As part of their education program, The Seed Savers Exchange recently hosted a webinar series about seed rematriation. The SSE is a non-profit organization that connects farmers. The SSE also collects, stores and regenerates heirloom seeds, distributes seeds via a catalog and website and educates gardeners.
Seed rematriation, as the SSE handout accompanying the series states, “addresses the desire for Indigenous communities to actively reclaim their ancestral seeds and traditions.”
This webinar series covers the efforts of SSE, funded through a grant by the North Central Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Partnership.
The first webinar was hosted by Shelley Buffalo, an enrolled member of the Meskwaki Tribe and 2021 Seasonal Seed Steward for SSE. Currently, Buffalo works for the Sustainable Iowa Land Trust through the Americorp VISTA Program.
Buffalo introduced the two featured partners, Dr. Rebecca Webster and Kellie Zahn.
Dr. Webster is an enrolled citizen of the Oneida Nation and an assistant professor in the Department of American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota-Duluth.
Zahn is the agriculture agent at the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohican Indians Community, located in Bowler, WI.
Both the Oneida Nation and the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohican Indians originally lived in the modern New York area. However, early colonists from Europe pushed the indigenous peoples out of their ancestral lands and with the loss of their ancestral lands, the ancestral seeds were also lost, too.
Dr. Webster began her presentation with an introduction to her Oneida farmstead, Ukwakhwa: Tsinu Niyukwayay’thisl, which translates as “Our foods: Where we plant things.” Starting with a humble crop of white corn in 2015, Ukwakhwa expanded to more indigenous and Haudenosaunee (Iroquois Nations) varieties including corn, beans, squash, tobacco and sunflowers.
In 2017, Dr. Webster and her partner, Steve, purchased ten acres within…
