Haudenosaunee Three Sisters Gardening and Seed Saving

Link to Dr. Webster's Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCedwwKoqSpSD1pCYvfpUXbw

Instagram: @Ukwakhwa

When I checked my phone this morning, I had an email reminder about a free online workshop today that I had signed up for several weeks ago and forgotten about. It was entitled "Haudenosaunee Three Sisters Gardening and Seed Saving", which I had signed up for because I am trying to plant a garden plot and I am interested in trying to have part of it be a three sisters garden (corn, squash, beans). This webinar was rather timely as this afternoon I went to check out a garden plot to rent in the Puyallup Community Garden.

This hour-long webinar was presented by Dr. Rebecca M. Webster. Dr. Webster is an enrolled member of the Oneida tribe and Assistant Professor at the University of Minnesota Duluth teaching in the American Indian Studies Department. Her research interests focus on tribal and local intergovernmental relationships, best practices in tribal administration, and indigenous food sovereignty, and for the past 7 years, she has been stewarding Haudenosaunee seeds. In this webinar, she outlined a little Oneida history, gave some tips on how to grow a three sisters garden, and explained the importance of food sovereignty in Indigenous communities.

The Oneida nation traditionally occupied 6 million acres of land from the St. Lawrence River to the Susquehanna River (from current-day New York up through Canada). The Oneida tribe is part of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy (also known as the Iroquois Confederacy or the League of Five Nations made up of the Oneida, Mohawk, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca nations). The Oneida nation was forced from their land in the early 1800s, and many moved to the Wisconsin area. Within one generation, the Oneida people lost 95% of their traditional land, largely due to allotments. Allotments happened when the government broke up tribal land and gave it to individuals in the tribe who were more easily able to lose it due to not being able to pay the mortgage, bad land deals, etc. (a way of dividing and conquering). Additionally, like many tribes in the country, children were taken from their parents and placed in boarding schools to strip them of their culture and assimilate them into colonial society. Boarding schools were harmful to the transfer of Indigenous knowledge, including knowledge of growing food and stewarding seeds because how is information supposed to be transferred if the connection between children and parents or grandchildren and grandparents is severed? Boarding schools were also teaching about agriculture, but looked down on Indigenous agriculture. While this history is one of loss, it is also one of resilience and hope. While the relationship between Oneida people and their food systems (particularly the relationship with corn, beans, and squash) has ebbed and flowed through time, it has never been completely severed. People hid traditions in secret, and in the past few decades, there has been a revival of this traditional knowledge.

Dr. Webster shared some tips in growing 3 sisters plants which I’m grateful for, and I’m excited to watch videos on her Youtube channel to help guide me in the garden I hope to grow this year.

She also spent some time talking about the health benefits of Indigenous communities eating Indigenous foods. Native communities have been affected by persistent colonial assimilation policies, like being forced into boarding schools that took away culture and by being forced off their land, which resulted in not being allowed to harvest and eat traditional foods. Currently Indigenous folks have heart disease 20% higher than the national average (I think the highest cause of death in Indigenous communities) and rates of diabetes 2 times higher than the national average. Dr. Webster mentioned a study where researchers studied Indigenous people who were given access to Indigenous foods, and results showed weight loss, improved insulin metabolism, decreased blood sugar and blood pressure level, improved levels of cholesterol and triglycerides, and even reversal of heart disease.

One way to make these results more universal is for Indigenous communities to have food sovereignty. Food sovereignty means access to healthy and culturally appropriate food, being able to engage in sustainable food production, and being able to safeguard agriculture practices, including planting, harvesting, preservation.

Something Dr. Webster said reflects an idea that I have been hearing recently in my circles: “Every time an Indigenous person plants a seed, that is an act of resistance, an assertion of sovereignty, and a reclamation of identity.” While I think that based on the history outlined above, this statement is more powerful for Indigenous communities than colonizer communities, I would argue that anyone planting seeds represents an act of resistance, sovereignty, and reclaiming identity. If we go far enough back, we are all indigenous to somewhere, and much Indigenous knowledge has been lost. How many people do you know who grow food, who garden, who even know how plants develop or how to collect and steward seeds. Even though my networks lie largely in the environmental education/conservation realm, I still know relatively very few people who know about any of this. I didn’t know anything about how plants grow or how seeds were formed on common plants or even what part of the plants I was eating (did you know the part of broccoli you eat is part of the flowers?!) until I started grad school at age 23 when I had to learn about plants in order to teach about them to students. Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer says in her book “Braiding Sweetgrass” that the best way to connect people to land is for them to plant and tend a garden. I agree with her. Growing a garden allows us to slow down and observe plants in a way we don’t by buying fruits/vegetables in the supermarket. Stewarding seeds is a way to resist colonial systems and reclaim identity and relationships with the land.

I think helping Indigenous people reclaim their food and seed sovereignty can benefit everyone. We can all benefit from reclaiming this knowledge. And these communities don’t need saviors. They need supporters, resources, and for colonizers to get out of the way.