Collective Effort

Dream of Wild Health is a collective effort to grow ancient seeds saved for generations by Native Americans. Some of these seeds are 800 to 2000 years old, and they contain within them the key to a healthy future. Sally Auger, Executive Director, began this project when she realized that the decline of nutritional health in Native cultures could be counteracted by the reintroduction of traditional foods into their diet. Paul Red Elk joined her efforts a year later as the program director. In order to implement the goals of Dream of Wild Health, Sally and Paul decided to grow the seeds of plants that used to be the basis of Native diets.

Dream of Wild Health now has a Women’s Garden and a Medicinal Garden on a farm in Farmington, Minnesota. They work with Yako Myers, Manager of the Women’s Garden; Beverly Little Thunder, who works with Yako; and Bob White, Head Gardener. In the summer, children’s groups from the city learn tool-making, scarecrow-making and other ancient Native arts at the American Indian Center in Minneapolis, and they get a chance to apply what they learn in the garden. Residents from the Native men’s and women’s Recovery Houses also help tend the gardens.

A Garden for Everyone

Dream of Wild Health uses some resources from the University of Minnesota to help study the nutrition of the plants and students come to the garden to help with tasks like corn pollination. Hired help plow and disk the land. The end result is a garden that provides a way to bring back traditional foods in a safe and welcoming environment. The garden is an arena where people of different generations and backgrounds can come together to learn respect, culture, and traditional gardening methods.

Another aspect of the project is the documentation of varieties of plants that have not been grown in centuries. Paul has found that many of the sketches that accompany old plant texts are inaccurate. Also, the names of the plants vary in different Native languages, as well as in the modern and old versions of the same languages. Tracing these names is a way of piecing back together ancient languages.

Some of the seeds come from as far away as Arizona, yet the plants that sprout have had very few problems adjusting to the climate and soil in Minnesota. However, Dream of Wild Health has come across other problems. It is important for them to keep the plants in the same place in order to allow the perennial medicinals to gain strength. The garden has had to move once so far, and they are now seeking a piece of land that they can garden on a long-term basis, which must also include woodlands in order to provide the natural habitat for the growth of many medicinal species. The land must be within a short commute of the Twin Cities, where most of the people who are involved with the project live.

Overcoming Obstacles

Another obstacle Dream of Wild Health has overcome is the idea that creating a garden of medicinal plants is foreign to traditional Native thought. In the past, people gathered plants from fields and forests. Now, as development has fragmented the habitat for these plants, and the remaining habitat is often contaminated by pollution, it is important for them to have a garden. It took a year and a half of deliberations with Elders, who traditionally think of having all the medicinal plants in one place as unnatural, to decide to create these gardens. Now, with the Elders’ permission and indispensable help and advice, Dream of Wild Health is working on the task of growing out some of the 400 plus medicinal plants they have identified in the seven state Upper Midwest area.

Dream of Wild Health still has to find and collect many of these wild plants, some of which are on the Endangered Species Lists of Minnesota and Wisconsin. This means they need permits from the Department of Natural Resources to collect these plants, which is more complicated in Wisconsin than Minnesota, due to the fact that the plants would have to cross state lines. Once they acquire the plants, Dream of Wild Health will need to research and document their medicinal qualities.

Money, as usual, is another barrier. At a time when funding for the research of genetically-modified plants is at its height, there is not much available for the research and use of native and historical plant species and remedies. Dream of Wild Health needs money to:

* lease land,
* buy seed flats,
* tools and other equipment, and
* to give gifts in exchange for the seeds they receive.

Seeds of Growth

Local knowledge is also a limiting factor. Many Elders’ memory of traditional ways was destroyed or suppressed by Missionary school education, and by generations of living in cities. Elders are also beginning to pass away now, taking their knowledge with them if they have not already shared it in the oral tradition. There is often no written record of what they know; Paul likens their loss to libraries burning to the ground.

In the face of these challenges, Dream of Wild Health is using what resources are available to accomplish their goals. A few Elders, some of whom have since passed, helped to set up and care for the garden. There is a greenhouse on the farm where Dream of Wild Health can start seeds and keep the seedlings. University of Minnesota students and faculty have come to this project to help carry out Dream of Wild Health’s research agenda, and there has been a lot of learning on both sides.

People from around the country donate seeds, which come from private collections as well as a handful of archeological digs. Most importantly, there are the plants, which work day and night to produce food and medicine. Recently, Dream of Wild Health planted 800 year-old cave corn seeds and got a 60 percent germination rate.

Long-term Goals

In the future, Paul and Sally hope to create a web site or CD-ROM to teach children and others about the plants and culture. They are also working to build up a seed-bank that is large enough to allow for the sale or exchange of seeds, which will provide an income to support their work. Long-term goals include developing language programs and programs that address the problem of diabetes in Native communities. However, their main priority remains the reintroduction of these crops into Native people’s diets.

Paul’s advice for anyone starting a similar project is to get the land and the funding first. Dream of Wild Health has taken on a life of its own, though, and continues to grow in spite of lack of steady funding and stable land. They have so far gotten by on small short-term grants, but the work would greatly benefit from a large, long-term grant. This unique project is reintroducing native plants back to the environment and at the same time, it is teaching people how to care for the plants and the importance of the plants to their culture and environment. This level of stewardship benefits the plants and all people.

Work like this is important in restoring both ecosystem and human health. By bringing people from the city to the garden on the city’s edge, Dream of Wild Health is beginning a process of learning that will draw people into a closer relationship with the land. This project also creates a flow of ecological and cultural knowledge between the city and the nearby countryside, increasing the depth of understanding about environmental issues that affect both places. This microenterprise’s main economic goal is to become self-sustaining, and it might be possible to build on the idea of creating a valuable seed-bank for retail sale or in-kind trade of medicinal plants and rare varieties of food plants.