By Rose Robinson ‘24.5
It should be noted that I, as the author, cannot speak from the Indigenous perspective. I am a White woman, privileged by that identity, and thus have been spared from the violence of colonialism experienced by Native communities. This paper examines a facet of Indigenous culture in the context of academia, an structural institution that has done harm upon, excluded, and continues to exclude Native voices. My intention is to uplift and bring attention to the power and importance of Indigeneity.
In the Abenaki canon is the story of Corn Mother. It is said that the winter after Tabulmak, the Creator, created the first people, they suffered through a struggle to find food. The First Woman, Corn Mother, prayed to Tabulmak, who told her that to feed her children, a sacrifice must be made. Thus, her husband, First Man, killed her, spreading her blood through the field. He was heartbroken, but Corn Mother told him that she would not leave; when the field began to grow, he would see the plants and know them to be her. Sure enough, from the mound in which First Man buried his wife, beautiful, bountiful corn grew. Their children would never go hungry because of Corn Mother’s sacrifice (Reade).1 Because she gave herself to the Earth, the Earth gave in return. This idea of reciprocity is at the heart of how the Abenaki view interaction with the natural world, and deeper than that, it is at the heart of Abenaki spirituality. The story of Corn Mother encapsulates the beauty of Native agricultural philosophy. For the Abenaki and other Native American nations, farming’s deep spiritual and cultural significance drives an important mode of agriculture, one that works in conjunction with the Earth rather than in opposition.
Agriculture is not merely a theme in Indigenous origin stories and cautionary tales, but a holistic system of culture, spirituality, and community. For the Abenaki, the growing season is not marked only by the seeding, maturation, and harvesting of crops, but by ceremony, festival, and celebration (“About Seeds”). The Vermont Indigenous Heritage Center’s project, Seeds of Renewal, is centered around reviving Abenaki crops, but could not be complete without also reviving the songs, dances, rituals, and regalia of ceremonies like the Green Corn Dance (“About Seeds”). At the Green Corn Ceremony in 2013, many said that these spiritual and cultural traditions are “as important as the rediscovery of ancient seeds and agricultural systems” because they bring the community together around the Earth, around “the annual cycles of sun, moon, rain and wind” (“About Seeds”). By revitalizing the holism of Indigenous agriculture, projects like Seeds of Renewal build protection over spirit and culture that was nearly lost in direct conjunction with the theft and occupation of Native lands. Like the Abenaki, the Hopi of the American Southwest view the natural world–from the land itself to animals to, perhaps most of all, plants–as something sacred (Aftandilian 228). For the Hopi, agriculture is connected to that philosophy. Rather, as exchange with the Earth, agriculture is, itself, a sacred practice, one of “the most religiously significant activities performed by Hopi” (Aftandilian 228).
To view agriculture as something greater than simply food production, as something spiritual in a tradition that centralizes nature, creates an ecologically minded practice. For communities like the Hopi and Abenaki, horticultural knowledge came from living close to nature, from generational learning after trial and error (Lewis 423). It seems that the Abenaki and other tribes’ view of all parts of the Earth as one whole allowed them to understand the world more deeply than the drivers of Western development. The Hopi, for example, do not till the soil in which they plant because they feel that the machinery “tears the skin of the Earth Mother” (Aftandilian 228). Indeed, “no-till agriculture” is being pushed for by supporters of sustainable agriculture because it does not destroy the natural structures of soil. Likewise, a traditional Abenaki method of planting corn, squash, and beans together is referred to as The Three Sisters and originates in an extension of the Corn Mother story. The Abenaki say that Corn Mother’s sisters were buried in mounds beside her after their own deaths and grew into beans and squash, and therefore the three crops are planted together in mounds (Reade). Though the method is rooted in this centuries-old spiritual and cultural tradition, the sustainable agriculture world would call this intercropping, an innovative practice in contrast with the modern convention of devoting large swaths of land to a single crop. Intercropping, like the Three Sisters, creates a small-scale, mutually beneficial ecosystem (Abenaki Heritage). Beans add nitrogen, a key nutrient, to the soil; squash acts like mulch, shading weeds from the sun and retaining soil moisture, and the tall stalks of corn act like a trellis for climbing beans (Reade). The Abenaki also have The Seven Sisters, an extension from the crop trio. In addition to squash, beans, and corn, The Seven Sisters include sunchokes, sunflowers, ground cherries, and tobacco (Reade). With more diversity, the benefits only increase: sunchokes and sunflowers act as a secondary trellis for beans that tendril even higher than native corn stalks, ground cherries have been found to ward off Japanese beetles, and tobacco’s sticky leaves ward off rodents (Reade). By simply planting these crops together, they thrive without the implementation of the harmful synthetic fertilizers or pesticides that dominate industrial agriculture.
The Abenaki and other tribes also relied on forests and natural ecosystems as part of their food system. Traditionally, the Abenaki supplemented their own, grown food sources with foraging and hunting (Abenaki Heritage). Foraging is now being treated as something trendy as sustainability has become fashionable and devoted environmentalists advocate for natural, non-industrial food sources. Around the country, Native tribes historically managed the forests they relied on. By setting low burning fires, they could clear out dead vegetation and encourage the growth of edible plants, making it easier to move through the forest while hunting and enhancing opportunities for foraging (Lewis 426). Managing forests to cultivate food sources resembles agroforestry, another innovative approach to farming that benefits from similar biodiversity and relationships within a forest. Generally, the modern sustainable agriculture movement promotes methods of cultivation that resemble, and therefore carry the benefits of, the structures of natural ecosystems. The Indigenous were practicing these methods long before Western society caught up to their value. The Abenaki and other tribes understood that by feeding the Earth, treating it with care in their relationship, they would in turn feed themselves. Though colonization tore apart the self-sufficient food systems of pre-contact Native Americans, enacting laws against fire-setting and robbing the lands that Natives knew how to manage, there is a movement to bring back Indigenous cultivation methods because of their environmental value (Lewis 427, Perroni). As the Traditional Native American Farmers’ Association says, “healthy soils = healthy plants = healthy people = healthy Nations. (“History”). The Association finds that a decline in farming correlates with a decline in health and wellbeing in Native communities (“History”). Native Americans have the highest rates of food insecurity, diet-related diseases, and poverty, one of every four Indigenous people experiencing food insecurity in comparison to one in nine people throughout the US (Meredith). To revitalize Indigenous agriculture would entail a more ecological approach to growing food, but it would also revitalize those spiritual, cultural traditions and a Native mode of self-sufficiency that were suppressed centuries ago.
Through its partnership with the Abenaki at the Knoll, Middlebury College is participating in that revitalization. The Knoll is Middlebury College’s on-campus organic farm, a place for education and community outreach as well as growing food. In 2019, Chief Don Stevens of the Nulhegan Abenaki, approached leadership at the Knoll with an interest in partnering to grow traditional Abenaki crops (Brakeley). The project represents a larger effort by Chief Don Stevens, Dr. Fred Wiseman, and the Abenaki community to partner with Vermont farms and institutions to reinstate local Native agriculture (“Abenaki at the Knoll”). In doing so, Abenaki crop varieties and growing techniques will be preserved, and fresh, healthy food will be grown for the community in hopes of combating the epidemic of food insecurity among Native nations (“Abenaki at the Knoll”). In 2019, interns at the Knoll grew four heritage varieties of beans and one heirloom corn variety to bolster Abenaki seed stocks, despite the extra labor required in their cultivation (Brakeley). The interns learned through growing these crops and through visits with Chief Don Stevens. He educated interns on the significance of their work and incorporated the stories of Corn Mother and the Three Sisters (Brakeley). Chief Stevens even offered an Abenaki blessing on the fields and shared songs at the harvest (Brakeley). Partnerships like that at the Knoll not only support Native communities and preserve culture and tradition but inform non-Native participants of Indigenous agriculture’s value. These projects reinforce both Indigeneity and allyship.
The modern American agricultural system is marked by a complete irreverence for the health of the planet. Though there may be the organic movement underway, and more recently, a push for truly sustainable agriculture, food production relies almost entirely on toxic chemicals, with “more than 1.1 billion pounds of pesticides applied annually to crops in the US” (“Pesticides”). These chemical pesticides enter surrounding waterways and reduce biodiversity among wildlife (“Pesticides”). Tilling, synthetic fertilizers, and monocultures are destroying soil health, depleting it of organic matter and nutrients until we are left with dust (“How Industrial”). And soil, if tended to with care, is an incredible carbon sink, a massive opportunity in the fight to mitigate climate change (“How Industrial”). Conventional agriculture is industrial. Instead of working alongside the Earth, we fight it to grow our food. The American food system is unempathetic and unsustainable, ignoring the wellbeing of both people and the Earth. And though we may be removed from the growing of our food, and the Earthly cycles that sustain us, we are not separate from the Earth. The Abenaki and other Native American philosophies acknowledge this truth; that we are one with our planet. To exist in this way, with empathy for our environment, to see agriculture as an expression of that interconnection, is a near-complete opposite to how mainstream American society functions, and our society is on the brink of environmental collapse. After centuries of outlawing, suppressing, and discounting Indigenous knowledge, we are only now beginning to recognize its incredible value. Only now we are beginning to see the need for guidance from our Native siblings towards an agriculture that is more environmental, more meaningful, more reciprocal.
1 This story has been shortened and simplified in order to respect its nature as a sacred tale in the Abenaki oral tradition. As a non-Abenaki person, it is not my place to act as storyteller. A telling by Chief Roger Longtoe Sheehan can be found in the cited source, and an oral version by Chief Don Stevens can be found in the “Abenaki at the Knoll Webinar” (see Works Cited).
Works Cited
“Abenaki at the Knoll Webinar 09 01 2020.” YouTube, uploaded by Midd Sustainability, 3 Sept. 2020, www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dlQxi-KE5o. Accessed 27 May 2021.
Abenaki Heritage Garden at the Intervale in Burlington, Vermont. www.nrcs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS/stelprdb1101651.pdf. Accessed 21 Apr. 2021.
“About Seeds of Renewal.” The Vermont Indigenous Heritage Center, Alnôbaiwi, www.alnobaiwi.org/seeds-of-renewal. Accessed 21 Apr. 2021.
Aftandilian, Dave. “What Other Americans Can and Cannot Learn from Native American Environmental Ethics.” Worldviews, vol. 15, no. 3, 2011. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/43809445. Accessed 28 Apr. 2021.
Brakeley, Megan. “The Knoll at Middlebury College: Food and Garden Educator’s Report for 2019.” 18 Dec. 2019, Middlebury College, www.middlebury.edu/system/files/media/Food%20and%20Garden%20Educator%20Report%202019%20FINAL.pdf. Accessed 21 Apr. 2021. Manuscript.
Celebrating Our Ancestral Roots: Abenaki Agriculture Alive and Well in the Northeast. NOFA, thenaturalfarmer.org/article/celebrating-our-ancestral-roots/. Accessed 21 Apr. 2021.
“History.” Traditional Native American Farmers Association, www.tnafa.org/history.html.
“How Industrial Agriculture Affects Our Soil.” foodprint.org, GRACE Communications Foundation, foodprint.org/issues/how-industrial-agriculture-affects-our-soil/. Accessed 13 May 2021.
Lewis, David Rich. “Native Americans and the Environment: A Survey of Twentieth-Century Issues.” American Indian Quarterly, vol. 19, no. 3, Summer 1995. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/1185599 Accessed 22 Apr. 2021.
Meredith, Eric. “November is Native American Heritage Month.” Hunger + Health: Feeding America, Hunger + Health, 10 Nov. 2020, hungerandhealth.feedingamerica.org/ 2020/11/november-native-american-heritage-month/#:~:text=Native%20Americans%20suffer%20from%20some,1%20in%209%20Americans%20overall. Accessed 13 May 2021.
Perroni, Eva. “Five Indigenous Farming Practices Enhancing Food Security.” resilience.org, Post Carbon Institute, 14 Aug. 2017, www.resilience.org/stories/2017-08-14/ five-indigenous-farming-practices-enhancing-food-security/. Accessed 13 May 2021.
“Pesticides in Our Food System.” foodprint.org, GRACE Communications Foundation, foodprint.org/issues/pesticides/#:~:text=share%3A,genetically%20engineered%20to%20withstand%20them. Accessed 13 May 2021.