We do not Own the Seeds, We Borrow Them from our Children

My mama used to let me play with Corn meal in the kitchen. A big tub of cornmeal, and she put little cups and measuring spoons it in. It was that classic 1980s Tupperware, with the impossible-to-put-on Starburst pattern lids. It didn’t start out that the cornmeal was mine to play with, I used to steal away into the pantry and open up that tub of corn meal and dig my hands into the silky smoothness…soon enough my mama gave in and let me have my own tub of it, because I just loved digging my hands into that cornmeal so much. I can still smell that memory of that fragrant cornmeal to this day.

I still remember the feeling of that silky cornmeal on my skin. My seed sister, Angie Ferguson from Onondaga, says that she watches for the kids who put their hands in the corn and seed pots; they were the ones who were going to be the planters.

Growing up we didn't have seed pots in my house. But my mom gave me corn meal. Corn Mother and I found each other against all odds, little did I know at that time that Corn would help me through a very unconventional rites of passage, where I learned the sacred Seasonal cycles with the Corn as one of my grandmothers. Inviting me back into long tended way of seasonal renewal that was sung into vitality each seasonal ceremony cycle, since time immemorial by my ancestors. I believe the prayers of our ancestors are nestled like seeds of memory in the Earth of our own bodies, just waiting to be sung to life again. I sing them to life here, in the way my hands remember, walking through rustling corn leaves, thanking the corn mothers for their gifts, my hands living swiftly over my back and dropping each cob into the pack basket, each step it gets a little heavier,our hearts a little more full. We know this way of living. It is written in our blood and bones.

When the season for harvest comes, and my pack basket weighs heavy with jeweled cobs of corn, I thankfully walk up the hill with a heavy load of Corn Mothers that have given my life purpose, have been my teachers. These wise ones who have taught me how to love, to tend and care, to nourish, to feed, how to sacrifice and work hard. As I sit and open up husks to reveal their jeweled faces, so bright and vibrant, I think about those cornmeal blessings that my hands never forgot, that somehow I felt a deep connection back then and still now as a grown woman I find myself with my hands in bowls of corn, how grounding it feels to bury my hands in the seeds. Seeds all around. Thankful to my mama, for giving me the pleasure of playing in the cornmeal all those years ago, which kept a multisensory memory alive so that years later it could sprout into a life long passion and love of seeds, stories, lineage, legacy and tending the wellspring of cultural memory.

Keeping these ways of life alive in a time when countless forces have tried to extinguish them is my daily act of love, Resistance and resilience.

I would much rather spend a life living for something in the spirit of my love for my relatives and the Earth than spending my life fighting against people who have never understood or valued who we are in our grandness of living in kincentric cosmologies and ways of being. So here I stand, singing seed songs to the winds of uncertainty, so that I can be one who nestles seeds of prayers into the bodies of my future descendants. Sometimes it's just that simple.

This movement will birth the new world we are praying for.

If you’d like to listen to me offering the full reading of White Corn Sister, which is my favorite poem/play for voices written by Mohawk artist Peter Blue Cloud, listen here.