Indigenous Corn Restoration Project

Indigenous Corn Restoration Project

Summary

During the course of this past year, we continued our work growing out Indigenous Corn varieties in a number of sites on reservation, and non tribal lands in northern Minnesota , Wisconsin and North Dakota, with the assistance of the North Dakota State University. We had some challenges in our crops, but, primarily overall good success.

In the short term, our project will:

Objectives/Performance Targets

In the short term we will:
• Increase awareness of Indigenous corn varieties in Native American agricultural and sustainable farming communities.

• Help to recover cultural and historical knowledge about corn varieties.

• Increase collaboration among Native American farmers and academic institutions.

• Build Native American communities’ intellectual capital in order to insure and improve farming outputs.

• Restore nutritionally and culturally significant foods to our region as part of our plan to decrease diabetes and other diet-related illnesses among Native Americans.

• Increase Native youths’ role in determining the future of their communities.

Intermediate Outcomes include:
• Building community interest in farming and traditional agricultural practices.

• Encouraging youth participation in determining the future of the food supply in our region, providing training opportunities in farm work and seed selection and corn breeding.

• Developing curriculum materials with White Earth Tribal and Community College.

• Building a partnership between a research institution and Native American communities.

In the long term we will:

• Build Native American communities’ intellectual capital in order to insure and improve farming outputs.

• Restore nutritionally and culturally significant foods to our region as part of our plan to decrease diabetes and other diet-related illnesses among Native Americans.

• Increase Native youths’ role in determining the future of their communities.

Our project will ultimately provide the foundation for long-term food security for Native American people in the face of climate change, decreased access to fossil fuel, and their effects on agriculture.

Our project will ultimately provide the foundation for long-term food security for Native American people in the face of climate change, decreased access to fossil fuel, and their effects on agriculture.

Accomplishments/Milestones

Oral Histories

During the course of the last two years, we have interviewed tribal elders from the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nations, Pawnee, Lakota, Ojibwe , Dakota and Odawa nations to document some of the stories of corn growing in our region. Interviewees include:

• Eddie Benton Benais (Anishinaabe) on Midewin Teachings about corn.
• Deb Echohawk (Pawnee) on seed saving
• Gerrard Baker (Mandan and Hidatsa) on Corn and seed saving

Growing out the Varieties:

• Madeline Island, WI. Grower- Martin Curry. Corn was grown at three separate locations with good success in the Manitoba Flint Variety, Saskatchewan Flint, and Bear Island Flint. We intend to expand the varieties in 2011, and alternate a bit, since we do not find that the Saskatchewan Flint seems to be well suited to our region, while the Manitoba Flint comes in strong. We intend to continue growing Manitoba Flint and Bear Island Flint on Madeline Island as well as trying out a variety of blue corn.
• Callaway, MN. Growers- Land Recovery Project. We had excellent success in our Bear Island Flint and Dakota Black Popcorn Crops. These varieties did not cross pollinate and were resilient against drought and high winds. They were grown as a part of a community garden plot near the offices of the WELRP, and were planted with children from the Omakakoons Daycare Program.
• Ogema, MN.We had less success with our Manitoba flint field at Mandaamin Akiing. Equipment failures and technical problems accounted for a loss of most the crop, in addition to deer predation. We were very disappointed with this field. Later in the summer, we began a crop rotation strategy, improving the soil with buckwheat and green manure for one of the fields we intend to plant in 2011 in corn, surrounded by Bergamot.
• Ogema, MN. Grower: Curt Ballard farm. The Ballard family, once again grew a fabulous Manitoba white flint crop for the project. Their fields , technology and commitment to the corn and the community was very helpful.
• Ogema, MN. Grower: Dave Chilton. Grew seed for Pink Lady flour corn. He seeded directly into the ground into a field rich with horse manure. He had very good success, and had to harvest a bit early because of the raccoons, but beat the raccoons to the corn and had a good seed crop.
• Frazee, MN. Grower: Ervin Herschberger. Grew four different varieties on his 135 acre farm. Hand pollinated the Manitoba flint, and then Saskatchewan flint grew out and was open pollinated, using timed isolation to avoid cross-pollination. Next, the Pink Lady grew out followed by the Otto File, which is a long season polenta variety.
• Battle Lake, MN. Grower: Sue Wika, successfully grew out a field of the Pink Lady corn.

Outreach
Many of our objectives were accomplished through outreach to Native Communities locally and nationally. Sharing the work of our partner growers at conferences and presentations has created a great deal of interest in this work.

• February of 2010, We held our seventh Indigenous Farming Conference, attended by some l00 farmers, Native harvesters and tribal leaders. The conference was held at Maplelag resort, where many of our project partners and growers presented on the corn restoration project as well as related topics. The conference allowed for us to expand the interest in this work to Red Lake, Leech Lake, Sisseton Wapeton and other reservatiobs.
• March of 2010 , Winona LaDuke presented at the Bay Mills Ojibwe Farming Conference to an additional l00 Native farmers from the northern Michigan and Wisconsin region.
• April of 20l0, the Bad River Band of Ojibwe hosted a farming conference, and this was attended by Nikki Crowe, representing the project who presented on the corn project and other work as well.
• October of 2010, Winona attended and presented at the Tesuque Pueblo Seed Sovereignty Days in New Mexico on the issues of seed sovereignty and restoration of Indigenous corn varieties from the Northern Plains and Great Lakes region.
• November 2010, Winona presented to the National Congress of American Indians in Albuqerque New Mexico on seed and corn restoration work .

Coverage in the Native media of this work has been extensive.

Work to be done:

• Follow up interview with Eddie Benton
• Follow up interview at Red Lake
• Interview at Standing Rock
• Interview at Sisseton/or Granite Falls
• Interview with Sally Auger
• Another interview with Carolyn Chartrand (Metis)
• Identify new growers in the Native Community
• Continue to increase seed until we have produced quantities viable to feed the community

Impacts and Contributions/Outcomes

We have increased our quantities of these seeds ten fold and now distribute the seed to community members and other reservations to grow. The growing interest in food sovereignty amongst native communities attests to the success of this project. The greatest impact of this work is the restoration of culturally significant crop varieties which are resilient to environmental stresses and retain higher nutritional value than conventional varieties. This work is fundamental to building a sustainable, local economy and achieving food sovereignty for Tribal Nations.

Building relationships amongst native communities and a University is another significant impact of the project. We are preserving some indigenous varieties using scientific methods and documentation. Some of the corn varieties have been planted in the NDSU Fargo corn breeding nursery over the past two years, and the top varieties have been selected for initial crosses in 2011. We are forging healthy relations amongst science, education, and native communities.

Our work has captured the attention of other University researchers, including Abdullah Jaradat, who conducted nutritional analysis of our corn- finding them have protein values over 10%. Additionally, Jaradat stated, “..the nine (indigenous) accessions have darker and greenish color as compared with those on the right hand side of the graph, have more nutrients (per unit seed dry weight) of phosphorus, Zinc and Sulfur (but less magnesium), and as the Y-axis suggests have more potassium than my corn (Nokomis Gold landrace varieties).”

• Jaradat Seed Protein Analysis
• Indigenous Farming Conference 2011 Article
• Sue WIka with Pink Lady

Collaborators: