Alliance of Native Seedkeepers - Interview with Fix Cain

Hello, and welcome to a special episode of the Revolutionaries Garden. Today we are going to be doing an interview that I've been wanting to do for a very long time. Back when I first started the show more than a year ago now, this was one of the first interviews I thought of to do. I've been trying to get this interview for pretty much that long, and our schedule is just never quite lined up, and we were never quite able to make it work. But now I am very happy to bring you an interview with FixCane, co-founder of Alliance of Native Seed Keepers. They do just incredible work over there, and I am always happy to recommend their Seed Store and any of their educational resources. I'm going to let him talk about all that and get to that, but I just want to say this was a great conversation. We talk about the Alliance of Native Seed Keepers, we talk about seed saving, we even talk a bit about corn genetics, which was fun and mostly for my own personal benefit. And if you want, there's more to this interview on our Patreon as a bonus episode where we just talk about comparing Maine and North Carolina, and we get a free history lesson on the history of the Tuscaro people. So if you want to hear that, make sure to check out our Patreon, but otherwise sit back, listen, and enjoy to this interview with the co-founder of Alliance of Native Seed Keepers. So if you could just go ahead and introduce yourself, and just let me know who you are. Okay, so yeah, so I'm fixed cane. I'm Scott Wolling, got the noaga, and I am a co-founder of Alliance of Native Seed Keepers. And could you tell me about the Alliance of Native Seed Keepers and what you guys do? Well, firstly, if you're not coming from the same cultural perspective as we are, then the Alliance of Native Seed Keepers may seem a bit complicated. Like, yeah, so, you know, it's not just a simple seed source. So like in the fact that it's more than just a seed store, it may seem to lack any sort of rhyme reason when it comes to all of its multiple operations. Like in our case, however, it all comes back to one thing, our food and the culture we have built around it. And that could look like many things, right? Like, when we talk about language, food is probably one of the primary factors behind this development. And about ceremony, we mean traditional work day celebrations and of course food protection of the environment is the protection of our food land management is about our food. Food plays a major role in our healthcare. We are governed by our food systems. Women in our community traditionally derive their power from food, building relationships with a cop assist foods brings us together, right? It is all about food when it comes to land access and healing the trauma, well, it's food. So of course, with all these things I mentioned above, I'm sure you can imagine how many of those things can be like carpementalized into many separate categories or subcategories. However, for us, it's all the same thing. And those are just some of the things we are talking about when we talk about last night, seed keepers, like here in the Delta and East Dent Cypress swamps, we have just managed to kind of package ourselves up nicely and neatly as a simple tiny seed store so that we can remain so inconspicuous that we're dangerous to anything that threatens us. So what started this specific project? I mean, obviously there's, as you've been saying, there's a bigger context that all of this factors into, especially with food and seeds and all that, but this specific project, how did you get started on it? I hope you're in for a story on that one. I'm all in for stories, story time. All right. So, so begin with there's there are probably like multiple branches and this origin story and probably just as many reasons as to why I mentioned many of them briefly, of course, but I guess the scurly got the wall, a seed bank was one of the earliest examples of this origin. We built this program after a community meeting where we were asked what we could do to like kind of get our people more involved in our culture. And I suggested we just grow our all food and the response was like well, we already have our own garden, you know, we grow these all we grow all these things. And you know, to which I replied back, so like, well, we do yes, we grow food, but we're growing things like silver, quen corn and big boy tomatoes, which is fair. However, why don't we kind of like grow our own seed, maybe? After some thought, those involved like agreed and they let me develop this program, the scurly got the new wall, a seed bank or what became that. Now mind you, I didn't know how to do anything at this time, you know, like I had some experience like with my great arts, with their gardening and farming and my father and all those things. But you know, when it came to like seed saving and all this stuff, my knowledge was very limited anyway, so don't I started off with this one type of traditional corn, it's tuskboard white flour corn. I reached out and got guidance from other seed keepers from elsewhere and our collection kind of like became like Pokemon, you know, you got to catch them all. And next thing I knew we had hundreds of varieties of seeds from nations from all over and people were giving us stuff and giving these like very sad stories like this is the last of this variety, please grow it, you know, no pressure, right? Like I don't know, I don't know what I'm doing, but I will certainly try, right? But you know, there was, there was like many things other things that kind of stood in our way, like land access being one of them, you know, we kind of have joke about like being nomadic farmers today, although it that was not historically the case with our people. And actually quite depressing because all that means is we are completely at the mercy of landowners who allow us to use any square foot of their land, I mean literally a square foot, you know, in some cases. And sometimes these relationships could, you know, they would be complicated as culture understandings and practices don't always lie. And you know, you would have to kind of, you know, hold your tongue with a lot of certain individuals too. And but then you'd have a lot of great people too as well, you know, it's just, it's just some things just online and that complicated things. Not not to mention that I would constantly have to adapt to different soil types and climates just things, you know, that's a lot to learn when you start from, you know, very minimal knowledge. And just learning one plot is difficult enough, you know, imagine 22 plots. Yeah, all different soils, different temperatures. Yes, scattered between two states. So to try to solve this, we kind of issued out seed the people from our community, like, you know, both closely and distantly related in order to kind of grow them out. We soon, unfortunately, discovered that many of our people no longer really knew how to grow our crops much less how to save seeds or eat that matter. All we were doing is just sending highly endangered crops, highly endangered seeds to their death. And to me that almost fills as bad as like hurting or killing somebody. So now all that meant was we needed someone to teach them in a space to teach them that. Now at this time, I was working overtime as a certified clinical high, the Himalodialysis technician and as fancy as that sound. I was being paid poverty wages, which were just a couple of dollars more than I would have received as being an EMT, which is what I went to school for. And we're talking about like 16 hour days, five to six days a week. Likewise, our people aren't exactly wealthy either. So trying to line up, you know, whatever time and money I had between their multiple jobs and limited capacity was nearly impossible. Unless I tried. And we managed to start this community garden at one of our meeting places, which was about 45 minutes from my home. And from there we grew like many beautiful things and I managed to learn a lot by just doing it. We can never really assemble much within our community. So whatever resources or lessons I had to share was like given sporadically to anyone who showed up at whatever time. So that was kind of difficult, you know, because you don't remember what you taught somebody and so forth so on. You know, thanks seem to be going fine minus the times constraints. And here's like where some tragic stuff happened. So however, one day, while out in the garden, you know, I noticed smoke coming. from one of the fields. I went to inspect it and when I did, I noticed that it was a fire and it seemed to be intentionally started. As I looked around more, I noticed multiple fires had gone off and quickly understood that this was no accident and that our garden had been fire bombed. This was devastating. It took like the fire department almost an hour, like 45 minutes to an hour to arrive. And by the time they arrived, these fires had already consumed over 26 acres of land, damaged some barns and fences and nearly took out four or five homes. And we were angry, right? But who did it was the question? Like, the shares came through and although there were witnesses that were willing to describe what they saw, the shares never did any interviews. And we had enemies, that's for sure, which was weird. We're just growing seeds. How do you have enemies growing seeds? But we had them for sure. And there are many amongst us, but especially in nearby tribes that strongly oppose any form of traditional culture. There are a lot of them are like they lean more to the right of things and they're highly Christianized and they're like early contact Christian. Not all of them, I don't want to blame you for saying that. But there's like core groups that are this fundamental far right Christian belief system and anything that goes with our traditional systems is just a devil. And then there's many other natives that just downright oppose our existence and have gone through great lengths to see to our ethnoside as a people. And likewise, there was ones amongst us that had adopted Western bigotries and politics, which often drives a massive wedge between some of the more traditional people. And in the past, there have been many types of hostilities which have resulted in numerous deaths and disappearances as well as the destruction of like barns and homes and other property. Or even a few of our long houses that we used to have and they were all destroyed. Which was, you know, that's where we would go to ceremony and do those things. So, you know, we hadn't had long houses a long time because they kept being destroyed. And, you know, likewise at this time, outside of that, many of us had also assembled into this new movement called the Coalition of Woodland Nations. And originally this movement was to unify like grassroots efforts within various tribal bodies in and around the path of the Atlantic Coastal Pipeline. And it just so happened that we would see WN had a meeting a few days prior to this fire bombing at this very St. Garden. And at this meeting, it was mentioned by one or two people that allegedly some of the security at some sort of event that they went to. Like it was kind of like an open event, you know, community outreach kind of thing with the pipeline and the farmers and people. It was mentioned that allegedly some of the security was bragging that he couldn't wait to treat these farmers and Indians like they did with their Dakota Access Pipeline. And, yeah, so, you know, that was kind of concerning. And we didn't think much of it at time. You know, it's like, you know, whatever. Because we seem some pretty crazy stuff anyways, you know, just existing. Yeah, I'm sure people say crazy race of stuff all the time and don't follow through on it. Yeah, you know, I was like, okay, cool. What are you going to do? Shoot us wherever bullets, great. We've been shot at with real bullets. You know, it's fantastic. So you know, perhaps as fire bombing wasn't a temp at timid, it wasn't a temp at intimidation. And we don't know for sure. All I know, I don't know if it came from them or whoever, you know, the possibilities are pretty broad. All I know is it didn't work regardless as to where it may came from. You know, regardless, CWN is perhaps the secondary origin of what became the last days he'd see keep receive from here. We met a lot of other natives who were fighting these types of fights. And one thing they all had in common was seed keeping orders, liars to keep seeds. They had this skill of observation. Of course, like, you know, if you get in any form of kind of agriculture, just working with your environment, you start developing that observation, right? You're able to identify very shifts in your climate. And thus, of course, they were more accustomed to sounding the alarm when these issues arise. And, you know, many side conversations occurred. And soon I found more and more help with our project from people from outside nations. And the seed bank had quickly outgrew itself as it was intended to, you know, only represent one community. And when most of the help coming from the outside now, and yet still most of the seedkeepers needing multiple sources of income, just to grow seeds, we decided to develop a more broader organization, which became, of course, the alliance and the seedkeepers. And the hope was to take on many of the things I mentioned earlier, but to also put us in a position where we may one day become like the grandter's to various other programs within our sphere. We had also hoped to be able to like hire people as we grew. So when it came time for us to challenge systems that threatened us, people could just roll out and not be afraid of losing their source of income. And, you know, would in fact still be covered. Losing out on income alone is probably one of the biggest factors that prevents people within our communities from assembling. And we discussed nonprofit routes. However Beth, one of the co-founders who has worked nonprofits nearly her entire adulthood, strongly advised against it for various reasons. And notably would be the ability to crush any descent due to potential dependency. A funding from people who don't exactly align with us. So we needed another way of doing this. So that's where we decided to become a benefit corporation instead. Going this route also kind of gave us an additional benefit. See, when you go as a tribal body or a cultural nonprofit in this region, especially as a scuttled person, you were often met by gatekeeping from other tribal bodies. And for example, without giving too many details, there was this huge cultural vent taking place not that long ago at this historical palace that received state funding. A lot of things were about to be shared, you know, like foodways, language, history, culture, and contexts as who we are as a people today. Now allegedly, some council members of another tribe, as well as members of a university, complained to a native house member in office about this event. And allegedly, this house member made a complaint citing that if they allowed this event to proceed, we would somehow use this event to push for the acknowledgement of our treaty rights. I don't know how true it is. I'm hearing that from multiple people, but it wouldn't be the first time something like that did happen. That would probably just be one of the more reeks of examples. All I know for sure is that it abruptly was canceled without notice and a quote, "safer" from another tribe occurred in this place. So I mentioned earlier, as a cease or we are able to kind of remain so inconspicuous that we're dangerous, we're able to actually get into places because nobody's looking at us as like a specific tribal body or anything for that matter. Yeah, I would assume that for tribal bodies, there's a sort of conventional channels that you go through. And by avoiding those channels, it seems like you're able to move about more easily almost. Oh yeah, we can definitely operate more fluidly in situations. We can definitely bypass a lot of the bureaucracy and politics that come. Granted, we're not going into these operations representing any specific tribal body or pdf, where individuals that might belong to these tribal groups and there's multiple people. And last but not least, see keepers who belong to various tribal bodies. But at the same time, like I mentioned, if you go for representing a specific tribal body dying, especially Scott Rudin, people, you're usually met by some pretty significant roadblocks. And through this, we're able to kind of avoid that. So with the lines of native sea keepers, it seems also like part of the goal is to make it a self-sufficient organization just to grant you and people working on it more independent and to pursue other missions and got projects and goals, right? Absolutely, yeah, yeah, that's absolutely. All right, so with all of this context, with all of the work that has gone into it, how has forming the alliance of native sea keepers gone so far? Like what kind of setbacks have you had? kind of. goals have you been able to achieve? I'm just asking this, I know I'm privy to a little bit of this, but I know I know in the just in the past year there was an almost not expansion and then an expansion if you want to talk about that. Oh yeah. Oh that was traumatizing and we're still not we're still not in the clear and I'll get I'll get that get to the second. Let me build up to that one. But overall it has gone horribly fantastic. Okay. And what I mean by that is it's going quite well however you know obviously there's many many challenges and yeah there's still many more challenges that we must overcome and there are so many challenges that sometimes it's a little difficult to kind of see what we have actually managed to achieve because you know we're so focused on like all these challenges and heartaches and disappointments that you know that we stop we don't stop and look back you know what did we look like pre 2019 we didn't have any of this stuff you know we didn't have access to any of this stuff but now look where we're at you know we can still do a lot more but we are in better position ever ever where you know see for example like see you know the old ones like you know from different communities they talk about how they you know used to have the ceremony in the woods up until you know about 1979 when it was finally legalized for natives to practice their religious and farming practices in the United States you know so the Native American Freedom of Religion Act. So a lot of people don't realize up until that point it was illegal for you to be to pretty much be native you know outside of your reservations and stuff like that however for you know even today however for Scott Oden people and other people within our region that lean more to a traditional kind of ideology we still have this ceremony in the woods and that's not that's both a metaphor and I mean that literally like we ceremony in the woods for safety reasons you know or else you know you get firebond or threatened or blocked from hosting an event you know so through seeds we'd have been able to provide like a safe ceremonial space with security for many of our people as well as as others you know outside of our community here where we here we grow things and pack seeds and everything like that there's something we could keep a closer eye on and have a space that's open-minded and you know a little bit more liberating for for our folk but it's still literally in the woods like I am surrounded by persimmon trees which I love pine trees and oaks and napoles and everything else so we are still in the woods you know which is great but we're working on yeah yeah and we have also managed to kind of like develop a platform with many other native and non-native people like you know I think people feel more connected when they grow seeds from us and we've been pretty transparent about our struggles and successes which creates I guess more sympathy for our cause you know we have used a licensed native sea keepers to kind of like challenge genocidal historical revisionism of like our various you know you know tribal people within our communities and then we have you know we don't publish everything and so we have taken on like extractive industries and that have been set to destroy like burial grounds and local water sources for other tribal people and I imagine you know once we develop enough capacity you will start seeing us using our platform more and more in full force but you know when is you know while I'm sitting here spending all my time packing seeds that's that's kind of difficult and other than that starting from you know a small apartment and like downtown rich member jenia and to a small house would just over three acres is pretty significant granted we didn't do that with just like a o nsk but with like people like you know best who so firmly believes in this movement that she was willing to uproot back to these traditional home lands and investor time and energy to help us get this place I couldn't do that by myself because you know my credit was absolutely destroyed you know so but anyways and now you know now we're making payments on this 14 by 40 shed that that you know we still need a foundation built because we're technically in 155 mile power zone and you know that wants to make sure we do everything by the book because you know as as like native people if something goes wrong and they find any flaw and anything or we miss anything you know they they'll they'll come hard on us but you know still needs insulation and wiring you know but however at least during this winter it'll make work for us easier simply due to the space be able to move and hold more back seeds because you know I was previously working in this tiny you know that's a good room and I like made what you call it what's those little offices called like where people working little tiny boxes in a larger room oh like a cubicle cubicle yeah yeah I had made a cubicle of boxes with seeds and you know I have this massive and like in commercial printer I call my fighter jet because it sounds like one that's what print seed packets with didn't have like my my label printer and you know all my seed pack and equipment in there and then drilled to the wall I have like little bins like cardboard bins of like with 300 different varieties of different seeds that go to the store and I don't know how I managed to do that but I did like fit all that in such a tiny space but this past winter we quickly learned that we needed more space because only one person could pack orders at a time and also when I'd run out of seeds of certain varieties not all varieties take longer to sell than others but certain varieties will sell out real quick I wouldn't have space to have like a bunch of pack seeds ready to go so what ended up occurring is that you know I would have to pause all my orders just to pack a bunch of seeds and mind you we're hand packing seeds we don't have a machine like some of these other companies do we're hand packing them so that's pretty time consuming and so we're getting backed up on orders so that's been a pretty big hurdle but now with this building even though it's not quite ready yet we're just kind of rolling with the colder water weather right now where we're hoping to kind of prevent some of those issues this go around but I'll just touch up on one last thing for that question was like what the first part of it yeah we this past winter we were offered in this investment significant investment up to about like $500,000 or so to go to obtaining this this building in town like I'm one at nearby towns and this building it's like soup it's really ideal to be like there's a there's a lot of money there so there's a lot of influence there too right and and plus the space there's plenty of space where we could expand you know like not only for deceit but our various other projects and we would have also an additional space to do any ceremony if we'd like to do that indoors because you know you know when weather happens and you can't really comfortably ceremony outside that becomes a problem but um but the biggest thing was it had four apartments upstairs of this building and and like three of them were pretty decent sized apartments like with two bedrooms each right and had nice nice little hangout space and um and on top of that there's like this high-speed ferry coming in just walking distance from this building that's gonna lead to this town to various other towns in the sound Almar Sound which we're located close to all the way to the outer banks so I was going to drive in a lot of foot traffic into the area as well but we looked at it as more than just potentially a seed store but we have a lot of our people that want to kind of return to this place and you know and that would help because I have people that that be willing to like you know we'll be able to hire to help work with the store and do things um but also you know we intend to build this this this cultural-based eco village in the area and start you know reclimating land so this would allow some people to come in and and start developing that foundation um so we have some money set aside that we were going to use to buy this prefabricated shed uh in the first place but once this was essentially guaranteed that we were going to get this this this investment um you know we spent all the money for all the legal fees and and getting everything in in a row and whatnot and then late this summer I think I don't even remember kind of blocked out the date I was just told out of nowhere that it's not going to happen. Wow. Like no reason at all is just like boom, yeah, it's not going to happen. I had everything lined up contract ready to go. It's just not going to happen. And that was heartbreaking because it's like a kind of not feel bad. I shouldn't have been telling people like, yeah, if we get this, we got this apartment ready to go. Other people were invested into this. And on top of that, with the money that we have set to decide. And granted, we're not making money hand over fist here. I've been using it. You know, it was originally was going to go towards the building or it was going to go towards equipment and to pay myself, you know, a little money so I could do it full time. Just up until December of last year, I wasn't working full time with the seeds. So when we were told the bad news, we kind of look back on it. It's like, well, we got all this equipment now. I've been working a little time now, but we don't have a building to put in new stuff in. So now, so we had to what little we had left. We had to go and put down for this prefabricated shed, which now, unfortunately, we got to kind of make high payments hot. So yeah. Yeah, I mean, at some point when you get yourself so far down, you just got to keep going forward. You got to keep pushing. Yeah, and pushing we did. Yeah. No, I've seen pictures of your original room that you were doing the seed packing in. And I can't believe it. I've seen college dorm rooms bigger than that thing. Oh, wait, wait, you should have seen what what I was looking like before we left Richmond. You see, you only see what looks like when we moved down here. Yeah. When we started in Richmond, it was a kitchen countertop in the corner of like the intersection between the kitchen, because it's pretty much the same thing like the little room in the kitchen. It's all the same thing. And it's just a corner of a kitchen counter and the corner of this living room slash, you know, kitchen with a cabinet. And I've got a board I could like mount bins to and that's what I started off with with a few seeds. And you know, and Port Beth, you know, when I was working at the clinics all the time, those ridiculous hours, you know, and she's like, she usually works four or five jobs and you know, grants it sometimes even if she doesn't need to work that many jobs, she just can't help herself. She always finds herself, you know, and every other day I got to ask for what are we quitting today. She'll be on these zoom meetings, especially this is during COVID. So everything was moving to like zoom meetings now. She'd just be sitting there packing seeds all day long while there in these meetings or like packing orders while outside work. So, you know, if it wasn't for her, of course, granted, we didn't expect to get so many orders, you know, we didn't expect COVID-19 to happen. We started it just like a few months before COVID-19 happened and once COVID-19 happened and after the toilet paper was gone, everybody came for the seeds. And yeah, no, I'm sorry. Everybody was selling out at that time. Yeah, so it was definitely a lot of a lot of work for her. And if she wasn't able to do that, we probably wouldn't be here today. Mm-hmm. Yeah, so that is quite quite a process, you know, getting to where you are now, getting this set up. Oh, yes, it's been in a quite interesting tell. Yeah. So before we move on to talking about the future of Alliance of Native Seed Keepers, I did want to ask a few questions just about some of the Nitty Gritty. And I know you've talked about this on the Facebook page, but I wanted to touch on it here. What what sort of seeds does the Alliance that sell? Is it only native seeds that you're providing here? Okay, so that's more complicated than what how it sounds. So, well, first, I'm just letting everybody know, oddly enough, I get this question and it's not necessarily like really exactly related to your question. I'm just going to go ahead and turn it out there. A lot of people ask me, you know, they'll message us, is this only for native people or can non-natives buy seeds from you? Please, anybody buy seeds from us, you're helping us. We need your money. That's one is there for cookies. So just to clarify that if anybody's listening and they're kind of thinking, "Hmm, can't buy seeds from them?" Yes, we skip all over the world, you know. So, you know, so I guess in context, I guess it depends on how one identifies native versus non-native. So, although we want to eventually get into things like, you know, trees and generally wild native plants to help rehabilitate like extracted lands, right now our focus is like on various vegetables, fruits, herbs, flowers from all over the world. You know, one day we had one person comment on one of our ads upset because in their opinion, we didn't sell, quote, "native American people food," unquote. That's a loaded content. I know. So I was like, which is a strange concept for me because like, with, you know, within the culture we evolve and adapt their foods to new things and I don't think my ancestors were looking at Brasica's introduced to them and going, "Yeah, having food we can grow in winter sounds like a terrible idea." But then you also have people who look at say things like modern corn and like modern hybrids and stuff like that and don't think it's native when all corn is indeed native regardless of if you've read it. And with that over 75, 78, I'm not sure the exact is somewhere with that range of food, you know, percent of the world consumed today was first domesticated in either North or South America. So the easiest answer to your question is, yes and no, we prefer not to restrict ourselves to like this cultural fetishism. Now, I will say though, we technically have like these two types of sea sanctuaries. Although we do sell seeds, we're talking about a lot more common heirlooms that aren't always associated with, you know, native communities. And there is the traditional seeds. These are the ones we do not sell. We believe that at the very least until which time I see which came from a particular community is widely accessible to that community. Then nobody else should be really selling it, you know? Unfortunately, as I mentioned, it costs money to do any seed revitalization work. Hence, you know, why we're selling like yellow Spanish onions and Carolina Reaper peppers and such. Yeah. And so by seed revitalization, do you just mean breeding up a viable population of a specific kind of seed that you can distribute or is there more to it than that? I mean, yes, yes, that's part of it. You know, so those ancestral seeds have been passed down for hundreds of not thousands of years, right? And they're on the verge of extinction. And we're not unique in the context that there's many like native programs all over, you know, North to South America that focus on like revitalizing specific seeds or like a broad number of seeds. So yes, that's part of it. But also part of it is also adapting, you know, our seeds to to change the climate, you know, I got I got some seed from from from one nation. Excuse me, I have to pull up my notes. I got so many seeds. I remember everything. Yeah, but this is a good example. Like this one seed was growing one corn was grown by this one tribe. And when they were forced to relocate to a colder climate, they gave the seed to another tribe to grow for them. So and what this other tribe was good for was making these read maps, right? And so what ended up eventually happened after both of these tribes got removed, the tribe that moved North that wasn't originally making these read maps started making these read maps. And the tribe that wasn't really growing this corn that was making read maps was just focusing on the corn. And so they started exchanging, you know, like well, you grow our corn for us and just give it to us and we'll make the read maps and give it back to you, right? So even forced relocations or, you know, which put us in different climates or just a change of climate in general, you know, we have to find a way to adapt these seeds to our changing environment. You know, unfortunately, what we experienced and a lot of our native communities is, you know, seed keeping, saving food sovereignty is a buzz word now. There are buzz words that everybody knows most of most of hand at it. And unfortunately, what that gets us is like a lot of people, they'll hand you a ear of corn. And like, here you go, here's the ear of corn. You can save seeds from these, you know, we save these seeds. But when you grow all that corn together, you know, it's, it becomes embedded in over the generations, it becomes weak and sickly and eventually, you know, you're doing the exact opposite. Or there's people that are so super afraid of outcrossing, which is a traditional practice of ours, you know, we would outcross seeds. We understood genetics. We understood in breeding. So we would outcross it and I'll get to that later. But, um, but we'd outcross these seeds. And that would help them also adapt to the changing of climate. So what we do offer is yes, we will do our best kind of, you know, to either grow to seeds out ourselves or just to pay you to grow your own seeds. You know, that's what we hope to do at least, right? But also, we're also working on other projects where we're adapting some of our own seeds or giving resources and that teach people how to adapt their own seeds to the climate. So, you know, regardless how much hotter it gets, how much shire it gets, you know, sea level rise, whatever is happening in your area, that your seeds might have a chance to carry on because you know, like if you, you know, used to you be able to like grow seed out, put them in a freezer for 10 years, pull them out and plan them and they'll do fine. Now that's looking like you should be doing that every three years at the most if you have to save seed because our climate is changing so dramatically, like, you know, I'm sure you already know, like our growing zones are changing every decade, you know, dramatically, like, you know, are changing every decade that if you grow it again at 10 years from now, the chances of it surviving that climate might not be there. So we're working on that, you know, breeding for adaptation of these seeds, but also of course, you know, to return the seeds or to pay people who already have those seeds and they just need to be able to, they just need the time and capacity to grow it. And I think that's a pretty good segue to ask, you mentioned a bit before how you are sourcing these seeds that you're distributing, how you had all these sites across two different states. Has that changed now? Like, are you growing all the seeds yourself in your, your own area or are you sourcing them all from, from around, from other growers? You know, I have to source a lot of things from, like, well, so when it comes to seed store stuff, the stuff that we do sell, I have to source them from other growers by large or larger seed companies that focus on selling the smaller seed companies because I have very limited capacity or time to grow these things on myself. And you know how complicated it could be if you're growing in one area, you know, the distance required between certain varieties of things and whatnot. Like, no seed company grows everything on site anyways. And for, you know, since I've just gone full time this past year, I've been focusing on building the infrastructure up to get the beds ready and stuff like that because, you know, what I found was, I'll sit here and I'll start all these seeds. And we're talking about hundreds of varieties of things. And I got some of the beds started. But then all of a sudden, I get a bunch of orders in. I got a bunch of other tasks. I got to take over, take care of. And the next thing I know, the seeds, they've grown too much, they start getting root bound or whatever it is. I never have time to finish the beds and put them in the beds. And next thing I know, they're kind of just sitting out there growing on top of each other all while. You know, and that's kind of disheartening. It's devastating. It's like, you know, I have access to all these seeds in my life every day is these seeds. And I love it. You know, don't get me wrong. I love it. But it's kind of also a torment that I can't grow these things. And that will change, right? That will change. Likewise, unfortunately, I have capacity issues with reaching out and contracting growers. Like, I have a backed up list of a bunch of people who want to hit us up and grow for us, you know, for contract work, which would be great. Except for I don't have time to email them. Now, I have somebody now that that helps me with communications in general, but they have very limited knowledge about seed saving or growing anything in general. They're just good at communications, right? So now I got to teach them all these different things if they were to take up this path. So, you know, that's complicated. But yeah, a lot of people would like to send us seeds sometimes, which is we appreciate it is great. But I have more seeds than I could possibly grow right now with different varieties. And I will be, I'll gladly help you find a place to send them to in the meantime. But right now, I got to build this infrastructure up first before we can become more independent with growing our own stuff and also communicating with other growers as well. Yeah, it seems like with anything, there's just so much daily work involved with just organizing something and keeping information moving back and forth the way it should. On top of just trying to verify, I imagine on top of just trying to verify the source of these seeds and making sure they were bred relatively correctly and there's not any major cross-pollination going on. Yeah, definitely, definitely. It's a lot of hard work trying to just make sure you find legitimate sources, especially when it becomes too like, it's not so hard when it's more common heirlooms, but when it's some, you know, a lot of people want more novelty things as well. And those are a little bit more complicated to find. Because, you know, you have some people out there like small-time growers that are growing it out and, you know, they might think they're sending you this one seed, but all of a sudden it's something completely different. And you don't know until after you get a message by somebody like, "Hey, this is, which happened this past year for one thing?" And you know, I refunded them and gave them like a huge discount on stuff, but, you know, I had to take all that off the website. But yeah, you don't know until after the fact, so. Yeah, I'm sure that that has been quite a challenge so far. But, so before we move on to the final section, I just want to ask, you know, what do you want to do with the Alliance of Native Seed Keepers? Where do you see it going in the future? And you've touched on this a little and I was just hoping you wanted to expand on that. Yeah, well, let's see here. Some of our questions went a little out of order here. So that's fine. So the broader scale of the Internet Broadscrew, where I like to see for our Alliance of Native Seed Keepers, I'm trying to think of what I haven't already mentioned. Yeah, yeah. Maybe if you just want to sum up a little bit, like a little, almost the elevator pitch, you know? Yeah, I mean, what they have mentioned is I'd like us to eventually become these grand tours for various related organizations or groups and individuals so they could do the work themselves. I'd also like us to be able to start offering more cultural and educational resources to like native and non-native people alike. Will Alliance of Native Seed Keepers, I'd like to continue for us to provide like a safe place for us to do ceremony and otherwise just meet at a symbol and organize with. But eventually, you know, and take on all those other tasks I mentioned earlier, but eventually what I really, really like to do is to, and I don't think it's ever going to happen, is to get back to a more simple, you know, what I originally thought I was going to be doing, which was growing out these seeds and enjoying it, right? Yeah. And then just sharing it and giving it away with people. I mean, that may happen, but right now, I think, you know, my role is being kind of like a provider of tools and resources for people, which is fine. I enjoy that too. That's an incredibly important role. Yeah, it is. I agree. But it would be nice if I could eat so many things that I grow and actually know what tastes. I'm looking at them for over a decade and I'm like, hmm, I still don't know what to taste like. And be able to live healthy or live a healthier lifestyle rather than drink this energy, drink I'm drinking right now and eat cornbread every day, you know? Yeah, I mean, I know exactly how you feel with so much of the farming I've done. I don't get to actually enjoy a lot of what I produce. There was one year I raised turkeys, raised almost 500 turkeys and I didn't get to eat a single one. I'm like, oh, I'm sure everyone was telling me how delicious they were at home. I'm like, I'm sure they are. Thanks. Yeah, it's the same thing just oh wow. Man, if I had the turks, at least have to get one of them, I'm sorry. Yeah. One year this one year. Yeah, no, next year I figured out if we the year after I figured out if we screwed up butchering one, that was mine because I was like, okay, we're not I'm not discounting it. It's just not because we messed something. This one's too flawed for the market. Yeah, I got you. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I dropped it on the ground. Oh, no. Yeah. So with the lines of native seed keepers, how can listeners contribute or aid this project? Well, so there's two ways people kind of like help contribute or aid the project, you know, and one is money, which we have set up through the Steve's store, right? Of course, it helps fund a lot of the work. Now you can send me grants all day long, you know, for us to apply for and granted, we're going to eventually have a nonprofit as well. that's the, you know, the, the, the irons are in the, the fire for that. But, um, you know, we're kind of limited on what kind of grants we can get. But even if we were able to, you know, get those grants, we qualified for, um, you know, please don't send me grants because I don't have passies. Unless you're doing it for us, you know, and you have all of our information, which takes like two or three meetings by itself, as you could tell from this. Very brief. Um, um, unless you're doing it, I don't have the capacity to do it. Beth doesn't have the capacity to do it. And I don't have anybody else has the capacity to do it. But you can't, what's that? I was just saying applying for grants is basically a full-time job for most businesses. Like they have someone that's their job as they just apply for grants all day, every day. Absolutely. I've watched Beth, Beth do it. I've watched her like miss a deadline one time and she, she, she like, you know, got real anxious and upset about that, you know, um, and I've had people approach her within that, that same week that I have to flip out on because they're asking her for free grant work. Or they're like, well, you can just kind of sign in how much you want to be paid in this grant. And it doesn't work that way, you know, it's no guarantee you're going to get that grant. And it's a lot of time energy in which you don't, you know, most people don't understand how much time the energy, it goes into it unless you do it yourself or you live with a person. And see them do it, you know, and it's not for me. I would not be able to do it. But yeah, that's definitely full-time job. And we're not trying to get people to, you know, we're not asking people to do it for free kind of deal either. We're not doing that thing. That's, that's disrespectful to us and we're not doing that. But there are things if people have like certain skill sets, if they, if they're in the area, that they would like to help with something or something drop in. And, you know, we typically feed people well and, you know, give them a place to crash. And eventually we're going to get to a point where we can hire people, you know, we're actually going to do that. Like in short spurts, we can kind of pay people, you know. Fortunately, we're not there where we can pay people full-time, which would be great. Because if I just had one person to help me the full-time work, we would knock out a lot of things. But, certain skill sets that people have, like I can't even, I don't have time and capacity to build compost bins up properly. I don't have time and capacity to build this foundation or to insulate the building or wire it up. I don't have time to finish assembling all the beds and time for planting or rotate the crops or sometimes harvest the seeds that do grow, you know. I don't have time to really remove all this invasive Chinese private, which I loathe to death, growing everywhere and taking over the forest here, right? I don't have time and capacity, you know, the seed packet designs are new ones. I'm not even done yet. The seed packet designs take me months to do, you know. So I don't have time to really do that. And plus pack the orders, you know, without like exhausting myself. I don't have time to pack the orders sometimes, you know. And I got to do that because that's time sensitive, right? For people that's the basis, the whole system here. Yeah, you know, and I got to do that. And so it was like little task, like, you know, recently we had a friend Ryan come through and I mean, he even helped with like little tiny task that that made life so much easier, easier for us. Like he mounted like best guitar things on the walls and I'd never have time to do, you know, such as you can hang your guitars in the wall. And for the first time in two years, because we moved out to the seed room, so I gave her that as her office now and painted and made it all nice. So at first time in like two years, she's actually playing the guitar again, which is like her summer from medicine, right? You know, and so that helps us, you know, mentally, you know, as well. But there's always things that need to be done and it's more like, you know, people ask what do we need done, but probably the easiest question to them would be. Well, what can you do? So if people want to come by and they're in the area and they want to see a beautiful area and you've seen photos, I'm sure of this place. No, yeah. It's, it's, it's a gorgeous area, you know, I mean, you have 30 minutes from here, you have some, you have crystal clear lakes that you can see the bottom of white sandy bottoms, you can see all the fish women in them. And from there, you have like red wolves preserved and, you know, just miles and miles of nothingness, you know, just wilderness out there. But then you have just an arbority area, you have four different rivers that all have their own characteristics. You have the Albumar Sound, which is, you know, beautiful open water. So you have different kinds of fishing, if that's what you're into kind of build. And I mean, you have all these new concrannies of just pure natural beauty just laying all over the place. And most of the people here are pretty friendly. And I'd get some people to beat their horns at me when I'm driving slow and looking at sunsets, but, but, but for the most part, everybody's real friendly here. So it's a beautiful place to visit anyways. But yeah, definitely helping relieve some of the capacity issues. That's the biggest thing to get us going. So what I'm hearing is the Rev Garden team needs to take a road trip down down there and help out in the garden. Sure. Why not? Yeah. All right. So I do want to be mindful of your time here. I just want to ask, do you have time to answer a few more technical questions about seed saving? Yeah. I'm looking at time right now. We're still plenty good on time. I've I've ate and everything before this meeting because I got up earlier. So yeah, go ahead. Yeah. All right. So what general advice do you have for those hoping to save their own seeds and and or network with other seed keepers in their area? So so if you're just let's just let's just think of this as if you're a brand new person. Don't listen to the elitist seed savers at the magic to start with the seeds themselves. If you have no experience with growing, it's okay to go to a nursery. Yeah, it costs a little bit more, but to go ahead and get plants that are already started and grow them out and practice with that first because you know, you're going to have a whole bunch of issues anyways, right? You have to look for past and diseases and you know, you know, whether and any other issues. So practice with starts first and foremost. Look online. There's plenty of resources online. I mean, you know, yeah, other organizations like seed savers exchange and stuff that puts a wealth of knowledge out there, which we hope to do as well, but this we're fine to say there's plenty of other organizations that do it right. That tell you how to save seeds and practice saving seeds from those starts and then next year, go ahead and get more starts from a different thing and then start seeds from those that you already you already had practice with. Because now you already know what kind of diseases and insects to kind of expect, you know, so so that's you know what I find is a lot of people they when they start seeds. That's a whole ordeal in itself, especially when you don't know what you're doing. That you get burnt out a lot quicker, you know, and eventually just give up and by June, July, you know, you just kind of give up on your garden, right. Yeah. As for organizing. There's plenty on social media is like plenty of seed trading groups out there. Good place to start. You know, although we like people to buy seeds from us out there that we don't have and there's people just kind of giving them. There's a lot of knowledgeable people there. From there, go to go to your community gardens and, you know, help out there if they need a project on or something like that, you know, if they need help with a compost bin or something like or if they need seeds, you know, and you have some extra seeds, you know, hand them some seeds. Just to let you'll end up meeting a lot of people who who know what they're doing or know what they're talking about or know people who do know what they're doing and know what they're talking about. And that's how you start to organize like within a community, at least from my experience, right. By actually getting out there within your community. Yes, yes, definitely. Yeah, we're so used to being online and doing social media and just like, you know, like commenting under. People's comments that, you know, well, you know me, I don't hold back. Yeah. Yeah. One thing I end up telling a lot of people who want to save seeds is I, I generally tell them pick one like whatever one you're really good at growing. You really like like you actually care about cooking and eating and using it. Pick that, save that for now and just do it. Do it really well. And then if you have time or energy, think about saving other seeds. Yeah, it's good advice right there. Yeah. I agree with that. Yeah. A lot of people kind of get like you were saying they they tried to do it all. They tried to save every seed from every plant in their garden and just get very burned out and very overwhelmed. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because there's definitely different seed saving practices for each and everything, you know, and it all doesn't just get summed up by wet seed saving versus dry seed saving. It's a little more complicated than that. Yeah. Yeah. On the note of seed saving, I didn't have a personal question I wanted to ask. We do, we just got this pink obanaki corn and you mentioned that. All the obnoxious pink corn you found so far has been very in-brand and so I did want to ask for myself How does one remediate that inbreeding? When growing that and saving seeds from that corn? Okay, so you want to consider a few things here like if you're just growing this corn You know just kind of keep for yourself and everything like you know You have a little bit of flexibility here But if you intend to like you know say give it back to some obnoxious people You might want to consult with them first before you start playing with the genetics, right? But let's just say that You're doing this for personal use You know if for my folk Traditionally, and this is kind of like almost a nearly forgotten practice from most people I've spoken to is you know We had a grandfather corn like a pod corn, you know, I'm talking about Is that would that be the more quote unquote primitive corns like the more the less domesticated? Well kind of it's like one of the earliest domesticated corn is like You know, you have is a corn that has its own corn husk and then each kernel has its own individual Oh, yes, yes, yeah, so you know kind of looks spiky and everything like Mm-hmm you know when Genetics would get too embedded in a particular variety, you know And start again weaker and dying out we would sometimes plant one or two of those in the middle of the cornfield And kind of help return some of those genetics and it might alter to taste slightly which we worked on again Now I know other nations out southwest Sometimes they tend to grow teal synthae which will cross of course with corn That's you know, that's the origin of corn that grass tea and and they would grow it on the edge of their fields Of the corn and of course it does the same thing as that grandfather corner that pod corn It reintroduces other genetics back into it without drastically changing the corn itself and that's kind of Trading that ember eating or reducing its damage. Yeah It's it's it's interesting to me that that's such an old practice and as you said your people have understood genetics for a while because I know with modern, you know high-tech lab breeding they found that with potatoes even breeding modern potatoes back into a little bit of the the wild ancestor of potatoes Breathe blight resistance and bleeds breeds positive traits back into modern corn that can be re-brad and refocused or modern potatoes So it's just interesting that that's such a long-standing practice already Right, right. Yeah, I mean we we uh most of us we traditionally understood genetics and I don't know which came first the observation of Ember eating within people and what happens or the Because you know we have we developed clans, you know within our communities just to prevent that ember eating and So like understanding Genetics is it's been something that you know that goes back tens of thousands of years with us So you know like say when you breed corn we kind of look at those corn like one ear. So be sure if you share seed The best thing to do to prevent ember eating in the future if you share seed Let's say for example corn Don't just give out one ear corn two people You'll start seeing the the ember eating and the The damage that is causing Within just the first generation now you're looking at three or four generations later is called you know that corn is just gonna Become trash, you know For back of letter terms. It's not gonna do much of anything. It's not gonna produce as much or it's gonna just look weak And eventually it's just gonna kill itself off Um, and you have to consider that this person that you're handing this corn to Might become the last person to have this corn. You don't know, you know anything can change Um, so what you want to do is make sure you collect as many ears of corns you can 150 150 ears at the minimum if possible Uh up to 200 ears the more the more the more the more the more mother lines you have the better and Just start taking some of the best seed that you have and that that corn from the best ears and like 150 200 some seeds later That's what you give to the person that you're hoping to share to seed with that would reduce ember eating They'll make it more enjoyable for them and that might actually save that variety in the future. We don't know So yeah, so just to having making sure to click seed from the wide variety of the plants instead of just you know A bunch of seeds from one ear from one plant. Yeah, and that's generally applicable for anything, you know Yeah, yeah All right, well one thing I wanted to ask about as well is Because our audience is largely settlers here in North America for us for our benefit How how do you feel settlers can aid or contribute to a broader native seed saving project if at all in orange general Oh, well, um, I guess I know that's a big that's a big question Yeah, well, it's one of those things I'm also kind of like you know, so outside of lancene seed keepers itself um, you know Uh, I'll just speak a little bit more general of like Between our movements and communities like the the the the the the the the the the wider differences between our movements and communities versus like you know broader movements or Communities and how we interact is like, you know A lot of communities or you see me broader movements and communities, you know they they kind of approach us and Ways that they might not think is malicious or might not be as harmful Um, they're just completely oblivious to it and you know, it's first thing people need to do is make themselves aware of this You know asking us, you know, what we can do for them Essentially, you know what seeds first go in this context, you know, what seeds can you give me kind of deal, you know You know, I'm looking for it. I give it all the time. I get emails and messages from people and they're like hey Uh, do you have any seeds from these people? I believe so yes, you know Are you working with that tribe, you know Or are you from that tribe or something like that, you know What's what's the context because if I have these seeds and these people don't have it yet Why am I going to give it to you, you know, what are you offering the return? You know, are you helping them get the seed back? You know, what's going on here? So a lot of people approach us they ask for seed Or they ask us to support their movements like they're they're uh, you know We get asked to donate seeds all the time to various organizations and we do we we donate a lot of things to do Different um non-native programs as well and like community gardens and various other individuals, you know Not necessarily be nonprofits or whatnot And but we try to focus on a lot of our our native communities, you know, because they're not getting to kind of support that a lot of these other organizations are getting Uh, so so as mentioned first thing for us be mindful of that be mindful of how you approach And if you do approach Be mindful that you might not be welcomed immediately Mm-hmm be mindful that your existence Might be traumatizing to some people, you know To be real with you, you know, like uh some some people I mean standing rock wasn't that long ago, right? Um Uh, uh, we had a school bus held up full of children by the National Guard They were held at gunpoint just a few years ago Virginia and North Carolina deployed a national guard against a bunch of children who just came back from a language camp just a few years ago you know and You have things like what's happening in kaiyoga right now with uh Internal conflict and outside agitators and you know mercenaries coming in and and people are being harmed right now You've have armed conflicts going on all across between Canada and United States between various hot in the Shawnee groups, right? and this kind of thing happens On smaller scales and uh and larger scales all throughout north and south america and most of the time nobody hears about them or nobody pays attention to it rather and So when you approach these communities are actively facing these hostilities are still fighting for your land and they're still fighting forward The just just to be able to grow their stuff and just to be able to do ceremony You approaching them might be traumatizing So you got to be mindful of what you say and how you approach and who you talk to Before you then come into community and be mindful what it is that you have to offer um so And that that could go so many different ways, you know like uh, you know for example You know, I mean, it's not necessarily related to seeds for example, you know, we had a Beth and I had our our our traditional wedding um October 1st this past October 1st Congratulations Thank you. Thank you. Thank you and um Outside some of the seniors were practicing before the actual ceremony, you know like uh, it's like it's like in town So there's people around and whatnot. So people here now a block over you have protesters and counter protesters around this Confederate monument Just like say just a block over it. It's not like a huge protest. It's not like what I've seen in Richmond and other places, right? It's just like handful of people and then like two or three people that are counter protesting, right? But anyways, they heard the singers out there and they approached them and though they meant well, I'm pretty positive they meant well, they asked if the Indians could come sing Indian songs at their protest. And you know, meanwhile, just like a month or so before that, you know, I approached them. I let them know it's like I support you guys and everything like that, but but some of them had like Ars Washington, Arskin, paraphernalia and I was like, I can't help but to see some hypocrisy. I'm sure that in one guy, I was like, oh yeah, I already told him he couldn't do that. It's like, so you are aware. This is offensive. So it's not even like, you know, just ignorance is like y'all are coming out here protesting this monument, which all four, but you're still displaying and wearing things that remind me of the flesh being torn from my ancestors for gold pieces. I mean, come on, let's be real about this. And they seem to understand and I think they're working on it, but then like I said, like a month or so later, they're coming to ask for Indian songs. You know, so people want that Native American medicine for whatever that looks like to them, you know, and they're so focused on that, you know, treating us like this circus act. We want to just come out with our drums and and and war paint and make noise and stuff like that. We're just we're just a novelty to them. And you know, we still have our own thoughts and our own conflicts, things like that that people just need to be mindful of when they approach us as to what it is they're asking. And that might have kind of went off the question a little bit. I'm sorry, but no, no, I mean, that that's exactly the kinds of things that that people should be thinking about. Yeah, so we can't we can't go to your your movements and be bullet sponges, especially when we're all working for jobs. I'm sorry, you can't be your your your little mascots while we're protesting mascots. I mean this yeah, yeah, I I found personally and I've definitely been guilty of this, you know, I'll admit that as settlers trying to decolonize or trying to help indigenous movements, it's always centering themselves in their thought process or in the conversation. Like with saving seeds, I'm, you know, it's sort of the I'm going to save this indigenous seed and give it back to them so that they have it. And it feels like it feels like it's adding some unnecessary steps. It is. And you know, and we we try to avoid that ourselves. That's what I mentioned earlier. It's like, you know, a difference between myself and some other people and granted, there's there's some wonderful people like, you know, like, you know, Rowan White, for example, and other natives that have, you know, remiturated seeds back to their communities and stuff like that, native and onnative alike. You know, but for us, you know, we understand that we don't have access, we have had access. We still don't really necessarily have access to it. We're getting better at it to this type of funding or privileges that allow us to just kind of just grow seeds out willy nilly. And we understand that a lot of these people, as I mentioned earlier, when you just remiturate seeds back to them, if they don't have the capacity to grow it out, then what is it that you accomplish other than get yourself in like a some sort of random online blog or magazine praising you for it for this. We're just the the feel good. Oh, I did I did a good thing. Regardless of how materially it helped. Oh, yeah. And I will add one thing though real quick to that. And here's another while we're on this subject. There's a broader issue I find and issue that found in these movements is that a lot of our people, excuse me, a lot of people in general. For example, if you want to approach native communities and ask these kinds of questions, don't just approach me myself because my opinions or politics or cultural understanding is going to be different versus somebody from a different nation, for example, or sometimes even people from my own nation, right? I don't have the authority to make certain decisions on my own people's behalf much less anybody else's. And I don't have the authority to speak on my people's behalf much less anybody else's. So, I know a lot probably a lot of your listeners, they might live in or around a lot of urban centers and what you end up finding is like movements that take root in there between like a couple of of native people who might be kind of disenfranchised from their communities for whatever reason, right? Be it by choice or not. And a lot of these movements that want to kind of do good, they tokenize that one or two people and whatever they say, they interpret it as representing all these native people. And they'll know about the popular movement, stuff like that. They'll know about standing rock and the history of American Indian movement, stuff like that. But most of them won't be able to tell you, you know, won't be able to name three leaders, tribal leaders from within their state. They won't be able to tell you a word and a single language from one of the tribal people in their state, not even a thing, you are hello, you know, nothing. In the one word they know, which is probably a town nearby is all butchered all the nonsense. But and they won't be able to, well, I mean, I'm not all I don't care about land acknowledges myself, that's just me personally. But they won't even be able to tell you whose land you are accurately at least. They just depend on that one map, which has so many inaccuracies in itself that I'm not even going to mention. Oh my god, it drives me crazy when I see it. They won't even be able to tell you who it is or who it is that lives in the area, you know, in the contemporary sense, in the modern sense, right? You know, they won't be able to identify any of the tribal issues that's going on within their state at all. But like I said, they could recite the popular movements that could say, "Many Wakani all day long," but they can't tell you about these things that are happening or when their governor deploys the National Guard onto children who just got back from language camp, you know what I'm saying? They don't know about that. Because a lot of those people that have been disenfranchised from their communities don't know about it either or the intention is always focused on these larger issues at hand that that's what drives them. So that's what they go after. So they completely neglect all these other tribal communities and other tribal issues. So, you know, when people want to do good and actually work with native people, they kind of avoid the source and just depend on like a couple of tokenized people. And they might mean well, you know, they all might mean well, including those who've been tokenized, unfortunately, but you have to be able to look beyond one or two people. Don't take my word for it. Go over here, talk to this person, learn from their experience. Kind of get a broader sense of what's going on in our world. So do you think it'd be accurate to say that it'd be a safer bet to follow the lead and listen to larger organizations and larger official tribal bodies on some of these issues? No. Wow. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sorry if I gave that impression now. No, yeah. No, no, no, no, when I mean that's like, yes, go to the tribal bodies if you can and listen to what they say. Now mind you, like tribal governments have to delegate and most of them, they do all that work for free. They don't get money to do it. Like, you know, like best people, you know, she's she's on council. And I am amazed at the amount of delegation they do for the most minute thing, you know, they they make sure they come to an agreement amongst each other. And that could take months on end. So if you're if you're expecting fast results for something, you're not going to get it through to tribal government. But I'm not saying don't consult with them. Don't learn from them. I'm saying though, is also learn from different individuals, just individual. You know, and, people who aren't exactly bound by, you know, the what you call it, the filters that they need in order to represent their people. But they could speak out about their own personal thoughts and opinions and whatnot and their own personal experiences. You know, I'm asking if you approach community, some of those are kind of people you need to look for as well. But you should be just, you know, like I said, just don't rely on one or two people because you're not going to get the broader picture. Yeah, no, that that makes a lot of sense. All right. So before we wrap up, the way I like to end all episodes I do is just with a commentary on, you know, how something factors into the revolutionaries garden. And that is just how it factors into a garden that centered in your community and a broader revolutionary struggle. So, and again, we've touched on all of this a lot. So I know pressure in answering this, but how would you say a lines of date of seed keepers or just networked collective seed saving in general places itself in a revolutionaries garden? Well, I mean, you can't operate a revolution without food, right? I mean, that's the most generic way I could say it. You can't conduct a revolutionary revolution without food. And for us, you can't revitalize culture without food, and you can't revitalize ceremony without food, and you can't revitalize the people in general without food. In order for us to kind of rise above the circumstances that we are under right now, well, we have to start with the seed, you know, and that can be said for just about any community out there. Everything, as I mentioned earlier, ends up coming back to food, you know, whatever that might look like for your people, you know, like fishing communities. It's always about their food, right? You know, with what they harvest out of seed. Almost every culture out there, at one point in time, revolve around the food. So whatever that looks like to you, just go back to the food. Make things simple, go back to the food, and people out, eat some food. I could not agree more. Discussions become a little bit more friendly, and that people start to listen to each other better, and their ideas they find that they have more linements and differences. So I don't think there's any other way to successfully lead a revolution without going back to the source, which is food or in our case, seeds. Yeah, I mean, amen. I mean, I feel like I should be snapping after that. All right. So do you have any final recommended resources or links that you'd like to share? And you can send them to me afterwards, and I can put them in the show notes as well. I mean, I might give you some afterwards. I'll say that a lot of my resources and everything I've just found by just, you know, a grant, you know, the modern age with internet accesses is a double-edged sword. Yeah. And a lot of things I've learned and a lot of access that I had to people that who taught me things was because of the internet. So you're not going to find a single source with everything in there. And not every source is actually accurate. You know, you have all that false science out there that's, you know, it looks good on paper, but it doesn't actually work in reality. And of course, not everything's going to work in your area. You know, that might work in some other area. So don't be afraid to experiment. Get out there with your community. Talk to people who already know how to grow in your area. And don't be afraid to broaden to reach out to. All right. And where can listeners find you and your work? All right. So if you want to support the seed store and find any additional information, we're going to be uploading more educational information whenever we have capacity, whenever that might be. But in meantime, we do have a store which is a Alliance of Native Seekkeepers.com. Or if you can't remember that, we have a shorter URL, which is a like as an alpha or apples of a native seeds.com. All right. Yeah. And I'll make sure to link those in the show notes as well. Thank you very much. All right. I want to ask them. (upbeat music)