Photos by D.Kakkak
One of the world’s wonderful speakers about the nature of, treatment, care and planting of seeds is Akwesasne Mohawk seed keeper Rowen White. Through several workshops in the Great Lakes and at the Gun Lake Pottawatomi tribes’ Camp Jijak in 2016 and 2017 White has led discussions on the cultural treatment, history and love of seeds that Indigenous people have.
White also brought some of her wonderful and extensive seed collections to assist in teaching people about the role of labeling, organizing, acclimating and caring for seeds for storage and planting. At just about any event that Rowen attends, there will be an abundance of seeds to look at, and in many cases share or exchange.
According to Rowen White “once you step on the seed keepers path, you will have more seeds then you know what to do with, because seeds, they are always multiplying exponentially.”
Many of the conferences, sponsored in part by the Inter-Tribal Agricultural Council (IAC) are meant to help bring and grow opportunities for American Indian farmers, growers, forage and gatherers and enhance the ability of Indigenous communities to become food self-sufficient once again.