Diane Wilson: 

So from 1862, when we see women protecting their seeds to now, when we see genetically modified seeds and to, say, well, that relationship has undergone really immense transformation and what are the consequences? And how does that reinforce your worldview of either being in relationship to the world, in which we take care of it, or we are in relationship to a seed, in which we take advantage of? 

Tyler Owens: 

That was Diane Wilson, this week’s guest on Everywhere Radio. My name is Tyler Owens, and I’ll be sitting in for Whitney Kimball Coe this week. Through this episode, we will be featuring a conversation that Diane Wilson and I had at Rural Women Everywhere. Diane Wilson is Dakota from the Rosebud Reservation. Through our conversation, we will explore what it means to be a native author in mainstream media, where she draws her inspiration, and the importance of community in place. Thank you so much for joining us. So first, let’s get started with, how did you get into storytelling? 

Diane Wilson: 

Well, I really love that you describe writing as storytelling because that is at the heart of what we do, whether it’s telling it in books or telling it into the oral tradition. But for me, I think the start came when I was growing up and heard a story from my mother and my aunts about attending boarding school out on the Pine Ridge and the Rosebud reservations. And, in my family, no one understood what boarding schools were for. We knew that my mother and my aunts went there because it was a way to help to support their family through what was a really brutal depression. And so, for me, that’s where the story started because I didn’t understand it. I didn’t know what boarding schools were for. I didn’t know why my relatives were there and why my life was so different. 

So you grow up with these questions. And then, as I became an adult, I started looking for understanding into starting with boarding schools, starting with my family’s history, and that ended up being a memoir called Spirit Car. And then, about 20 years ago, I also started volunteering working with indigenous seeds and found a whole new world of stories. So I mean, the stories were carrying the history of the land but also the history of the people who grew them. So I worked with Native organizations for the past 15 years. One of them was Native American Food Sovereignty Alliance. And that’s where I really learned a lot about seeds, about traditional food systems, about food sovereignty. And then it was all of these stories together that I tried to bring into writing The Seed Keeper. 

Tyler Owens: 

That’s amazing. And just as you talked on wanting to discover your family’s story and where they came from and going through those boarding school eras, I’m from the Healer [inaudible 00:03:35] community, so I know my grandmother’s experiences and her siblings as well. So that leads me to my next question. Why do you feel it’s important to have Native American stories and authors, such as yourself, in mainstream media? 

Diane Wilson: 

Well, just thinking about where we started, which is that conversation around boarding schools and growing up not knowing anything about how assimilation works, what boarding schools were for, and then not having any of those resources or role models available in the schools that I grew up in. And so I feel like we have a lot of ground to make up in terms of telling this stories that have been repressed. Among them, I do feel that the boarding school story is one that there’s so much work to be done around that history, especially if you’ve been following what’s come out of Canada. So stories like that are incredibly important to tell the… And it’s really important for the healing work that needs to be part of that history as well, that people understand why we had boarding schools and that deep intention of assimilating Native people by removing children. 

Diane Wilson: 

It’s such a horrific story, but when you tell those stories, when you share them, you open up that opportunity for healing work. So that’s one of the reasons is to bring forward these stories that have been repressed for so many generations. And I’ve been doing my own research in seeing how many of these histories and stories have been told from the perspective of white men and that how often historians… That these storytellers, they would misinterpret the culture or they would shift it so that they’re telling historical events from a perspective that that is very one-sided. And this can lead to the development of stereotypes. And one of the things that, I think, is really critical is the fact that the stories and voices of women have been silenced for many generations. 

Diane Wilson: 

So when you look back in history, it’s very hard to understand the role of women in women’s stories. And one of the stories that has always seemed especially important to me is the role that women have always played in agriculture and that, when we think about the fact that so many of the foods that we rely on today were developed by Native agriculturalists and that, in many traditional societies, women often led the way in terms of keeping the gardens. If the tribes were gardeners, it was often the women who took care of raising the food that way and saving seeds. And yet, that history has pretty much been silenced and that we don’t acknowledge the role of women, for example, in developing corn, which today, especially living in Minnesota, is one of the most important crops that we’re raising. And that women played a really critical role in helping to develop that plant, in helping to disseminate, and find food uses for it. 

Diane Wilson: 

And yet women don’t get the credit that they deserve for doing this incredible work as agriculturalists. So part of telling stories is giving credit to women for the work they have always done in taking care of families, taking care of community, taking of seeds, and also doing this really brilliant work of helping to develop the foods that we rely on today. So that’s one of my favorite stories to bring forward is around corn and the role of women in developing it. 

Tyler Owens: 

Of course. And, in a lot of communities, tribally specific, we do know that it’s a lot of a matrilineal society. A lot of women tend to the children. They take care of the food. They manage to pretty much be the backbone of the family. And so that’s one difference whenever it comes to indigenous peoples’ relationships with food. But do you mind touching on, when it comes to your book and the story of seed-keeping, the difference of relationships between indigenous communities and non-natives? 

Diane Wilson: 

So when I think about that different in relationships, it’s in terms of, just to generalize rather broadly, the difference in worldviews so that when I think about… Especially for Dakota people, the worldview could be summed up in the phrase, Mitákuye Oyás’iŋ, which means we are all related. And through that phrase, it means I’m related to all of you. I’m related to the plants, the animals, the water, the soil, the air, and that, as a relative, I have a responsibility to take care of all of these beings and to see them as living beings who are co-creating the world with us. And so, from that perspective, it means that if I’m out gathering wild plants, I only take what I need. It means that if I’m growing corn in my garden, I’m going to take care of the soil. I’m going to take care of the seeds. I’m going to offer prayers when I’m planting, when I’m harvesting. And throughout that entire process of being in relationship to the plants and animals, who give the gift of their lives as food, then I understand that, at the heart, it’s based on a reciprocal relationship, so that we give and we receive.  

And then what I would call another worldview, which what settlers brought in, which is viewing plants and animals and soil and land as commodities so that, if you regard all of these beings as commodities, then they can be sold. So then, you bring a very different perspective, which is that bottom line. It’s that making money from these relationships, it’s a profit orientation. But the danger in that relationship is that you can rationalize the way you treat animals and plants and soil, for example, based on the amount of money that you can make out of the way you treat them. So you can rationalize raising your animals in factory conditions. You can rationalize not taking care of your soil to the point at which it’s completely depleted. You can pollute your water. You can genetically modify seeds. And these are ways, to me, that show a worldview based on a commodity relationship, as opposed to a relative relationship. So I’m wondering, Tyler Owens, what would you add to that, from your perspective, from your upbringing? 

Tyler Owens: 

Of course. Thank you for that question. For me personally, it’s a big piece of that is the respect component of understanding that we don’t necessarily have ownership over anything. And whenever we think about the food that we’re taking in, we’re thinking about all of the work that went into it, the prayers that go into it, as well as just being grateful for being able to have what we had, because a lot of our tribal communities definitely faced famine at one point or another and are fortunate enough to be here today as resilient as we are. And, of course, your book is absolutely beautiful, The Seed Keeper. Do you mind sharing with us the importance of seed keeping or what that tradition is? 

Diane Wilson: 

Well, so this has been a big part of my own life journey is understanding the importance of seeds. So 20 years ago, when I was really trying to understand my own family history, I heard about a collection of very old, rare seeds that were being grown out on a tiny little garden just south of the Twin Cities. And I had not heard of indigenous seeds to that point, but at this garden, they were growing out seeds like Cherokee Trail of Tears corn, and there was traditional tobacco that was 800 years old or more. There was Hopi Black turtle beans. And what was so touching to me, so impressive, was the fact that these seeds had been saved by generation after generation in families who often faced terrific hardship and sometimes even starvation. And yet, they saved those seeds because that longer-term view of thinking always ahead to the next season but also the next generations meant that your responsibility, as a seed keeper was immense. 

And that’s the story that I’ve really learned by working with these different Native organizations, working to both protect, grow out, and return these seeds to communities as food. So I’ve learned from farmers, I’ve learned from elders, I’ve learned from native youth, I’ve learned from the seeds themselves just how important seeds have always been as part of our culture, and that that practice holds such important teachings for us as human beings. And so it was trying to combine all that I was learning into a book that took me a long time, but it is really the culmination of all of that experience. 

Tyler Owens: 

That’s amazing. And I mean, in the past couple of years, I feel like we’ve definitely seen a lot of young people specifically, but a lot of people, throughout Indian country who have been really working hard to go back to their indigenous foods and trying to decolonize the foods that they intake, which means growing their own and also learning about the different kinds of nutritional values that a lot of these items had that our ancestors ate. 

Whitney Kimball Coe: 

We’ll be right back after this from The Daily Yonder. 

Xander Brown: 

Hi, I’m Xander Brown with The Daily Yonder. Check out The Yonder Report, a new weekly podcast rounding up the latest rural news, produced by The Daily Yonder and Public News Service. You can listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. 

Whitney Kimball Coe: 

And now back to Everywhere Radio. 

Tyler Owens: 

So besides just wanting to bring the tradition of seed keeping to the table, what else inspired you to write this book? 

Diane Wilson: 

I think of myself… I’m a writer and a gardener, and those two just they feed each other. So I garden and I write stories about it and then the stories feed the gardening. And so, in addition to the stories that those seeds were carrying, I was also involved in an event, oh, back in 2002, called the Dakota Commemorative March. And that was an event here in Minnesota to honor the 1,700 Dakota women, children, and elders who were being forced marched after the 1862 Dakota War, from the Lower Sioux reservation to a concentration camp at Fort Snelling. And so the story I was told is that the women didn’t know where they were being sent. They didn’t know how they would take care of their families or what they would grow in the coming season. So they sewed their seeds in the hems of their skirts, and they hid them in their pockets. 

Diane Wilson: 

And so, even when families were starving, they protected those seeds so that they would have something to grow in the coming season but also for future generations. So it was that, the example of their courage, their strength in making sure that they protected those seeds, they’re the reason why we have this Dakota Corn today. So I’m actually growing that corn that I write about in my own garden. I don’t have a lot of plants, but it’s really important to me to be in relationship with those plants. But it was the teachings from that story of… It made me realize that today, all these, what is it, 150-plus years later, that we are facing the same kinds of… We are facing very different challenges but no less serious, which is when I grow my Dakota Corn in my backyard, I’m surrounded by corn fields. 

Diane Wilson: 

And so that corn is at risk of being cross-pollinated, always. And so it is on our watch now, our responsibility to take care of those seats. So part of writing this book, for me, was wanting to communicate that message of this is our responsibility that has come forward from the story of what those Dakota women did. I just wanted to put it in a story so that it wasn’t a lecture. It wasn’t yet one more dire headline. I wanted to be infused with hope. I wanted to, through the story, reconnect with what is so beautiful, so hopeful, and so amazing about seeds because, I think, we’ve moved away from that. 

Tyler Owens: 

Of course. And, in your book, the main character, Rosalie Iron Wing, she’s finding home again after being gone for a while. And, like you said, a lot of these women who just are people, in general, who are displaced and moved around the country and had to make do with what they were given, what is the importance of connection to place whenever it comes to tribal communities and specifically for Rosalie? 

Diane Wilson: 

Mm-hmm (affirmative). Well, I think, for Rosalie, like a lot of people, it’s coming back to your homeland. So it’s the place where your ancestors are buried. It’s the place that always feels like home to you. So you know the plants. You know the animals who grow there. You know the medicines and what they’re used for. And I like to think about the horizon line, that we are drawn back to the horizon line. That is part of who we are and that… One of the terms I love is that idea of blood memory, that when we come home, we feel it in our bones. We recognize it. We hear it and just in the sound of the wind and, again, that horizon line and the feel of the land. So for Rosalie, she had lost her family, her language, her community, and that, even though she was in that place early in her life, that relationship that she develops with seeds and with gardening is what helps her on that journey back to her home. 

Tyler Owens: 

Well, thank you so much. We’re going to go ahead and jump into some of these questions that we have from the audience for you, if that’s okay. 

Diane Wilson: 

Oh, yeah. 

Tyler Owens: 

Okay, so first we have, do you have any suggestions of places to find seeds and support the indigenous seed-keeping efforts? This individual is from Kentucky and would love to find native seeds that are from their area and garden them to help continue their lifeline. 

Diane Wilson: 

Hmm. So there’s actually two seed-saving organizations that I know of that are generally and publicly available. And one is Seed Savers in Iowa, and I actually put their contact information in the afterword in the book. And then the other one is Native Seed Search down in the Southwest. In the work that I did in organizations, because of what assimilation has cost tribes in terms of displacing indigenous foods, there has been a priority in making sure that those seeds get returned first to their home communities. It’s a form of rematriating those seeds and returning them to the people who have been without them for sometimes a long time. 

Diane Wilson: 

But once seeds get established, then they can go to organizations like Seed Savers, where they’re more broadly distributed. And, to me, the more we grow out seeds, the more we share them, the healthier it is for the seeds themselves. So those are two organizations who are national. You might also look in your own state just to see if there are organizations that are also doing this work. I know there are seed libraries popping up a lot, but I should also say, too, that indigenous seeds are heirloom seeds. And so that anytime you are growing out an heirloom seed, you are continuing a line of seeds that have not been genetically modified, and this is doing good seed work. 

Tyler Owens: 

Could you maybe talk a little bit more about how genetically-modified seeds tend to align with the commodity-based view that you were talking about earlier versus the indigenous relational view? 

Diane Wilson: 

So genetically-modified seeds, to me, it is taking a step in taking apart life. Genetically-modified seeds, to me, that discussion has really become polarized between dueling sets of scientific data. And what is missing often from that conversation is about the relational piece of that work. If we regard our seeds as our ancestors, as sacred beings, then is genetically modifying them, especially with DNA from another species, is that being a good relative to these seeds? Is that taking care of them for the long view for our grandchildren’s grandchildren? Is that what we want to pass on? And I have to say, the question that I raise in the book is specifically about that relationship, how it’s evolved over generations. So, from 1862, when we see women protecting their seeds to now when we see genetically-modified seeds and to say, well, that relationship has undergone really immense transformation. And what are the consequences, and how does that reinforce your worldview of either being in relationship to the world in which we take care of it or we are in relationship to a seed in which we take advantage of. 

Tyler Owens: 

Yeah. And I mean, you did talk about them being similar to relatives. And I know a lot of tribal communities have that perspective. And not only whenever it comes to repatriation of sacred items and things along those lines. Whenever it comes to receiving those seeds coming back to us, it’s something that we’re excited about because then it gives us that connection back to who we are. It helps us. But also, getting into those traditional harvesting practices as well, creating those items, and the different tools that you need, because sometimes we don’t necessarily want to just go out and pick things by hand, that there’s different tools that our ancestors had, and they were phenomenal engineers, if I can say so myself. 

Diane Wilson: 

Oh, yes, the tools that were developed… Again, it’s hard to know since women were so left out of the historical record, but the fact that they were the ones maintaining gardens, meaning they’re also the ones developing tools, everything I’ve learned reinforces just the wisdom and brilliance of our native agriculturalists. 

Tyler Owens: 

Yeah. I have a couple of friends who are from the [inaudible 00:25:44] community and they started doing harvesting of traditional food. And one of them is Cholla buds. So it comes from a cactus, and it actually has a lot more calcium in a little tiny piece of the harvest that they make than actually comes from milk. So it’s amazing getting to see just nature’s engineering in and of itself. But when we talk about the seeds being our relatives and us learning stories, because we have relations to animals and the plants that surround us, what have you learned personally from the seeds yourself? 

Diane Wilson: 

Well, I was just thinking, when I’m grown heirloom seeds, those seeds… So one of them being traditional tobacco and then the squash and beans and corn, but what I’ve seen, too, is a much higher level of pollinator activity. So that you see the way that our native bees, in particular, will gravitate toward plants that are native to your area and that is really dear to my heart is planting for pollinators so that, if I have something that… It doesn’t matter whether… If I don’t harvest it, I know somebody else will, but it’s that idea of creating a community where you live. So even in your own yard, you have that possibility of putting in plants are not only good for your family but good for the families of everyone around you. So that’s one of my favorite lessons has been observing, firsthand, the pollinators return to an area because of the plants that are there again. 

Tyler Owens: 

I love that, that there’s some kind of… That there is symbiosis between everything and that there’s purpose with everything that’s done. I think that’s one of the things that I love most about being indigenous is knowing that it’s more than just about myself, that there’s a sense of community, and that it serves more than just one purpose for putting food on the table, that it also helps continue the lifeline of the bees who live there. 

Diane Wilson: 

Yeah. We take care of each other, and then you grow up understanding them, whereas I see so many kids who are terrified of bees or don’t know where their food comes from. I’ve known kids who were shocked to see a carrot come out of the soil because it’s like, “Oh, it’s all dirty.” 

Tyler Owens: 

And you’re like, “That’s what sink and water is for.” 

Diane Wilson: 

Uh-huh (affirmative), or sometimes just that sweet taste of the garden on your carrot. 

Tyler Owens: 

Well, I think this will be our last question before we get into you getting to read a little excerpt. So is it culturally appropriating for non-indigenous people to grow indigenous seeds? This individual said that a tribe nearby them is sensitive to sharing seeds and just taking advantage of tribal culture and assets in general. What are your thoughts on this? 

Diane Wilson: 

Well, getting back to what we were talking about a little earlier, so understanding really how assimilation has been impacted the food systems in tribal communities and that when tribes were placed on reservations, not only did they lose access to their land, but they also lost access to their foods. And so, as part of that, we’ve seen the seeds themselves become in very short supply. Many of them have disappeared, so then the first priority, in cultural recovery work, is to re-matriate those seeds, to make sure that they go back to their home communities, and that they are grown out as food for those communities. And I do believe it’s a really important priority that those seeds belong first to the families who have lost access to them. 

Diane Wilson: 

But it’s also true that if seeds are shared with you, then grow them out and share them back with their home community, or another possibility is find seeds that are native to your culture. So if you are say… If you’re of European descent, where did your family come from, and what are those seeds like? Maybe there’s something you can find that is closer to your own culture. Or, this is based on a teaching I heard from Terry Lynn Brant, if you find heirloom seeds that you’re really interested in growing out, then you grow them in your garden for seven years and they become your seeds, and you can then name them. You can enter into a different kind of relationship with those seeds, but you have to put that time in, but they become your family seeds, then, after seven years. So that would be my suggestion is that support the work of seeds, returning home to their communities, and then, in your own gardens, support seeds that can become part of your own tradition. Yeah. 

Tyler Owens: 

I would love if you would go ahead and read us your excerpt that you had spoken about, so we can give the audience a little bit of taste of what your book has in store. 

Diane Wilson: 

This is just from part of Rosalie’s journey in learning to become a gardener herself. Seeds breathed and spoke in a language all their own. Each one was a miniature time capsule, capturing years of stories in its tender flesh. How ignorant I felt compared to the brilliance contained in a single seed. I had begun to see that when we save these seeds, when we select which ones will be planted again, our lives become braided into the life stories of these plants. 

Tyler Owens: 

Thank you so much for sharing that. I wish I would’ve had you reading this whole book to me. Well, thank you so much for being with us. I have enjoyed getting to dive deeper into what brought inspiration to this book and breathed life into it. Congratulations on your success with this book. I have plenty of friends who have read it, and I’m going to continue to recommend it. So to our audience, if you can, please, please, please support Ms. Diane Wilson and order from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, your local bookstore, or any way you possibly can, but thank you so much for joining us, Diane Wilson. I really appreciate you. 

Diane Wilson: 

Oh, thank you so much for the invitation to be here. It’s just an honor to be part of this event. 

Whitney Kimball Coe: 

A big thanks to Tyler Owens for sitting in the host chair this week. If you really enjoyed this conversation and want more, you can actually go back and watch Tyler Owens and Diane Wilson’s exchange on our website at ruralassembly.org. You can also purchase Diane Wilson’s book, The Seed Keeper, from all major book sellers out there, but we really encourage you to pick up a copy from a local, independent bookstore if you can. Today’s episode marks the end of the first season of Everywhere Radio. I can’t believe it. We did it. We did it, y’all. And you are so incredible, our listeners. Thank you so much for joining us for a dynamic year of conversations with 20 incredible rural advocates. Coming up in 2022, we’ll continue introducing you to rural heroes, allies, and maybe a few grouches who believe in the work of building a more inclusive and just nation. We hope you’ll meet us back here in January 2022. Stay kind, stay healthy, and keep it rural, friends.