Grandmother Flordemayo Maya Seed Wisdom Our Elemental Connection to Seeds By Carla Woody Twenty years ago I was first introduced to indigenous traditions through the Native teachings of Peru, and then over the years to Maya, Hopi and a number of others in the US and elsewhere. One of the primary attractions for me is the innate understanding these lifeways hold toward connection to the elements-earth, air, fire and water-each interacting with the other to nourish life. Not long after my first encounter, I had the overwhelming desire to get my fingers in dirt. At the time I lived in an inner city Ohio neighborhood, far removed from nature. Nevertheless, I dug up a third of my back yard and began to experiment, planting medicinal plants and herbs, using them for my own purposes. Only then did I begin to feel like a hole was being filled. San Juan Chamula, Chiapas, Mexico ©2012 Carla Woody Apabyan Tew is an Ajqij, or Day Keeper of the Kiche Maya tradition from the village of Nawalja in the Guatemalan highlands. His people come to him for advice and ceremonies in regard to the Tzolkin calendar, still used today in relation to cultivation and optimal timing for individual or community needs. He described to me knowledge that came to him years ago: I entered the fields with full comprehension of what I was doing. The ceremonies, respect to the Earth, the Sky, the seed, my body. I understood about interconnection. Not in the New Age way. But that I was part of the construction of the Universe. Theres a saying. When you have your seed and you sow it, you help it to grow, then you have your first meal [from the seed], it makes you a real being. It happens when you are a child or maybe a teenager. Thats the moment you realize you must not waste anything! You must treat everything with respect. You must not complain about anything, lets say the weather...what the Sky is doing...what the Earth is doing in the growing of things. When you eat the first food you prepared yourself from the beginning, then you are a real person, a winaq. The seeds Apabyans people plant have been cultivated with careful attention and ritual over centuries, and bred into their very identity as Maya. Unlike many places, they dont have a problem with maintaining the purity of their seeds, largely due to isolation. Others arent so fortunate in that regard but wish to retain and plant heirloom seeds, without questions of safety and health relating to genetically modified strains. As a result, in pockets around the world, a grassroots movement is afoot-seed preservation to protect biodiversity. Individuals and organizations are quietly taking measures to save seeds in their original form like Native Seeds/SEARCH in Tucson, Navdanya in India, the NSW Seedbank in Australia and 1,000 more. San Juan Chamula, Chiapas, Mexico ©2012 Carla Woody Flordemayo is an esteemed member of the International Council of 13 Indigenous Grandmothers. This group of female elders has been welcomed to audience by the Dalai Lama and awarded the 2013 Pfeffer Peace Award for their work for peace through prayer, education, and the preservation of diverse cultures. As part of her personal mission, Flordemayo was called to found the Seed Temple, a seed bank. Located on forty acres in Estancia, New Mexico, this volunteer-run project includes an underground seed vault, a classroom to teach seed saving and ceremonial spaces on the land in the Native tradition. She relayed the importance of this work, The seed has a spirit, but it doesnt have a voice. We are giving the seeds a voice! For the last year, Flordemayo and her volunteers have been receiving seeds from Native elders and heirloom gardeners for cataloging and storing in the underground vault. Seeds are lent in the sense that individuals may obtain a portion of the seed stock, grow in accordance with proper practices and return a portion of the seed produced to the project. Kenosis Spirit Keepers is a volunteer-run organization I founded to help preserve indigenous ways in danger of extinction. We view the seed issue as an integral aspect of Native traditions and are helping to support the Seed Temple. We will be holding Seed Wisdom events January 31-February 1 in Phoenix, Arizona featuring Flordemayo and long-time seed savers Dianna Henry and Greg Schoen to teach methods of seed saving and the relationship to Native culture and sacred ways. Greg will be giving away Glass Gems seed, also known as Rainbow Corn. He originally got this seed from Cherokee Elder and seed saver Carl Barnes in Kansas years ago. One of the truly beautiful-and unexplainable-things is that, as Carl began to grow pure Native corn, other corn that had gone extinct began to volunteer in his field. Carl returned this corn to the Native people that had long ago carried it. For them, it was like part of their identity had been restored. These are the kind of things that will be shared at our benefit, focus on the truly sacred aspect as well as practical seed saving. Benefit proceeds will help build a greenhouse and otherwise maintain the Seed Temple. To learn more and for advance discounted tickets, go here and scroll to the bottom of the page. Apabyan Tew ended our conversation with a final statement on the Maya worldview: We cannot be who we must be without the land. Another principle is that the body we have is not really ours. It is lent from the Mother Earth herself. So if you create any kind of danger to your body, you are also hurting the Mother Earth. What the Earth produces and what we produce is part of the same cycle, the same system. We are not separated from the Earth, and the Earth is not to be thought of as just a provider of goods. The term that is used in the West is natural resources as something to be taken, something to be transformed. For us, we dont use this term. We use the term elements of life. It is our life! It is not a resource. Every one of us has the opportunity to maintain this connection to the elements in whichever ways we can. For some years, it has a no longer been feasible for me to attempt a garden due to the amount of travel I undertake. However, I take comfort in the rural area I now live in, the wildlife that wanders through-and the organic farm down the road that provides produce in their on-your-honor stand. **************** Carla Woody, author of Portals to the Vision Serpent and Standing Stark, sponsors spiritual travel programs with indigenous leaders in Hopi, Peru, Mexico and Guatemala. She founded Kenosis in 1999 to serve human potential and guide the vision: One tribe, one world. In 2007, she established Kenosis Spirit Keepers as a nonprofit extension to help preserve Native traditions threatened with decimation. Carla makes her home near Prescott, Arizona. Visit her websites: Kenosis, Kenosis Spirit Keepers and blog. This Huffington Post article is written by Jacob Devaney. David talks about Kenosis Spirit Keepers, The Path Seed Temple and the January benefit in Arizona with The Path Seedkeepers sponsored by Kenosis. Seed Power! by Jacob Devaney The heart of a mighty tree resides in a tiny seed. The mysterious power of seeds pervades every aspect of life. Seeds can be literal, heirloom or GMO. They can be metaphorical seeds of deceit, healing, or justice sewn long ago and ready to sprout anew. Our relationship to planting and reaping is as old as civilization itself. As the adage says, You will know a tree by the fruit it bears, and so today we see both the bad and the good seeds flourishing metaphorically AND literally. The seed has a spirit, but it doesnt have a voice. We are giving the seeds a voice!-- Flordemayo of The International Council of Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers I am director of Culture Collective, a non-profit that uses creative media and art with a focus on culture, environment & community health. So I spend a whole lot of time integrating the solutions that exist in natural systems, traditional communities, permaculture, and design so that I can think about ways to spread these ideas with media and art. For me ideas are seeds and inspiration can be contagious. Yet the wave of corruption, destruction, greed, and deception is often so strong that I find myself battling to pierce the heavy veil of ignorance by engaging in contemporary socio-political issues. Though I think this is a very important thing for all of us to do, it sometimes has me more focused on the bad seeds. I use the bad news as compost for my garden-bed to plant solution-oriented seeds, being mindful of the work that is before us now on the planet. Inspiration is contagious, and I make sure to have a balanced diet of art, natural sanctuary places, and culture to make the stench of the compost a little more bearable as I till the soil. The GMO battle is particularly interesting because it is at the place where privatization and corporate greed intersects with the most ancient and sacred practices of growing food, saving seeds, cross-pollinating. Cross-pollination is as good in nature as it is with creative ideas, yet it often threatens private interests. We see the battle between open transparent systems and closed secretive agendas playing out all around us. What are the badseeds, how do we select what is worth growing in the coming seasons? You can read a comprehensive history of GMO by Woodstock Earth here. A tree doesnt withhold its fruit from the birds and the worms, nord does the sun decide which flowers to feed its light to. What if economic systems embraced this idea? Though closed systems are sometimes needed, life flourishes in open systems that are in balance. Seeds carry that wisdom inherently, knowing which way to reach through the soil for sunlight as they burst out of their shell. I think humans also have this inherent wisdom, but we are good at forgetting. One of the greatest technologies within a seed is decay. A seed must be planted or it will decay so the prospect of hoarding seeds is limited. Too bad money doesnt work the same way. Giant companies like the dreaded Monsanto know that controlling the worlds food supply by patenting seeds is a route to global domination. Thank goodness for the activists who work tirelessly to inform us, to write ballots and initiatives to battle the giant corporations. Yet there are forms of activism that take their inspiration directly from nature, directly from the ancestral ways, understanding that there is more to life than dominating markets and filling up bank vaults with money. Permaculture, sustainability initiatives, community supported agriculture (C.S.A), naturopathic medicine, and other movements like these model natural systems. Natural systems have sustained life since the beginning of time. Practices that understand and respect life as an interconnected whole are surely the seeds of a healthy future for all of us. Im doing my best to resist my traditional jabs at current socio-political and economic structures that have clearly forgotten this inherent wisdom. However, the list of inspired individuals and organizations who ARE doing it right is endless but lets look deeper into the wisdom of seeds. The Hopi Natwani Coalition was formed in January 2004, and it represents an affiliation of Hopi organizations and individuals dedicated to preserving Hopi farming traditions, strengthening the local Hopi food system and developing innovative sustainable strategies to promote wellness. I call Hopi the Tibet of The West and if we are going to talk about traditions and practices that have stood the test of time then Hopi is core curriculum. Natwani literally means produce or vegetables but more significantly, it refers to the processes and rituals necessary for the rejuvenation of all life. It is the intact web of obligation and activity involved in the planting, harvesting, processing, hunting and gathering of food. It is physical and spiritual sustenance. Native Seed Search, based in Tucson Arizona knows and understands this wisdom also. As a nonprofit organization, their mission is to conserve, distribute and document the adapted and diverse varieties of agricultural seeds, their wild relatives and the role these seeds play in cultures of the American Southwest and northwest Mexico. They promote the use of these ancient crops and their wild relatives by gathering, safeguarding, and distributing their seeds to farming and gardening communities. They have wonderful programs coming up this winter and spring called Seed School which you can attend in Los Angeles, or in Hampshire College, MA., or at their home in Tucson. Kenosis Spirit Keepers, a nonprofit that honors and preserves the integrity of indigenous wisdom and sacred cultural practices by providing cross-cultural exchanges, education, and community-building opportunities takes this concept across many realms. I had the honor of developing a cultural exchange program with director Carla Woody between Hopi of Arizona and Qero of Peru a few years back. Kenosis educational outreach includes wisdom keepers from many indigenous traditions who understand the concept of sustainability from psychological/spiritual, cultural, and practical perspectives. On the weekend of January 31, 2014, Kenosis Spirit Keepers is hosting a Seed Wisdom Conference in Phoenix, AZ to benefit Flordemayos Seed Temple Project. Flordemayo, of The International Council of Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers (see video below), who is also Director of The Institute of Natural and Traditional Knowledge will be one of the keynote presenters. Other presenters include Dianna Snow Eagle Henry, author of Whispering Ancestors: The Wisdom of Corn, and Greg Schoen. So as we set our sites for 2014 we have many practical options for planting seeds in the new year. On the metaphorical realm we can ask ourselves which seeds are worth planting and which are not. Ideas are seeds: We spread them through our words, through media and art; they sprout in the minds and hearts of our friends and in our community. In 2014 plant seeds of inspiration that enrich your community with ancient wisdom while keeping yourself firmly planted in this modern world of technology and endless possibility!
Posted on: Wed, 29 Jan 2014 17:11:13 +0000
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