Bioculture is a part of our community. Our seeds are our ancestors.

Seeds of Renewal

The Abenaki People are the Indigenous inhabitants of most of Vermont, except a small portion in the southwestern part of the state. They have lived in their land for over 12,000 years. When we think of the Ancient Vermonters, we think of them as hunters and perhaps fisher folk, but we now know that for well over 1,000 years, the Abenaki communities in the Champlain and Connecticut River Valleys as well as the state's other river valleys such as the Winooski and Lamoille, were farmers and gardeners, using sophisticated agricultural techniques and a number of distinctive crops. This rich culture of the Seeded Earth had not been studied to any great extent by archaeologists and cultural historians.

This belief changed in 2006-2010, when cultural and historical research on the four Vermont tribes that were petitioning for Vermont State recognition by the Wôbanakik Heritage Center in Swanton, VT revealed a rich legacy of agricultural earth-working, fertilizing, multi cropping, and even bits of evidence for agricultural ceremonies. In 2012, Steve McComber, a Mohawk ethnobotanist and traditions-keeper told Prof. Fred Wiseman about several crops that he knew were not Mohawk and were almost certainly grown by the Abenakis and their neighbors to the east. A quick search of the internet revealed that McComber's suggestions had a measure of academic support.

History

Armed with this knowledge, the Seeds of Renewal Project (SOR) began in 2012 to track down and preserve ancestral crops, agricultural systems, ceremonies, cuisine, and seed saving practices of the Abenaki tribes in Vermont. The project has identified and preserved over fifty cultivars of corn, beans, squash, and other crops, and has also documented traditional horticultural practices such as mound gardening and fish fertilizing. In addition, SOR has revived traditional Abenaki dances and ceremonies related to agriculture and has collaborated with other Indigenous communities in the region to share knowledge and resources. The project's work has helped to revitalize traditional Abenaki agriculture and has contributed to a better understanding of Indigenous food systems in the Northeast.

• 2012: project start! By year’s end, 14 Abenaki Crops were identified

• 2013: start of collating knowledge on Indigenous mound gardening, agricultural terracing, and fish fertilizing from recognition petitions. Intensive research began, involving interviews, crop and soil testing, phenological studies, herbarium sample collecting, and cultivar trading among farmers

• 2013: started teaching traditional Abenaki agricultural relevant dances, including the Sun, Moon, and Green Corn dances

• 2014: SOR partners with the Koasek Band to combine known dances, ceremonies (Forgiveness Day, Green Corn and Harvest celebrations), and the horticultural cycle into a yearly biocultural cycle

• 2015: investigation into regional culinary ethnobotany and cuisine from discussions with tribal elders and study of functional basket relationship to harvest activities

• 2018: developed an agricultural calendar including Forgiveness Day in winter, Field Blessing in spring, Shooting Fire in summer, Green Corn and Harvest celebrations in Fall

• 2024: 50+ identified crops of cultivars of corns, beans, squash, sunflowers, ground cherries, sunflowers, sun-chokes, bottle gourds, and tobacco

What are we doing today?

The mid 2020’s focus of SOR is the Abenaki Cookbook and developing the Abenaki Year Horticultural Calendar into a K-12 Curriculum.  We offer three yearly workshops “Seed School” in March, “Planting School” in May, and “Harvest School” in late October or early November. In concert with the Vermont Indigenous Heritage Center, we hope to establish a horticultural “field station” at the proposed new Vermont Indigenous Heritage Center campus.