Aaron Lowden, the primary irrigator of the tribe for many centuries, knelt next to a field in Acoma Pueblo on a windy winter’s day.
Lowden, an Indigenous seed keeper/farmer, said the soil had been steadily growing. He was pushing his hand into soft, dark dirt near the base of a stalk Acoma Blue corn. Lowden explained that the otherwise dry land becomes a food forest during the summer. He pulled out a photo of the corn rows, with Hopi yellow beans and Acoma winter squash, from his phone. Three sistersPueblo agriculture.
There are rows of amaranth, heirloom sunflowers, and giant heirloom sunflowers at the fields’ edges. These plants attract pollinators. Lowden said that companion cropping allows you to replicate the natural systems found in nature. He was referring to the Indigenous practice of interplanting crops, which is used to control pests, retain moisture, and enrich the soil. He added that this is thousands of years worth of knowledge that has been passed down over the centuries.
Lowden, 34, has been working in Acoma for the past ten years to restore traditional farming practices and crops. Lowden is the program director. Ancestral LandsHe established the non-profit ‘Non-Profit that Supports Land Stewardship in Indigenous Communities’ and reintroduced traditional Acoma plants into the community.
His work is part the larger movement to build food sovereignty and seed sovereignty on tribal lands in the face of massive global biodiversity losses and growing food insecurity due to climate crisis.
Lowden stated that it is crucial to restore our seed diversity. He spoke in the Ancestral Lands office located in Acoma, just a few doors from the seed bank. To end monocropping and bring home these resilient seeds.
According to the United Nations75% of crop diversity was lost in the last century, as farmers abandoned many local varieties of crops to make high yield monocultures. These monocultures are often shoehorned into environments that are not well adapted.
The Hopi, a sovereign nation located in north-eastern Arizona has been using resilient methods of farming for many years. Hopis are one of the few places I know where corn is grown to suit the environment and not manipulated to fit it. Dr Michael Kotutwa Johnson is a Hopi dryland farmer from Arizona. He relies on passive rain harvesting to ensure his crops are healthy. The fundamental problem in agriculture around the world is the ability to re-make the environment to suit products.
Lowden added that the industrialized food industry has failed us. We must restore our food system, and the ecological knowledge that has been supporting us since the beginning.
This ecological knowledge is rooted in the southwest, where farming dates back to 2000 BC.
Acoma is the best option for Lowden The oldest continuously inhabited communityNorth America is a beacon of resilience. A community that has a holistic, mutually-supporting, and self-sustaining food system. This is incredibly adaptable to the high desert. It can withstand extreme droughts, climate change, and other violent intrusions from outsiders.
Lowden said that farming isn’t a hobby in Acoma. It is the foundation of our culture and our survival.
The seeds are your children
Since the arrival of the Spanish, Indigenous culture has been constantly disrupted.
Roxanne Swendtzell is an Indigenous seed keeper and sculptor who hails from Santa Clara Pueblo, northern New Mexico. She said that the Native American amaranth story is a good example. The Spanish wanted Indigenous people to grow wheat, so they made amaranth cultivation illegal. Ask most people what amaranth is.They don’t even remember it. Yet, it was one our main crops. This led to a loss of diversity.
Lowden said that Acoma’s seed diversity and agricultural knowledge declined as we moved away from economies of care to cash-based economies that rely on the national system for food.
Lowden joined Ancestral Lands for the first time in 2011. There were fifteen people or less in Acoma who were farmers when he arrived, and most of them were over 40 years old. They [farmers]Lowden said that they weren’t renewing the seeds or propagating them.
Lowden started teaching Acoma youth traditional farming methods, seed saving and seed selection, and food preparation through the Ancestrallands Farm Corp. They have 65 farmers since 2020.
Farm crew members were processing the fall harvest in October last year. A group of Acoma youth removed sunflower seeds from the heads of large sunflower heads. A layer of Hopi Yellow Beans was then dried outside on a covered tarp.
One corner of the room was covered in heirloom gourds; Lowden noted Acoma melons smelled like flowers when harvested, and Acoma banana squash (or Tee-deeshu-koo–meh daa–nee) was named for its long, elongated shape.
Another variety, the Northern People pumpkin, was created from seeds saved by Lowdens uncle (a traditional Acoma farmer who was also one of his first teachers).
He told me these things [seeds]Your children are your children. Lowden recalled his uncle’s words that once you put them in the ground, they become your children. I teach my young people everything about our food system, and our ways of being.
Some of the harvested seeds will be replanted next year and grown out. Others will be replanted next season and made available to Black and Indigenous People of Color with guidance on how they can be grown to minimize cross-pollination and hybridization.
Most of the varieties in the Acoma seedbank were rematriated from seedbanks to their origin communities. Lowden said that if you really wanted to care for the seeds and preserve biodiversity, then it is best to return them to the people who have the know-how.
Connecting to Food
Lowden describes it as a joyful feeling to see a seed variety returned to the community.
It feels like a relative is coming home, Lowden stated. Lowden recently became the Indigenous Seedkeepers Network Program Coordinator. Native American Food Sovereignty Alliance, a non-profit working to revitalize Indigenous food systems.
Lowden has identified Acoma Blue Corn as one of those rematriated crop options. Planted for the first time in 2020. The kernels that are shelled into bright orange Home Depot buckets range in color from almost black to deep purple to blue.
Lowden stated that corn has a connection to the directions and where we are in the world. It connects to songs and culture.
Blue corn is an integral part of the Acoma traditional diet. Lowden lists many blue corn tamales, atole, parched corn, and other dishes that you can name.
Lowden used a blue corn topping that was traditional to blue corn. hi-yaa-shru-neeHe made red chile stew, which he served with Hopi yellow beans (tepary), for the crew’s lunch. (Dessert was pumpkin pie made with Acoma banana squash.
Lowden stated that we often forget how important food is, as it is so easily accessible. He added the light-blue cornflour to a cast-iron pan on a stove outside of the office. It is so bad for our health to eat food that is easy to access.
The farm crew constructed hoop houses passive solar cold frames with raised bed to allow elders to grow fresh produce in the spring and winter following the pandemic. Acoma is like many Indigenous communities, a food desert. Lowden said that McDonalds is the closest thing to a food desert, as he pointed towards the Sky City Casino, which is located on interstate 40. 40 miles (64 kilometers) away is the nearest grocery store.
In Indigenous communities, there are significant health disparities due to a lack of access to affordable, healthy food. Include nutrition-related chronic disease.
2015 saw the international recognition of sculptors. Roxanne SwentzellThe process began Pueblo Food ExperienceSanta Clara Pueblo’s participants were restricted to foods available before European contact for three consecutive months in order to reap the potential health benefits.
The health problems of the 14 volunteers ranged from heart disease to cancer to diabetes. She said that we had every type of health problem. Before and after the three month period, a doctor examined the group. Swentzell stated that the pre-contact diet had powerful results. All the health issues, all of them improved.
Swentzell attributes part of the health benefits to the co-evolution between the people and the animals and foods in the environment.
Swentzell wrote in her Pueblo Food Experience Cookbook that it takes 20 generations for species (humans included) to adapt to the environment.
Swentzell stated that if we stay in the same place for more than 20 years, and eat the same plants and animals for more than 20 years, then everything starts to align.
Clayton Broscoupe, a Mohawk traditional farmer and seed saver and one of the founders and leaders of the Seed Savers Program, stated that most of these older varieties have been found to be better in nutrition, less water-demanding, and more adaptable to climate. Traditional Native American Farmers Association (TNAFA). The more we use those varieties, the better we will be.
Our farming is about survival
Climate-resilient crops, water-conserving farming techniques, and climate-resilient crops could prove to be crucial amid rising heat, drought, or water scarcity in south-west.
Lowden, a traditional farmer in Acoma, stated that this is one of the most important things. Lowden said, “I believe it can be our greatest response to climate change.”
Acoma fields are irrigated less frequently than conventional farms. Acoma does not irrigate when it rains, and only twice per month. Lowden stated that the corn will show us when it needs water. Acoma varieties thrive. We always get what we want.
Ancestral Lands Farm Corps established a dryland farm in 2016. This type of farming, once widespread in Acoma used passive rainwater harvesting for highly arid-adapted crops.
Lowden said that three harvests were successful and that he hopes to plant another field in the future. It was almost extinct.
The Hopi, located north-east Arizona, are the masters at this practice. They have cultivated successful fields in an area that receives an average 8.5 in of rainfall annually.
All of our agricultural techniques are designed for soil moisture preservation, said Micheal Koutwa, standing in front of his house near Kykotsmoviin, north-eastern Arizona. My view is that traditional agriculture is more sustainable than conventional agriculture.
Lowden sees farming as a matter of independence. We are a nation. We are not Americans, we are Acoma. [A]A big part of maintaining that sovereignty is being able to feed your people.
