Carrying the Corn Mother

I was born in the Aniyunwiya diaspora of Central Point, Oregon. As far as I knew, we were the only “Indians” in the Rogue Valley, and certainly the only Cherokees. Now I know better: At the close of 2024, there were 6,691 enrolled “citizens” of the Cherokee Nation like me living in the state. That figure doesn’t include citizens from the other two Cherokee bands or those who aren’t enrolled. For perspective, the Klamath Tribes, the largest of Oregon’s nine federally recognized tribes, claim a total enrollment of around 5,700—including those living outside Oregon. 

As a child, I felt like an outlier, but my mother’s garden gave me refuge. It was my root, in every sense. The garden consumed half our acre of land. I can still picture the rows upon rows of corn—the stalks were so tall come August, my birthday month, and a natural hideaway. I’d spend hours between the silks and husks, scribbling in journals, imagining what lay beyond the Cascade Range and Klamath Mountains. The stalks were irresistible, popping up each late summer with upstretched, welcoming arms. I didn’t know then the importance of corn, selu in the Cherokee language of Tsalagi. Corn is one of the three sisters. Selu is ceremony, it is medicine. 

The Corn Mother, Selu, is also our first woman, borne of the first corn plant. She fed us, nourished us, protected us, but in the end she was killed by her sons, who mistook her power for witchcraft. Witchcraft—sound familiar? It, like industrial agriculture, agribusiness, monoculture, and GMO (genetically modified organism) farming, like extractive and chemically intensive agriculture, is a colonial introduction.

The fallout of colonization began five centuries ago, and yet it is not so distant. It’s still happening now, but we continue to fight back, to reject and upend it. Yes, we are still here, as the pan-Indigenous anthem goes. We are here, and we are gardening, sowing Indigenized futures, healing and reaping through what we plant. My own childhood “Eden,” rich with the energy of the Cherokee first woman and cultivated by the first woman I knew, the one who gave me life, was an exemplary paradigm of seed-keeping and Indigenous food sovereignty. Of knowledge. 

Seed-keeping and food sovereignty are not new practices for Cherokees and most other Tribal Peoples. For those from the Cherokee Nation and United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians of so-called Oklahoma, they recall one of the most notorious events in our shared history: the Indian Removal Act and the subsequent Trail of Tears. We are descendants of those who survived the thousand-mile forced trek between 1831 and 1850. Along these trails, we were joined by our neighbors the Chickasaws, Choctaws, Creeks, and Seminoles. 

Driven from our lands under the watchful eyes of white “conductors,” my ancestors were delivered to a flat, foreign landscape ripe with sporadic, angry winds and far from anything they knew. They predicted the land would be alien and that traditional attempts at agriculture and gardening would be challenging at best. To survive, they would need the familiar fruits and vegetables and plants they knew how to grow and use. To this end, some Cherokee women sewed seeds into the hems of their skirts prior to embarking on the Trail, carrying this secret power with them across wintry, frozen terrain. How’s that for witchcraft—wiccecræft, a compounded Old English word meaning powerful female ability. My ancestors didn’t just secure a source of food, of survival, when they were deposited on the red clay of “okla humma,” the Choctaw phrase for “Red People.” They planted our culture. They seeded our future. 

Today, Cherokee seed-keeping continues to find new roots far from our ancestral homelands. The Cherokee Nation Seed Bank in Tahlequah was established in 2006 to help preserve culturally significant seeds and distribute heirloom varieties to tribal citizens across the country. I began entering the annual seed lottery in my twenties, still living in the diaspora but up north in Hillsboro. Every year, Cherokee Nation citizens can request heirloom seeds, listing our top desired picks from gourds to tobacco, jewelweed to beans. Among my first lottery wins was, of course, selu—White Eagle Corn. My mother’s garden is gone—her home burned in a man-made fire one month after her death in 2018—and I do not have such ample gardening space as she did, so my gardening is restricted to a series of six-foot beds nestled in the front yard and watched over by an ancient apple tree. 

The seed bank helps to ensure that no matter where a Cherokee might be, they can have a connection to their history, their culture, and their people by growing our plants and foods. Groups like the Mt. Hood Cherokees in Portland are leading initiatives to further secure these traditional practices. Abby Hall, a member of this satellite group who is spearheading efforts to win a $25,000 grant to start a local Pacific Northwest version of a Cherokee seed bank, shares how seed-keeping connects her family to their heritage: “Putting my hands in the soil, touching the seeds, being mindful of the life cycles and what the seeds need makes me feel connected to the Cherokee Nation—and connected all the way back,” she says. “These seeds were carried on the Trail of Tears by our ancestors to Oklahoma, and now they’ve made this other trip [to Oregon] as our diaspora continues.”

But demand is superseding supply. Last year the bank ran out of seeds in under two hours. In response, the Cherokee Nation reached out to at-large groups to discuss alternatives and options. During a meeting on January 22, 2025, between the Cherokee Nation and Mt. Hood Cherokees, Hall broached the fact that not all our crops can grow easily in Oregon soil—such as tobacco, one of the multi-Indigenous four medicines. Oregon’s climate poses unique challenges for Cherokee gardening: Our region’s soil temperatures are cooler than those of the warm-weather plains of Oklahoma, which makes growing many traditional crops difficult, but not necessarily impossible.

“We want to be a test bed, due to our geography and ecosystem,” Hall says. She also emphasizes the importance of experimenting with different growing methods. “Putting seeds in pots helps to create warmer soil temperatures. For example, I’ve tried shaker gourds; they thrived in pots.” As for me, my heirloom tomatoes have done very well in their beds, far dwarfing, both in size and taste, any tomato I’ve encountered in a supermarket.

Such local, Indigenous, ancestral examples of seed-keeping might not be what first comes to mind when many people hear the term. They may not realize the practice is happening here, right in their (neighbor’s) yard. Instead, perhaps the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway springs to mind. Svalbard, tucked away in a mountain within the Arctic permafrost to safeguard some of the world’s agricultural biodiversity, is a place of high-tech storage, cold steel doors, and carefully monitored temperature controls. The Cherokee Nation was the first tribe in what is now often called the United States to be invited to send heirloom seeds to this global vault. The tribe sent nine varieties, including White Eagle Corn typically used in ceremony. Nine, sonela, is an auspicious number for Cherokees. A marriage between Indigenous and non-Indigenous, Cherokee and “western,” hasn’t just taken root in recent years—it’s gone to sprout.

Current non-Indigenous research on seed-keeping explores the importance of biodiversity and the preservation of heirloom varieties. Compared to Indigenous practices, such examination is in its infancy. Western scientists are just now warning of the dangers of monocultures, where a reliance on genetically uniform crops can make food systems vulnerable to pests, diseases, and climate change. This isn’t new to Indigenous People; it’s a potential problem we have known about for generations. 

Many researchers are finally advocating for strategies that mimic if not directly follow traditional Indigenous practices, like maintaining seed diversity and cultivating crops in ways that support ecological balance. Some of the most “cutting-edge” agricultural research is rooted in centuries-old Indigenous practices—though the foundations of these methods are rarely acknowledged outside Indigenous communities. For example, agroforestry, or integrating trees, shrubs, and various crops into multifunctional landscapes, not only produces food but also improves soil health, conserves water, and increases biodiversity. Non-Indigenous researchers are now rallying for agroforestry to help combat the environmental degradation caused by industrial agriculture, but it’s an approach Indigenous Knowledge has always promoted. 

As such trends pick up traction within the global minority, seed libraries and community seed swaps are gaining popularity, too. These initiatives promote biodiversity and empower individuals to take control of their food systems, echoing principles that have long been at the heart of Cherokee seed-keeping. Diana Davidson, a Cherokee Nation citizen living in so-called Washington state and the proprietor of Battle Ground Apothecary and Natural Goods in Southwest Washington, wants to help Cherokees in the Pacific Northwest better access their seeds. “I’d like to get seeds of every strain that we have in the Cherokee Nation so I know it’s pure and free of cross-pollination,” she says. Davidson is working to create a regional mini seed bank. “I think pretty much every Cherokee would be interested in a seed/plant exchange,” she shares, pointing out that it could also be a means of fostering relationships between the Portland Mt. Hood Cherokees and the Eugene-based Willamette Tsa-La-Gi at-large groups.

Davidson’s efforts highlight the importance of not only preserving heirloom seeds, but also making sure they remain accessible to all Cherokee communities, reinforcing the deep cultural significance that seed-keeping holds for Indigenous Peoples. For us, seeds are not just a means of survival but a way of asserting sovereignty, reclaiming space, and telling our stories. When we plant our heirloom seeds, we are not just planting food. We are participating in a practice that transcends food security. We are helping to strengthen the roots of who we are as a people.

Like those who came before us, like those who survived the Trail of Tears, many Cherokees in the Pacific Northwest are using gardening for connection, for culture bearing, sharing, and preservation. Hall notes, “Growing edible plants is really important to me at home. My kids will eat whatever they can pick.” My children are much the same, eager to plant in the beds each spring. They look forward to summer mornings, when they take a saltshaker to sprinkle on tomatoes they pluck straight off the vine and eat like apples. Hall currently has sage, parsley, rosemary, oregano, and lavender in her yard. My own front porch is flanked with alternating bushes of rosemary and lavender. She tells how her children eat the herbs, “make potions with them,” and concoct treats like lavender syrup. My children snip sprigs to make potpourri bags for dresser drawers so they can carry the aroma of these herbs, this medicine, this history, with them. For Cherokees, what we plant and what we grow has never been just about bodily sustenance. 

Davidson says she no longer has much physical connection to Oklahoma, despite being raised there by her grandparents for part of her life, but, she says, “I want to go and check out where [my grandmother] was from and touch the earth—she’s the one who taught me the love of gardening.” Food sovereignty feeds the whole person. It can nourish an entire community, a whole tribe, if we adapt—and we always have.

After Selu’s murder, cornstalks sprouted from her blood, a promise of continued vitality for the Cherokee people. It was a gift, a sacrifice, a symbol of the interconnectedness of life and death and, perhaps, the intersectionality of Indigenous and colonial. This meeting point of modern research and Indigenous Knowledge underscores just how much there is to learn from Indigenous practices like seed-keeping. While Western science races to mitigate the harm caused by industrial agriculture, the answers might already be in the soil. They have been passed down in the hems of skirts, in stories like that of the Corn Mother, and are revealed in how we are handing over this knowledge to one another. 

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