Haudenosaunee Seed Workshop

Ganondagan Seneca Historic Site hosted the Haudenosaunee Seed Workshop on March 24th of this year. It was well attended from farmers and seed growers across the Confederacy. The workshop started with Pete Jemison doing the Ohenton Kariwahtekwen or Ganiono in his Seneca language since it was hosted by the Western Door. Our main mission is to share the knowledge and keep our main food source growing like Hegowa, the main corn needed for our ceremonies.

Pete wanted to share with everyone what is happening at Ganondagan. They have an herb garden and a three sisters garden. They also inherited all the equipment from John Mohawk’s White Corn project so now they are set up to wash, roast, dry and grind flour corn grown from our own Haudenosaunee farmers. They want to encourage as many people as they can to grow our white corn to sell so they can keep producing flour corn for people who are willing to buy it. They have 2 and half acres put aside just to grow white corn at Ganondagan. He also is encouraging us to plant more for the tough times that are coming and we are nowhere near ready for the catastrophes that are coming.

Steve McComber got up next and talked about how he got started in preserving our Haudenosaunee Heirloom seeds. It all started with the White Roots of Peace. Some elderly gentleman gave him some old Oneida Beans. Then he got involved with Seed Savers on how to preserve them and keep the strain alive. Then he was introduced to more of our Haudenosaunee seeds when he met up with Doug Edgeland. Since then he has been traveling among the different Haudenosaunee communities collecting and preserving more of our seeds from elders within those communities, and then attending workshops such as this to get more people involved in preserving our seeds because there are so many and one man cannot do it alone.

Richard Kettle, a farmer from Cattaragus got up and spoke next. He said he has been growing Hekowa since he was a kid, the way his father taught him. It is our responsibility to keep it growing for the ceremonies. If the food stops, does that mean we stop giving thanks at our ceremonies? It is the only thing that sustains us during tough times. It is our main existence, why we are still alive today. We need to learn the corn song. Dar Dowdy did an interpretation of this song where we start out with the seed and describes each stage of the corn as it is growing. We all need to know this if we want to grow corn. We have a female corn and a male corn. You need to mix the two to grow the next generation of corn. The white corn with the red cobs is the female, and the white corn with the white cobs is the male.

Archie Bomberry grows white corn from Ohsweken. He came to talk to us about seed selection. He used to supply John Mohawk with lots of white corn when he was doing the white corn project. He used to grow 20 acres of white corn at one time. Never select seed from the same stalk. That is like inbreeding. Select corn from the inner rows. Don’t want to select from the outside rows. They would be less pollinated, so you would get less germination rate from your seeds for next year. You also want to look at the stalks, make sure you select from the ones that are stalky, straight and tall. If you want to store your seeds longer, you can freeze them. The longer you keep your seeds, the less germination rate you will get.

Neil Patterson, Jr. from the Tuscarora Nation said there are less people growing our crops on our territory than there used to be. They started a community garden and a farmers market in their community to get the young people growing again. They also did food preservation workshops. When they were growing white corn in the community garden, a lot of the people did not take it because they didn’t know how to prepare it. Once they did workshops on washing corn, now they can’t grow enough of it to keep up with demand. We also developed a food security program with HETF. He also wants to collect as much information and use HETF as a resource for storing this information on growing and preserving our own foods from the knowledge of our elders.

Dave Arquette from Akwesasne Mohawk Territory spoke about his involvement and experience growing our Haudenosaunee seeds. He did not know Haudenosaunee seeds existed until Steve McComber came to Akwesasne to talk to us about them. He said it was nice to give seeds away to get the people planting again, but how come you don’t give away our own seeds? Then he talked about the different varieties of seeds that are original Haudenosaunee and have been in existence before the Europeans came to this continent. He left us a few bean seed varieties like Hi-Yo and Deseronto Potato Beans, and a few squash seeds called the Boston Marrow. He told us to get in touch with Doug Edgeland who doesn’t live too far from Akwesasne and since then brought home more varieties of beans and corn seeds and been sharing these seeds with anyone willing to commit to growing them and preserving them just like we do. He also learned something from a Global Climate Change Workshop at which the presenter stated the best foods to grow during hard times is from the heirloom seeds. So I guess we must be doing something right.