Ancestral seed relatives offer healing, better health
Dream of Wild Health farm recovers seed relatives, provides nourishment for urban families, and cultivates young leaders.
Editor's note: This story has been edited by Dr. Jill Greendeer, enrolled citizen of Ho-Chunk Nation and Potawatomi/Kaw Descendant, to ensure cultural references accurately portray an Indigenous perspective and don't perpetuate harmful stereotypes. Dr. Greendeer is consulting with Project Optimist to improve its coverage of Indigenous issues. She also works at Dream of Wild Health, though she was not used as a source in this story.
As days lengthen and Mother Earth moves toward spring, staff at Dream of Wild Health comb through ancestral varieties of seed relatives that have been saved and kept safe. Deep-red and blue kernels of corn. Shiny black beans, or white ones with wisps of purple. Golden squash.
Indigenous cultures view seeds as living relatives that nourished people from across Turtle Island (North America) for hundreds of years before genocidal colonization and weaponization of food systems pushed across the continent.
Many of the seed relatives were gifted by Cora Baker, a Potawatomi elder and seed keeper who lived in Wisconsin and protected ancestral corn, beans, squash, tobacco, and more that families had managed to save despite generations of people displaced from homelands.
“I’ve heard some of those were carried on the Trail of Tears. That really hits you at your heart,” said Dream of Wild Health Executive Director Neely Snyder, a St. Croix Ojibwe member. The organization has offices along Minneapolis’ Native American Cultural Corridor and 30 acres of farmland about 30 miles away in Hugo.
To gently pour them into the hands of someone from a tribe that historically planted them, provides a powerful reunification experience that can be healing, she said.
Dream of Wild Health has staff devoted to reviving seed relatives, some of which have been dormant for 50-100 years. The staff plant the seed relatives, harvest fresh seeds at the end of the season, and seek to rematriate them, which returns seeds home to their tribal nations.
“There’s a spiritual connection we have to the seeds,” Neely said. “It’s deeply significant with tribal communities, because it’s not just simply about agriculture and producing food. A lot of these seeds represent cultural survival, food sovereignty, environmental resilience, and reconnection to ancestral knowledge.”
Restoring access to ancestral produce
Dream of Wild Health began in 1998, two years before Baker gifted her seed collection to the program. By 2004, leaders expanded to 10 acres in Hugo, and in 2020 the organization’s farm grew to 30 acres.
Starting Thursdays in June, the staff begins delivering to the Four Sisters Market, which has about a dozen vendors at the Native American Community Development Institute. They stack tables with vibrant greens, herbs, berries, and radishes, followed by a parade of bean varieties, a rainbow of tomatoes, carrots, summer squash, potatoes, beets, plums, winter squash, and dried beans as summer progresses into fall.
Dream of Wild Health also prepares weekly food-share boxes of produce, herbs, and native teas to about 90 families, with instructions for each week’s featured items, along with recipes and tips for storing the food and keeping it fresh.
Faith Gronda is a member of Dream of Wild Health’s Board of Directors, in addition to her work as an Indigenous Evaluation Specialist with the American Indian Cancer Foundation. She participated in Garden Warriors as a teenager, and later served as a youth leader and intern for Dream of Wild Health.
“We always say, ‘food is medicine,’” Gronda said. “It’s so essential to our well-being.”
Lisa McClintick
Weaving empowerment into gardening
In the mid-2010s, Gronda participated in summer programs at Dream of Wild Health. Cora’s Kids gives 8- to 12-year-olds four-day introductory sessions, while the Garden Warriors program for teens runs for three weeks.
Each starts the day with circling around a fire with an offering and a focus on gratitude. Activities, including games, gardening, and cooking lessons, weave together with language and cultural lessons, said Community Outreach and Cultural Teacher Hope Flanagan, a member of the Seneca Nation. Flanagan has been with the program for 17 years and often does storytelling and presentations in area schools, as well.
Children who attend Dream of Wild Health’s summer programs talk about finding and sharing their unique gifts with the world, and how it’s important to let go of negative thoughts and focus on kindness. Kids get to eat traditional breakfasts, such as blue corn mush or wild rice porridge, and help prepare lunches such as stuffed peppers, buffalo tacos, and kale salad.
Gronda, who is from the Wyandot of Anderdon Nation based in Michigan, said the cultural lessons were the best part of the farm experience. She appreciated the way staff valued youth and empowered them to find ways to make a difference.
“Since Dream of Wild Health, I’ve always wanted to work in Indigenous health equity, and it’s the path I’ve followed since then,” she said. “At the end of the day, you just want to support and uplift your community.”
“That’s our whole focus,” said Flanagan. “We grow seeds, and we grow leaders.”
Dream of Wild Health
Mission: Dream of Wild Health's mission is to restore health and well-being in the Native community by recovering knowledge of and access to healthy Indigenous foods, medicines and lifeways.
Core values
• Dream of Wild Health values the personal character traits of honesty, integrity, generosity, humility, courage, and fortitude.
• Dream of Wild Health values and respects individual and group spiritual beliefs that their families, stakeholders and constituents may hold.
• Dream of Wild Health values the belief and practice of kinship and reciprocity in their relationships with all people and with the natural world.
• Dream of Wild Health values the practice of respect in all their dealings and relationships with one another.
Founded: 1998
Location: Offices on Franklin Avenue in Minneapolis, with 30 acres for farming in Hugo, Minn.
Harvest: About 27,000 pounds of produce and medicine grown in 2022 and 2023.
Impact: About 15,000 people through fresh produce and weekly farm shares, including 2,000 youth.
Next big project: Currently raising money to build a 5,525-square-foot community center with a teaching and commercial kitchen, processing facility, gathering space, and classroom. The plan will include an outdoor classroom and pavilion, greenhouse, and hoophouse.
This story was edited by Nora Hertel and Jen Zettel-Vandenhouten. It was fact-checked by Jen Zettel-Vandenhouten.