The Pawnee Seed Preservation Society Revive Ancient Ties to Ancestors | Seed Warriors | PBS 

I really love seeing stories like this. It's tragic that we've lost so much, including our ancestral foods, to colonization. I can only hope to one day be able to help in these seed preserving and growing efforts. Look forward to seeing more like this.

Man what strikes me as so inspiring and beautiful about this is how deeply everyone involved and around the efforts to revive Shawnee seed varieties benefits from this work in so many ways. For the Shawnee it’s both cultural preservation and revitalization and a health initiative, since as they said their strains of corn are in their blood from generations on generations, their bodies are tuned to getting their nutritional needs from these crops and taking that away from them has, as is the case with so many other indigenous people around the world, led to a plethora of health issues from the forced adjustment of their diets in the long term. For the farmers in Nebraska this is an effort that helps them to build a sense of community with the Shawnee and with one another, as well as with the land they live on, as I think many settler-descended Americans like myself can say we don’t have that same connection to the world around us and the land we live on that Indigenous peoples have from having lived in and known intimately their homeland and the life that subsists on it. For other Indigenous peoples and generational settler communities this can serve as a model of reparation and cooperation for further efforts in righting the wrongs of colonialism in the future, not just in America but in all corners of the globe affected. And just for all the people of the world, indigenous crop varieties are really vital going into an uncertain future because the monoculture farming system our world survives on nowadays is fragile and vulnerable to devastating breakdowns caused by lack of robust genetic diversity to protect from diseases or pests. When the time comes that some new blight develops or a pest insect breaks out that threatens the monoculture strains of crops we’ve overcultivated it’ll be the genetic strength of varied indigenous crops that may offer the key to saving the rest of us. All of us in this world are interconnected, no man is an island and no people walk alone, we have to love and care for one another to be strong in the future. Inspiring work, hope it flourishes in days to come!

Yummy yummy corn. Its really precious.

A blessing to all these seed collectors. 🙂

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Thank you for this story. Knowledge is so important to improve our understanding of different customs, culture’s and history.

Thank you for sharing this story! 😀👍

It is beautiful to see biodiversity and culture prolonged and protected in this way.