Kanà:tsyakon yahà:kohwe’ ne ase’shón:’a.
In the Mohawk language, this means “I put the vegetables in the pot.”
Kanà:tsyakon yahà:kohwe’ ne ase’shón:’a. I put the vegetables inside the soup pot. I repeat this Mohawk sentence to myself aloud, my lips mostly still while the syllables form a guttural sound rising from my throat. I think about this phrase, and I will my mind to learn it. It is good practice, learned during my immersive Mohawk language training.
At the time of year when the green corn ripens, I did put the vegetables inside the soup pot one Sunday morning at the Tuscarora Nation Longhouse ceremony. I stirred in a medley of cooked yellow squash, zucchini, and blue corn, swirling the kernels and chunks into the giant kettle of corn soup. There it blended with the green corn, grown and picked from the fields on Tuscarora land, nestling in among the cooked green beans and squash that people gathering for the ceremony had already mixed in that morning. The night before, I had proudly cooked my own contribution, boiling half-moon-shaped slices of squash, gingerly cutting kernels off the corncobs, and adding a few drops of maple syrup to the spring water. The vegetables simmered while I shared with my mother my adventures growing the corn in the gardens over the summer. She and I often cook and preserve foods together, carrying on traditions taught by her mother—my grandmother.
A Humble Garden
Nearly a decade ago, the idea of starting a garden on my grandmother’s land whispered to me when I attended a community seed-sharing gathering. I rummaged through paper bags of seeds and talked with experienced farmers and growers, feeling hopeful about learning how to grow food and giving the heirloom seeds a comfortable home. Sitting deeply in my grief after my grandmother passed, I made plans to clear the site where her double-wide trailer home once stood. The trailer had been sold by family members and removed, leaving a barren and littered swath of land with concrete chunks lodged deep in the ground. Before the trailer had been installed, my grandfather built by hand a modest home where he and my grandmother raised their thirteen children. The building decayed with time and was later condemned and demolished to make way for the trailer. I treasured the time living with my grandmother. Losing both her and the house within two years of each other left an aching void in my heart.
Decades earlier, through my mother’s lineage, generations and family had made the decision to call Tuscarora Nation territory their home. My mother’s mother left the Six Nations of the Grand River Reserve in Canada to work at a canning factory in Lewiston, New York, near the Tuscarora Nation community, where she eventually met my grandfather. In the mid- to late eighteenth century, my grandfather’s ancestors chose to follow the Tuscarora Migration journey northward from North Carolina to the territory of what is now called western New York. My own mother, sister, and I have moved from place to place around Niagara Falls, surrounding towns, and even as far as Oneida, Wisconsin. So much of Indigenous life historically has been marked by movement. Even our traditional Iroquoian languages are concerned with fluidity, movement, verbs, actions, and states of being.
I thought about these movements as I prepared my grandmother’s land for the garden. I took great care in working with the land, carefully excavating the newly exposed plot of earth, cleaning and preparing it for new growth. I spent my time working through layers of earth that held memories, family history, dreams, traumas, and generations. I noticed the creation surrounding me, the maple and pine trees, the grasses and plants, old plant matter and soil, bacteria and fungi. However, less poetic was the mangled nest of wires, pipes, broken glass, and critters’ skeletal remains. The more interesting finds included shards of gold-rimmed ceramic dishes, old sneakers, a dirt-stained doll, and a rusty spoon.
I packed up the spoon along with my gardening tools, gloves, leftover seeds, and water bottles. At home I had a quiet moment to meditate on the day’s work, turning the spoon over in my hands. Dull, corroded turquoise spots peeked through layers of caked mud. Flecks of sienna rust decorated the handle, which was lined with ornate dotted patterns. I often think of that spoon and wonder about the meals it saw or the many mouths it fed in its lifetime. How fulfilling those meals must have been to those who shared them. I think about the kinds of conversations that happened around the table and how the meals kept a family satiated and content.
I set out with plans to build a garden, measuring the plot, testing the soil, selecting seeds and plants, and seeking out tools and resources. When a giant mound of soil and compost was delivered, I worked with my friends and family and my husband from sunrise to sundown to spread the soil and prepare the garden. I thought about Skywoman and the Haudenosaunee Creation narrative that we were taught; how she danced and shuffled her feet around the small bits of earth to spread the dirt across the turtle’s back, creating Turtle Island.
With plants and seeds in the ground, the next few months were marked by a historic drought in the region. Nearby wells dried up, and no rain fell. My uncle patiently and conservatively watered the garden while I was working. My mother stopped by often to weed when she made her rounds of the reservation. My husband and I visited the garden to plant more seeds and take care of the plants. The hot, dry days didn’t help, and the soil grew parched and dusty. The plants struggled to thrive, and some withered and died.
Sunflower Patterns
By midsummer I felt that I had failed in this great gardening experiment and wanted to give up. I didn’t understand why I had felt called to build the garden to start with. These challenges guided me to think about the growers who came before me who experienced loss, drought, floods, pests, and other devastations. I thought about my ancestors and what a bad growing season would mean for them. A difficult winter, with scarce food in storage to support the community could mean hunger and struggle. Despite our best efforts, gardening humbles us and teaches us that we are still only human, subject to forces beyond our control. But as we grow, we learn.
Fortunately, the late summer and early fall brought much-needed rainfall, and the garden rebounded, producing different varieties of tomatoes and squash. The Buffalo Creek squash, a winter variety, with its giant, twelve-foot spreading vines enveloped the space and left gifts of generous orange fruits. Climbing cranberry beans flourished in their ascent along the cornstalks. Sunflowers grew strong and tall, overlooking the garden and bobbing with the wind. A special blue corn variety grew well and produced modest cobs. A friend and knowledge keeper reminded me that this particular corn variety was actually of Tuscarora Nation origin, even though I was gifted it at a seed gathering at the Onondaga Nation community and it had connections to the Six Nations Reserve in Ontario. He reassured me that by planting and growing this variety, I had actually brought this corn home. Upon learning that news, I felt a shift. I recognized that this gardening project, with its challenges, was itself a homecoming and a way to honor my grandmother.
Gifts from the Garden
*****
I remember the moment well. The smell of wood ash and corn soup permeating the air. Eating the beautiful foods and feeling the power within them, knowing that they came from the earth, from soil, sun, water, and prayers, and that they were made from seeds carried and cultivated by ancestors’ careful hands. Being grateful for the nutrition within them that heals our bodies and provides unique sustenance, with their genes dating back hundreds of years. Our body memory appreciates that reunion, realignment, and return at a cellular level. Acknowledging the appreciation of the hands and work that grew the foods we ate, the Good Mind energy that went into the cooking process.
Everything culminated in that moment. The gentle splash and plop of vegetables rolling into a kettle, immersed and mixed with the other homegrown gifts of the season, from our land, all blended to serve and nourish one another, to feed our families and community.
Returning the vegetables to the pot was for me a restorative act, a reclamation, a return, and an expression of gratitude to the land and community that raised me. Despite a record-setting drought, that moment was the reward from the garden I built for my grandmother. It was healing to see fruits grow again on my grandmother’s land, to watch leaves unfurl, vines climb, flowers blossom, and foods return to the land. This is what food sovereignty means to me: connecting to the land, honoring our ancestry and agricultural traditions, sharing and feeding our community, and expressing greetings and thanks for all the parts of creation that ensure our survival and continuance. We continue our ceremonies, sharing our foods to honor those who came before us and to show love for the generations ahead of us. The seeds will persist and continue to grow and provide. We exist as humans in the present, but we are aware of our position in a line of continuity that connects descendants and ancestors—much like the seeds.
Kanà:tsyakon yahà:kohwe’ ne ase’shón:’a. I put the vegetables inside the soup pot.
Atókwa means spoon. While preparing the garden,
I unearthed an old spoon from the soil beneath my grandmother’s home
Image Permissions: All images below are owned by and were photographed by Laticia McNaughton
- Featured Image: Cherokee purple tomato
- Grandma’s Spoon
- A Humble Garden
- Sunflower Patterns
- Gifts from the garden
