(birds chirping)
(soft music)
- My mom said there wasn't a straight spoon
in the house when I was a little girl,
that I'd be outside digging all the time.
I've been growing plants, it seems like all my life
the flowers that I use, they're still the same flowers
that I was growing when I was a teenager.
Everywhere I moved, I kept the seeds
and kept growing 'em and kept collecting them.
My people, the Akeetahdu the Pawnee
didn't always live in Oklahoma.
Our homeland was in the land that later became Nebraska.
(upbeat music)
My great-great grandparents couldn't take much
but they took their sacred corn.
- We held onto that corn
from that walk all the way from Nebraska down to Oklahoma.
A really difficult challenging time
where many of our people were lost
but some of us still held those seeds.
Then it's just a really beautiful thing to me that
decades later we found a way for those seeds
to still germinate, even if they were down
to like a handful of seeds.
(upbeat music)
- I like this one.
We called it the knife chief corn
because we thought Dennis knife chief
had cross pollinated corn or something.
But it came up with this striped corn
this red white striped, and about six feet down,
they they found the buffalo skull.
Well, the buffalo hadn't been there since 1863
and inside the buffalo skull was that seed.
(soft music)
The corn didn't reach its full potential in Oklahoma.
The Oklahoma soil weakened the seed.
So our Pawnee put the seeds away.
One of the first questions I asked is, "Hey
where's our corn?"
I mean, that's what we're known for.
It took a long while to answer that question.
Our culture committee, our chiefs asked families
and they would produce what they had
and some of it we couldn't get to grow 'cause they,
it was stored so poorly, but some were kept in bundles
and there'd only be 20 seeds in there.
One day I got an unexpected call from Nebraska,
that gave me hope that we could grow our corn again
in our homeland.
- I worked at the Archway and Kearney over I-80
that teaches a lot of the history about the trails
and transportation, and I had natives telling me,
"You really need to teach more about
the thousand years before that."
So that's how I met Deb Echo-Hawk,
was I wanted to start a program about the Pawnee
because we're in the homeland here in central Nebraska,
so wanted to have gardening as part of that
because I've always, I grew up on a corn farm
and I've always gardened.
She sent me just 25 seeds in 2004 the first year
and I planted them like we do.
We plant corn in late April here in Nebraska.
So I went out and did that and I was all excited
and it all rotted in the ground.
It was too early and too cold.
So the next year she sent 25 colonels.
She said, I have 25 left.
This is it, I can't part with the last 25.
We have to be able to show our children
what it looked like once
- Ronnie O'Brien, she's my little corn sister.
In fact, we gave her her name in Pawnee.
Yeah, I think she cried for days when that happened.
We talk almost daily and sometimes several times a day.
Other Nebraska farmers wanted to plant Pawnee corn too.
One was Del Ficke, a man that I would later call friend.
- We wouldn't be here if it wouldn't have been
for the Pawnee helping my family
when they homesteaded just a mile south of here in 1869
there was a Pawnee encampment, another mile south of them.
It was the Pawnee and they ended up, you know,
trading food and things with them and it's evolved into
a love affair and a, like I say, in a very spiritual way.
It's become, you know,
the connection with the Pawnee people.
They are truly family.
This is a manicuring of a precious resource
from a historical and spiritual base
that is teaching us how we need to be in the future.
It is teaching the next generation.
(singing in foreign language)
- To see and to hear Del, you know,
when their, when his great grandparent, you know,
homesteaded this place
and how the Pawnees helped them through that winter.
They felt they owed something to the Pawnees.
It's pretty awesome that he still feels that way.
I mean, that was a long time ago, you know
and things die off, you know, but that's still in his heart
in his family's heart, you know, to recognize that.
That really tells me a lot about, about him and his family.
That they're really good people.
- Yeah, so it really makes a nice drink
and you know you don't have to heat it, just drink it.
- Each fall we travel to Nebraska to pick
and prepare corn for our ceremonies
and to restore our traditional diet.
- There's always a feeling for me
when I am here with this land of being home.
Which in a sense, you know,
maybe I feel a little bit silly to say
because I've never lived here, but it's true.
(soft music)
- I love to remind Nebraskans
that we were the first cornhuskers.
- We're smiling more than we have in a long time.
There's a little bit of teaching that goes
into almost everything that we're doing.
Yet it's been beautiful to see it all play out
into a camp setting.
So this year we're processing eagle corn.
We've been working towards this moment
for a long time to be able to serve eagle corn
to the people at our dances,
at our spring ceremonies where everybody could try it.
Everybody could know what it tastes like.
- I like the eagle corn to taste 'cause when we shell it
you know, just, we get the whole thing.
We're careful about how we take the kernels off the cob
but when you cook it, you know,
we'll blanche, roast it and then take it off the cob.
But then when you cook it, it turns like super round
and it just kind of pops in your mouth.
And to me it's got this really incredible nut like taste.
That's definitely my favorite.
And we like it when it looks
like a eagle with it's wings spread out.
It's fun to find that design in there.
And a lot of other designs,
it's just like a art show every day.
You know, looking at all the different varieties.
Lots of prayers have gone into this corn
in all phases of production.
And anytime you pray to brings out the healing properties
of plants. We've been putting wrong foods in our bodies.
So if we get back to a food that our DNA,
our bodies recognize, then you know, hey,
we're going to have healthier people.
We use corn as most tribes do in every celebration there is.
Pow wows, ceremonies
and there's just so much reverence to it.
- When we were on the verge of extinction
it was just a miracle that we found some of our corn.
I mean, what adventure it has been.
- Mother corn is very, very, very sacred.
To have something that's, that was passed down
generation to generation, to generation,
and we're still able to consume it, to taste it,
it touches the soul.
That to realize, you know, our grandma's, you know,
great grandmas took care of this enough to supply us.
(upbeat music)
(singing in indigenous language)