known

00:34:52.540 oh gosh so so important so beautifully said

00:35:21.840 Rowan, thank you. And as you've been describing, seeds are so incredibly dynamic. And I think

00:35:29.240 similarly, we need to consider the constantly shifting field and changing landscape upon

00:35:35.200 which this work of seed rematriation rests. Whether it be indigenous folks working to

00:35:41.860 revitalize their heritage seeds on another tribe's homeland, or farmers on settler

00:35:47.260 descendant cultivating native seeds on occupied land. And there seems to be an incredibly rich

00:35:52.860 border in this work where ancient ways meet and mingle with the new. So I'm wondering if you have

00:35:59.320 anything to share from your practice at Sierra Seeds on this dance that honors both your own

00:36:04.380 traditional lineage and the history of the land or its own wild expression. Yeah, absolutely. I mean,

00:36:12.120 I think change is the only constant, right? And as a student of the seeds, I'm a student of

00:36:17.840 adaptation and innovation and creativity. Seeds are that talisman of adaptation and creativity

00:36:24.800 embodied, right? And so as we apprentice ourselves to them and allow them to guide the work,

00:36:31.060 I think we would be remiss to not only think about the ways in which the cultural memory and the

00:36:37.080 teachings that our elders and ancestors have taught us about how to take care of these seeds,

00:36:42.120 but we would be remiss if we didn't look to all of the tools that we have at our fingertips in

00:36:48.220 this modern time. I think that we have an opportunity right now to remember that we're

00:36:54.000 always in a change process, especially in agriculture. There's changes always happening

00:36:57.800 every single season and all the time. And so it's thinking about what's in the best interest of our

00:37:03.060 seeds and our people and what tools do we have now that we can adapt. We've been experimenting a lot

00:37:09.600 with irrigation practices here that allow the inherent strengths within the seeds to

00:37:15.860 come forth, right?

00:37:16.940 So when we baby seeds or when we give them too much water or too much nutrients, we actually

00:37:22.660 don't draw on their inherent strengths to adapt and to acclimate to the conditions that

00:37:27.540 we have.

00:37:28.020 And so we've been playing around a little bit with implementing some different ways

00:37:32.280 of growing and irrigating our crops.

00:37:34.480 So that way they are the most tenacious and resilient kind of in the face of what we see

00:37:39.080 on the horizon where we may have lack of access to water. We may need to be continuing to grow on

00:37:45.420 marginal lands given land access issues. And so how are we making certain that we're really

00:37:52.840 working in collaboration with the plants themselves and the practices that we use

00:37:57.780 to make sure that we're really relying on those inherent strengths in the land and the seed and

00:38:03.360 that synergy that they have instead of, again, going the way of industry, which is incredibly

00:38:08.300 high input agriculture, but I think that there's new iterations of it. And I think that this

00:38:13.600 younger generation that's getting involved in the food sovereignty movement has an incredible

00:38:18.140 capacity to dream and to vision and to use their inherent creativity as young folks

00:38:23.460 to think about, again, new ancient ways of growing and nourishing our communities

00:38:27.960 with the tools at hand. I mean, I even just see, aside from practical components of agriculture,

00:38:34.100 I see the way in which social media is being used to do community organizing around food,

00:38:39.480 the way in which cultural memory and knowledge is shared through unconventional means.

00:38:43.620 I think we're at a really exciting time in the world to really think about how old meets new

00:38:48.440 and future. Seeds remind us of that because seeds are always becoming something new again every

00:38:53.620 season. They're not a stagnant static entity. Every year they're adapting and changing slightly

00:38:59.380 to adapt to the new conditions of the time and so that's always why I talk to my students and

00:39:05.020 people around me about thinking like seeds and really leaning into that idea of seed time

00:39:10.640 because it isn't I think sometimes in heirloom seed preservation or conservation circles

00:39:16.040 oftentimes it's people trying to always keep the seeds into the snapshot of what it was 50 years

00:39:22.420 ago or 75 years ago or 100 years ago instead of embracing this more dynamic participatory

00:39:28.800 restoration of seeds where seeds are always their faces are always changing they're always

00:39:34.060 continuing to be renewed based on the environment that we're living in and so I think we're at a

00:39:40.500 really important time and we really need that younger generation of creative innovative thinkers

00:39:46.300 to be involved in this work absolutely and I'm happy you spoke to the evolution of seeds and

00:39:56.300 not trying to restore or go back in time, but instead dancing with what is now. And I think

00:40:04.380 about that a lot with forest restoration, with the native species nursery that I'm building out here

00:40:10.180 and the redwoods and so much of restoration ecology, at least the academic restoration

00:40:14.680 ecology is trying to put things back in time to a time that somebody is picking, you know,

00:40:21.920 like it's really interesting and then trying to fit into that little box but climate isn't what

00:40:27.980 it was a hundred years ago climate isn't what it was 50 years ago and it probably won't be that

00:40:32.360 another 50 years so there is a lot of evolution and change that I think we need to ride with

00:40:38.960 because we can't be in control of this we can't control seed we can't control weather patterns as

00:40:44.740 much as we try. Some of us try. And so I appreciate you speaking to that because, yeah, there needs

00:40:52.820 to be flexibility and deep listening and slowness. And I'm definitely seeing that a lot in my forestry

00:41:00.080 work. And it's a bit frustrating to push up against the normalized industrial commercial

00:41:07.040 model of reforestation and just how seeds are being worked with and cloning. And it's pretty

00:41:14.300 frustrating and so what you're saying gives me a lot of revitalizes my spirit like okay we got

00:41:20.420 this we just need to we keep needing to come back scale back come back to the land keep rethinking

00:41:26.520 so yeah i do want to talk a bit about the patenting and biopiracy of the food seed crop

00:41:33.840 and i was recently reading about a case in toton de peck miha indigenous community in the mountains

00:41:42.760 of eastern Oaxaca, Mexico, where they grow a variety of maize known as oloton, and this variety

00:41:50.280 has the ability to grow in nutrient-poor soil by extracting nitrogen from the air through its aerial

00:41:56.380 roots. And in recent years, scientists have been trying to determine whether this trait can be bred

00:42:03.080 into commercial corn, and if successful, a viable commercial application of the maize now heralded

00:42:09.620 as the corn of the future. And this case raises the alarming phenomenon around the commercialization

00:42:16.400 and exploitation of crops that have been nurtured by Indigenous peoples for thousands of years.

00:42:23.120 So I would really like if you could speak to some of these challenges facing the Indigenous

00:42:27.400 seed sovereignty movement and the critical work of safeguarding agricultural heritage

00:42:32.300 against patenting and biopiracy. Yeah, absolutely. And that's a big part of why

00:42:39.100 Indigenous Seakeepers Network banded together in the first place. You know, that network is built

00:42:44.560 upon, again, countless, countless generations of people doing the work on their lands and in their

00:42:50.740 communities. And it really became apparent in the last couple of decades that there are powers that

00:42:57.000 be that seek to extract and engage in biocolonialism and take not only seeds and foods, but also

00:43:05.820 cultural, Indigenous, traditional ecological knowledge, and privatize that and patent that

00:43:11.000 and commodify that, not to the benefit of the communities of origin, but much to the opposite

00:43:15.980 of that. A big part of our Indigenous Seedkeepers Network is to come together in solidarity,

00:43:23.080 cross-tribes, an intertribal network, largely here in the United States, but we've been

00:43:28.240 collaborating with an emerging network in Canada, and then have also been invited to the table in

00:43:33.360 Mexico and Central America as well to speak about resilient seed systems and the need for advocacy

00:43:40.000 against biocolonialism and biopiracy. We've been brainstorming quite a number of ways in which we

00:43:47.080 can come together in solidarity in the face of that. And it's a multitude of fronts, right? So

00:43:52.480 that's why we need a diversity of people involved. It's not just the farmers and seedkeepers, but

00:43:57.560 it's also attorneys and public speakers and thought leaders and politicians and teachers

00:44:03.600 and parents.

00:44:04.480 Like, it's just such a diversity of people who we need on this front, on this seed revolution

00:44:09.420 front, because we need to cultivate seed literacy, but we also need that advocacy.

00:44:15.280 So we've been working with a number of entities within our Indigenous communities who either

00:44:20.260 have felt the threat of seeds being taken away from their communities to be commodified

00:44:26.660 or even potentially patented to those who are just starting to learn about this and

00:44:32.540 wanting to know how to protect their seeds from that potentially in the future.

00:44:37.820 So we've been creating a number of different tools around templates and frameworks for

00:44:43.160 tribal ordinances, what can tribal communities do at their governmental level to protect

00:44:48.020 their seeds.

00:44:49.000 So there's that happening.

00:44:50.360 There's advocacy that's happening at the state level with United States government

00:44:54.160 representatives and Congress people to put bills through to basically acknowledge the fact that we

00:45:00.960 don't see ourselves as tribal communities as having sole proprietorship over seed. We don't

00:45:05.060 have a relationship, a proprietary relationship to seeds, but this is one of a collective inheritance,

00:45:10.120 right? So we're attempting to create some frameworks that acknowledge that and that can

00:45:15.140 actually hold water in bigger courts and working with organizations such as the Open Source Seed

00:45:21.500 initiatives to potentially flip certain tools that are actually used in the patenting and

00:45:27.640 commodification of seed. There's something that's called a bag tag. So when there's a genetically

00:45:32.360 modified seed that has a license attached to it, just by opening that bag of seed, you've agreed

00:45:37.840 to the immense fine print that's on the license of that seed. And so we actually have been creating

00:45:43.780 seed packets for Indigenous Seed Keepers Network, which actually flips it completely on its head,

00:45:48.900 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.

00:46:08.300 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.

00:46:15.780 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.

00:46:40.620 yeah the consolidation of seeds we're witnessing today is an increasingly urgent matter in the face

00:46:48.780 of our earth changes and we know that biodiversity not monoculture has always been the cornerstone

00:46:56.580 of a resilient healthy food system and that this will allow us to weather warming temperatures

00:47:01.020 and climate uncertainty but taking this one step further i'd love if you could talk more about

00:47:07.260 the importance of preserving biodiversity in the living context, which you'd mentioned before in

00:47:13.020 our conversation, or on a local level for climate change resilience, as opposed to, say, storing

00:47:18.780 seeds within private collections or seed banks or refrigerated banks, like you were talking earlier.

00:47:24.900 In other words, why does biodiversity require radical, abundant redistribution rather than

00:47:30.800 private withholding or stockpiling? Yeah, that's a great question. My simple

00:47:36.960 answer that and then I'll sort of elaborate on it is that every garden is a seed bank you know

00:47:41.900 every piece of land that holds wild and cultivated plants is a vibrant living seed bank and that's

00:47:48.040 the way it has been since the dawning of time that these seeds are in a constant relationship

00:47:53.420 not only with the land and the elements there but the people who've stewarded them

00:47:57.340 I mean that's of vital importance that cultural memory as it relates to biodiversity and those

00:48:02.620 relationships as it relates to biodiversity is critical. There's a mentor and colleague of mine,

00:48:09.020 Virginia Nazaria, who wrote really just some signature pieces on cultural memory and biodiversity,

00:48:14.220 talks about this idea of sensuous conservation, which means that people are intimately connected

00:48:22.080 to the seeds and to the foods through their emotional landscape. So it basically comes back

00:48:27.260 to this premise that we love the seeds in the same way that we love our children. The smells

00:48:32.580 of them remind us of home. The taste of them reinvigorates our purpose for caretaking them,

00:48:38.720 that there's this other element of responsibility that gets activated by the multisensory

00:48:44.020 nature of the way in which we engage these foods when they're in our day-to-day life, right? And

00:48:48.860 Wendell Berry, I use this quote often, he says, we exploit what we merely value, but we defend

00:48:55.120 what we love. And I think that when we begin to have a culture and grow the culture in a way that

00:49:02.200 we see every garden as a seed bank and we begin to reestablish that relationship back in our daily

00:49:08.320 life, we begin to grow a culture of people who love the seeds as mother and will defend them

00:49:13.920 against all odds. And so that to me, I think is that form of living seed bank, that the way that

00:49:21.860 they stay protected is in our relationship to them and in their relationship to the land,

00:49:26.880 as opposed to this false sense of security of putting seeds into the, you know, the tundra

00:49:32.460 at Svalbard, you know, beneath the permafrost in this faraway location. Farmers have always kept

00:49:38.860 aside little caches of seed in pots or in baskets, all kinds of ways, in jars and various things.

00:49:45.700 But the ways in which we have always stewarded seeds in ways that create vibrant and vital agriculture that nourishes people is by growing them out and ensuring that we have a relationship to them encoded in our stories.

00:50:00.400 They become encoded in our songs. They become encoded in our ceremonies. They become encoded in motifs and visual art motifs that are on pots and baskets and in our day-to-day lives.

00:50:13.000 And that's the real security. That's real seed security and seed sovereignty is when our seed banks are alive and thriving all around us. And that's the vision that I hope for. We need to get out of that mentality that seeds are static, that we can just put them in a jar and set them on a shelf and leave them.

00:50:31.200 No, they're a living, breathing entity that we have to be in constant communication with.

00:50:36.580 And our elders told us this, that if we began to forget and abdicate our relationship to

00:50:41.040 those seeds, that those seeds would go away, right?

00:50:43.260 That they were a gift from creator since the dawning of our creation stories.

00:50:46.520 And if we were to forget about them, then they would go away, right?

00:50:50.320 And so many of my ancestors and elders petitioned long and hard after the hard times of relocation

00:50:56.980 and displacement to ensure that those seeds would continue to stay with us and continue to care for

00:51:01.960 us and that we made promises back to them that we would take care of them too and engage that

00:51:07.960 reciprocity with them. So that's my invitation for all those who are listening is find simple ways

00:51:15.500 in which you can re-engage your relationship to seed because you're in a relationship to seed and

00:51:20.160 she never forgot about you. If you have a full belly of food, she didn't forget about caring

00:51:24.880 for you and so what are the small and beautiful ways in which you can re-enliven and reconnect

00:51:30.160 and oftentimes ancestry is a good place to start you know that same question I stated in the

00:51:35.500 beginning with who are the foods that and seeds that fed your ancestors it's oftentimes a really

00:51:40.320 beautiful springboard to a really beautiful and nourishing relationship that will again live

00:51:45.180 beyond your own time so beautiful thank you Rowan and to stay a bit on this topic I know that much

00:51:54.860 of your work exist within this larger paradigm of food sovereignty, like we've been speaking.

00:51:59.820 And a critical piece of the puzzle that I'm curious to ask you about is how we might create

00:52:05.180 more sustainable, regenerative economic models that support the decentralization and democratization

00:52:11.780 of seeds. Do you have any thoughts to share around the revitalization of a trade economy,

00:52:17.120 maybe, that might restore the currency of kinship and connection?

00:52:20.760 Yeah, it's a big part of our growing edge, especially right now. We're actually, through the Indigenous Seed Keepers Network, we're running a seed drive right now where we're gifting thousands and thousands of seed packets back out to Indigenous communities to really support the hope and resilience gardens that are emerging in this time of uncertainty.

00:52:38.940 And it really is perhaps fast-tracking an idea that we've been kind of flow-simmering for a while, which is that trade routes and kinship routes have existed on Turtle Island since the dawning of time, that seeds have moved from places like Oaxaca all the way up to just north of Winnipeg and into Maine.

00:52:58.580 And it's an amazing, intricate migration path that seeds have taken.

00:53:03.280 And so we are working as a network to begin to build the foundation of capacity for local

00:53:09.960 and regional seed hubs to emerge that would be based from a cooperative model.

00:53:14.160 So working together at the regional level to grow seed, to share it with others in our

00:53:19.240 region and to share it at a local level and recognizing that, again, it's much easier

00:53:24.780 for me to envision a group of people growing out a multitude of varieties with grace and

00:53:31.400 ease versus kind of the every man for themselves model, which is I were to caretake 200 different

00:53:37.780 seed varieties on my own home farm by myself, that would take up all of my hours and all

00:53:42.660 of my days.

00:53:43.720 But if I had 20 people who would do it with me and each of us grew 10 varieties and then

00:53:49.400 we shared them amongst each other, we have so much more capacity when we band together

00:53:53.920 and collaboration in that collective effort, that existed here. That existed here. It was the

00:53:59.560 dawning of agriculture on Turtle Island. And so what we're doing is trying to revitalize that and

00:54:04.480 re-engage that by helping to build capacity, by leveraging resources, fundraising, and getting

00:54:10.840 the tools and the seeds and access to land to people who need it, to be able to produce larger

00:54:16.600 amounts of seed that then can be shared in community. So we've been seeing a lot of seed

00:54:21.180 giveaways, a lot of ways in which we're doing these seed drives to take money out of the equation.

00:54:26.940 I don't think seed companies and commodification of seed is the way forward, actually. I think

00:54:31.740 there is a deeper gift in trade economy that can be revitalized that has existed way, way longer

00:54:37.540 than the commodification of seed, which, again, I'll remind you, it's been under 200 years that

00:54:43.540 seed companies and the commodification of seed has existed. And before that, it was a complex

00:54:48.160 and beautiful trade network.

00:54:50.020 And I think what it reminds us of

00:54:52.300 is that we currently exist in an economy,

00:54:56.380 in a capitalist economy that's based on scarcity.

00:54:59.200 And what we can envision when we say,

00:55:02.100 in seeds we trust, right?

00:55:03.360 When we understand the wealth of seeds

00:55:05.720 and the wealth of the land

00:55:06.900 is that we root our regenerative economy

00:55:09.580 in an understanding of abundance as opposed to scarcity.

00:55:13.380 Because seeds themselves are the talisman of that.

00:55:16.340 One seed turns into a hundred, and then a hundred of those will turn into thousands.

00:55:21.280 So the nature of life herself on earth is actually rooted in exponential abundance.

00:55:27.200 But we have this manufactured economic system that is rooted in scarcity.

00:55:32.960 And so when we can root our indigenous economy or our natural economy back into the true nature of life herself, which is ever generous and benevolent,

00:55:43.520 And then I think we can create a cooperative and collective economy that isn't exploitative and extractive. And in fact, we'll just continue to share nourishment and abundance with everyone. And that's what food justice looks like. And that's why we need communities of color and Indigenous leaders to be at the forefront of food justice work, because they have a more intact understanding and memory of what that might look like.

00:56:08.620 yes absolutely agree with you well as we begin to come to a close on this conversation which

00:56:18.440 i don't want to end i do have a few other thoughts for you i really love hearing about

00:56:24.820 your visions for a different type of future than the current trajectory and it really does

00:56:33.180 give me a lot of food for thought. And in one of your blog pieces, you share this word from

00:56:39.320 the Bureau of Linguistic Reality, who we've had the pleasure of having on the show before.

00:56:44.320 And the word is que seed. I think I'm pronouncing it right, which means a seed that due to social 0.84

00:56:51.400 trauma stays consciously dormant, not out of oppression, but rather due to a deep intuition,

00:56:57.440 which senses not to seed until it finds itself in a fertile, fecund environment.

00:57:03.180 end quote. So I'd love to hear more on how we can understand the unfolding of seeds in their own

00:57:10.100 time and the role we play as humans in preparing a soft home to receive them. And then maybe as a

00:57:17.480 second part to that question, how do we become more human, more ourselves when we step back

00:57:23.560 into accountability and honor our consensual contract with the land? It's a gorgeous question.

00:57:29.900 And I think what it comes back down to is starting small like a seed, right?

00:57:34.700 It's like starting with ourselves.

00:57:36.780 You know, I think sometimes when we look at the landscape of change and the process of

00:57:41.000 change, sometimes we can get really either paralyzed or distracted, I think, by the

00:57:46.560 bigness of what has to happen, you know, in a change-making landscape.

00:57:50.340 And we sometimes forget our own personal agency and that we're a collection of little things

00:57:55.660 But if we make small, subtle changes into the way that we we move in the world, that that has such a more powerful is so much more of a powerful change agent than, you know, trying to rally and change like NASCAR dads and soccer moms.

00:58:12.140 You know, like it's just like, how do we start with ourselves and then have that change echo outward?

00:58:18.140 That's why I think asking ourselves those questions around what is our personal responsibility to seeds and how have we abdicated that in the past and how can we reclaim that and re-engage it, even if we are not gardeners or farmers or landholders, even if we live in an apartment in New York City?

00:58:36.000 Like, what does that mean? And what small things can we do in our life that retune the way that we look at the world and re-engages that more reverent nature?

00:58:45.800 And again, it might be starting from a place of connection and lineage and ancestry and coming into a deeper connection there.

00:58:54.140 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.

00:59:05.140 to talk about these things, to engage, you know, what does it mean to be a seed keeper? What does

00:59:11.260 it mean to care for seeds? What does it mean to create seed literacy in our communities, whether

00:59:16.360 it's through the actual saving of seeds themselves or through making art or poetry or creating

00:59:23.620 curriculum for our students or, you know, whatever that might look like, what role do you play in

00:59:28.260 generating increased seed literacy in our community? And so I think again, starting small, but I think

00:59:34.800 through the power of cultivating creative supportive learning spaces where we can normalize

00:59:39.620 this kind of conversation. I've been at a number of different conferences and spoken publicly

00:59:44.160 where normalizing the spiritual and cultural nature of agriculture has been well-received

00:59:50.540 and people have come to me and thanked me and a number of my colleagues for normalizing the

00:59:56.960 spiritual and cultural nature of agriculture because oftentimes in western culture everything

01:00:01.380 is so compartmentalized right and it's so it's so reductionist it's so boiled down to just science

01:00:08.460 and so ways in which we can enliven this aspect of ourselves that does have a cultural and spiritual

01:00:14.540 connection to land and seed and it's a healing that needs to happen in order for us to really

01:00:19.320 reseed what the food landscape can look like yes i'm with you rowan there is so much to chew on

01:00:29.780 here that you have given us. And I personally feel really connected to everything that you've

01:00:36.220 been sharing and with the seeds, they've been calling me a lot. Yeah, I'm just grateful for you

01:00:43.320 for holding so many aspects of this work together. So thank you again for your work and for sharing

01:00:51.280 this time with us today on For the Wild. Oh, my pleasure. What an honor.

01:00:59.780 I can always breathe under her

01:01:08.160 Lay at the bottom

01:01:11.840 Gaze up at the sun

01:01:16.100 I can't be contained

01:01:24.880 And I won't be tamed

01:01:28.220 Can't be contained and I won't

01:01:32.480 Can't be contained and I won't be

01:01:37.880 Thank you for listening to another episode of For the Wild podcast.

01:01:42.280 I'm Ayanna Young.

01:01:43.860 The music you heard today was from Madeline Alana.

01:01:47.000 I'd like to thank our podcast production team,

01:01:49.840 Francesca Glassbell, Hannah Wilton, Andrew Storrs,

01:01:53.820 Erica Ekrem, Melanie Younger,

01:01:55.860 and our special guest producer, March Young.

01:01:59.620 If you haven't already, please rate us on iTunes

01:02:02.500 as it really helps build our community

01:02:04.440 and sign up for our newsletter at forthewild.world.

For The Wild - June 15, 2022

ROWEN M WHITE on Seed Rematriation and Fertile Resistance [ENCORE] ⧸291

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