WITHOUT ORIGINS, WE ARE SACRED: AN INTERVIEW ON BLACK TOBACCO SEEDKEEPING
hannah jo king(they/she) is a sister, daughter, granddaughter, auntie, niece and friend; a starseed, descendant, and ancestor in the making. They are a Black femme of mixed African and European ancestry. They are currently a PhD candidate at the University of Minnesota- Twin Cities studying and teaching environmental justice, tribal natural resources management, and Black ecologies. (http://hannahjoking.com/)
I wrote this interview in St. Croix, original homelands of Taino, Carib, and other Arawak peoples, and former sugarcane plantation colony turned U.S. territory that today embodies native Afro-Caribbean heritage. I lived for two months at a family friend’s compound on the West end, not far from the abandoned lighthouse at Ham’s Bluff and the fugitive slave refuge at Maroon’s Ridge. I spent those two months doing land work, writing, communing with neighbors, and swimming in Caribbean Sea. I set up an outdoor ancestors altar for the first time in my life and left yummy foods and fruits there. I used my Secrets of the Ancestors African tarot-oracle deck frequently.1 I took mid afternoon naps in the heat of the day. I meditated.2 I heard the voices of ancestors as I fell asleep, I saw their faces when I woke. Many drafts of this Tobacco piece were written before I arrived in St. Croix. I had written so much and wasn’t sure how it could possibly come together. Until one day, almost by instinct, I sat down at the computer and wrote this (podcast style) interview with the ancestors.3 It was with the ancestors in the sense that they helped to draw these questions out of me, and helped me to respond. Sometimes they wrote through me and other times they were simply there besides me. With their aid, the voices of friends and mentors and scholar-artist-activists echoed in my head, reminding me of all that community has said. I am grateful to whoever was visiting me– ancestors of the land, of my line, or of the oracle deck. It was an unexpected, even overwhelming, spiritual encounter. An encounter that honors me and obliges me to share this story.
. . .
unknown: hannah jo, welcome. It’s awesome to be here with you today. How are you?
hannah jo: Oh thank you, it’s great to be here. You know, I slept well last night, we got rain today, I ate some good meals, so yeah I’m good today, I’m good. How are you doing?
un: I’m okay, thanks for asking. State of the world giving me panic attacks and all that. But you know I’m coping. I’m keeping it together, and I’m also falling apart, and letting that be okay. Showing up the best I can.
hj: Heard. Felt.
un: Okay, well I’m really looking forward to being with you today because we get to talk about a topic I love, which is plants!
hj: [chuckles] Yess.
un: [chuckles] Right? We love plants here. Specifically Tobacco. And we are also going to talk about Black family, and genealogy, and being a Black Tobacco Seedkeeper, as you self-describe yourself, right?
hj: Yeah that’s right. It’s a title, or a role I’m newly taking on. But yeah. Mhm.
un: And I think ultimately how Spirit, and spirituality, and your ancestors are leading you through this work. So, let’s just dive into this. I’d actually like to open by asking, can you tell us about your relationships to Tobacco and to Black genealogy, and how and when both of those passions in your life began?
hj: Sure, definitely. Thank you. Well the thing I realized while I was trying to record this story on my own, and one of the reasons I ultimately decided I’d rather just talk about it, you know, is that I have a lot to say about Black family ancestry.4 So much. Too much I think. [chuckles] And also I have a lot to say about Tobacco. But most of the time when I’m talking about those two things it’s separately, and they have nothing to do with each other. So it really was not easy for me to bring those two passions, those two parts of my life, together into one story and allow them to mingle.
hj: So to answer your questions I started getting interested in family ancestry before my grandparents passed away. These were my mom’s parents, the white side of my family that’s Norwegian, Irish, and German heritage. I had the luck to spend two weeks with my grandmother, just the two of us, when I was in my early 20s. And that’s when I started drawing trees, and taking notes, and making recordings of her all about our family history. After that, it was just an obsession. [chuckles] I was “bit by the bug,” you know, or whatever. I call it a “positive obsession” actually, because thank you Octavia Butler.5 So that was in 2015. With Tobacco I started that relationship when I moved to Minnesota—or Mni Sota Makoce in Dakota—for grad school. I’m a PhD student in environmental studies and I work on a project with lots of tribal natural resource managers in the Upper Great Lakes.6 It’s a project focused on studying and protecting Wild Rice and most of the non-university collaborators are with Ojibwe and Anishinaabe tribes. And Tobacco was always part of the gatherings we had—whether in canoes on the rice lakes, or in prayers during feasts, or as offerings to elders during an elder panel at our research symposiums. So that’s how my relationship with Tobacco started, and it grew once I got into doing Water Protector activism in the Stop Line 3 movement. That’s when I really developed a spiritual relationship with Tobacco that was personal. And that’s when Indigenous friends and mentors started in on teachings that came at a “deeper” level, if that’s fair to say. And something people always said is that, one—Tobacco is sacred and, two—All Tobacco is sacred; it doesn’t matter where you get it from, or the brand, or if you are unrolling it out of a cigarette—it’s all sacred and it’s all good for offerings.
un: Mmm.
hj: So the one thing that did click over for me was this idea of “sacred.” And that summer of the massive Enbridge Line 3 build7 was still a summer of major Black Lives Matter activism and protesting in Minneapolis. It was hard for me honestly to be on the frontlines of Stop Line 3 when I knew that I could be on the frontlines of Black Lives Matter. Not that it was an exclusive choice to do one or the other—but, I don’t know, I guess it was something I personally struggled with. [pause] That’s a longer story. Um, but anyway, after a while I started writing places and posting and tagging shit saying “Black Lives are Sacred.” Because I was like, fuck! Let’s elevate this! I’m so tired of “mattering” and I want everyone to know that we are fucking sacred so respect that. And it’s language that I didn’t have before working with Indigenous environmental stewards and land defenders, that’s something I can say for sure. And something I’m grateful for.
hj: But me growing Tobacco—naww girl. That was not in the plans at any point.
un: [laughs] I would like to talk more about that growing and farming part later. For now though, I’m curious about this thread connecting Blackness and Tobacco. Because you also bring up this piece around genealogy. So is genealogy that thread connecting the two for you? And I also want to make a callback to your title for this piece—“Without Origins, We are Sacred”—so can you speak to that as well?
hj: Yeah definitely, I do love that title! [laughs] Okay so this is a more convoluted story actually, and it’s sort of tough to tell without doing the background on seedkeeping. But I guess the thing is I loved this journal’s call for artists, the concept of “upstream.”8 It really captivated me because I’m thinking about “upstream” all the time in genealogy work. It’s always about what came before this, who and where, how and why. And tracing back, like—how far can I go? You know. That often feels like the goal. And you know, with my Black ancestry I feel 100% validated in that obsession for me. It’s incredibly meaningful, like incredibly, to be able to utter the names of Black relatives. It’s not a shallow or superficial thing to want to know our origins. It’s one of the so many things we lost, that was taken from us, in the Transatlantic Slave Trade. So just knowing their names is huge for me. And I’m not discounting that, I’m grateful and proud, and I’m making trees for the next gen to have, and I’m tattooing them on my body—you know what I mean! So it’s not that we, descendants of African slaves, don’t deserve to know our origins, we do.
hj: It’s more about that sacred piece that I struggle with. Like I said, I was able to gain that language “Black Lives are Sacred” and let it really soak into my body and spirit and soul thanks in large part to Tobacco. I’m hugely grateful. But then that’s abstract too sometimes. [pause]
hj: [pause] Um, wait what was the question? Sorry [laughs] I totally lost my train of thought.
un: No worries, I love hearing this. I really resonate. The question was how do Blackness, genealogy, and Tobacco all tie together and why is your title for this piece “Without Origins, We are Sacred”?
hj: Right, okay, and I think I did sort of answer some of that already, right? [laughs]
un: Yeah, definitely. I mean, you touched on the importance of origin and names for Black families. And I think you were starting to talk about Tobacco too, and how that has to do with “upstream”?
hj: Yes, okay thank you! So like I said already, I started to learn and understand personally that Tobacco was sacred, and learned from so many people that it doesn’t matter where it comes from in order to be sacred. I’ve been carrying Tobacco seeds for 7 years now and don’t know where they came from, originally. But that doesn’t make them less sacred. So maybe you can see where I’m going with this, but I didn’t! I mean, it wasn’t like two dots sitting in front of my eyes for me to connect. It took me months, years—I mean even still I’m working on this—to realize that part of me searching for my heritage was searching for a validation. It wasn’t until chatting with one of my mentors, who was always encouraging me to read Sarah Broom’s The Yellow House9 —do you know that book?
un: No I haven’t—or, no I don’t.
[both laugh]
hj: No worries. It’s basically about this family, Sarah Broom’s family, in the South in Louisiana near New Orleans and this multi-generational house that holds so much of their family’s story. I’ve actually only read the introduction—which maybe I shouldn’t admit, oops [chuckles]—but I heard one of Broom’s talks, again because Dr. Jacobs, my mentor, was encouraging me. [laughs quietly] But she had this beautiful moment in one of her talks, the one with Saidiya Hartman10 –dream–where she’s talking about going through the archives, and talking with all her family, and just how much work it is to do this history work. So you really hope to find something incredible, you know. I think she was talking about looking for one of her ancestor’s names, in the archives tirelessly, and then finally thinking she found them, only to go home and chat with her mom and realize it was the wrong person. Something like that. Honestly, it’s obvious that I don’t really remember the full story. [laughs] But the point is she finally got to a place within herself of realizing that she was chasing some sort of validation. [pause] Like, if I can find information that “proves” how long we were here for, or “proves” the stories my grandma told were true, or whatever—it’s like, Oh then we’ll be legit. Then we’ll have claim over our heritage, or this land, or the stories we been telling each other from the grandmas and the aunties and the previous generations.
hj: Uh, hearing her talk about that meant so much for me then, because in that moment it was just like everything clicked.
hj: I don’t know, I might have totally butchered the details on that story though [pause] – sorry Sarah Broom! I think you are brilliant! [laughs]
un: [laughs] No I totally get that. I’m unfortunately the same way with books. Especially in academia because there is just so much!11
un: But it’s still a really interesting story. Because it sounds like Sarah, Dr. Broom, is sharing about an “aha” moment, where she realizes that she is searching for something that literally doesn’t exist. Or maybe it does exist, but that doesn’t mean it will be found today, tomorrow, or ever. Like with that paper she finds, thinking it’s a historic record about a relative, but then it isn’t. It sounds like you have, or have had, that same experience. Of realizing that there’s a validation you want but aren’t probably going to get?
hj: 100 percent. 100 percent. I have that validation over and over again. Or wait—not validation. [laughs] I don’t have that validation over and over again.
[both laugh]
hj: But yes, that sort of “aha” moment of being like—oh wait, I may never find this record and I have to be okay with that. That’s what happens over and over again. Over the years I’ve gotten better at being happy about what information I do have, you know. And I’ve gotten better at trusting the stories that my family and my dad tell me. Because the crazy thing is too, they are basically all true! Like, I’ve gone through and “validated” a number of them, they start off sounding far fetched and then they are true! So anyways it’s like, why am I doubting? And why am I hoping that this fucked up system of censuses, and military records, and fucking slave schedules is going to give me answers?12 Because it’s like, we have other ways of knowing. And, at the end of the day, maybe it doesn’t matter. Because I’m still sacred, either way.
un: Mmm, that’s powerful. And you mentioned that some of these stories that seem far-fetched, end up being true. Can you give an example of that?
hj: Yeaaa. [pause] Well I guess an easy one, one that’s at the top of my head is about my dad’s paternal grandfather, and the family he was raised in. So his name is Willie King. He was raised in Arkansas and told my dad that his grandma lived with them and that she kept a stash of money from being a war widow. Her husband died in the Civil War and the story is that she had $500 under her bed by the time she passed! I love this story. I can feel my ancestor when I hear it, and this way that she was saving money under the bed. Her essence is in the story, and so it holds truth just because it holds her energy. But is it “true”-true like factually, all the details completely? I wasn’t sure before, but over time in doing this genealogy work I’ve actually found the records to support it. And it took me years. I thought I had looked in the right place for the records, like 16 times you know [laughs]. I would look and then give up and do other things. And then months later come back to it, look again. Just doing this over and over. But at some point the census records and military pension records materialized. A “magical encounter,” is what I call that. I learned the names of these relatives, born in slavery and died free, and I learned that the story was true.
un: Mmm, wow. Thank you. Thank you for sharing all that. To be let in on something so deeply personal to you and your family, I appreciate that. And that’s amazing too that you have their names now. Can I ask what they are?
hj: Hm. [pause] I do want to tell you but I think I need family’s permission first. [pause] It’s a power in speaking names aloud and I don’t think we’re there yet.
un: That’s okay. Thanks for respecting and setting that boundary. I’m so inspired by your ancestor though, that grandma saving money in the bed.
hj: Yeah. You know, same. I’m like, damn she was thrifty! She was smart. She was preparing for a rainy day.
un: They were so aware back then, how necessary it was to be prepared for devastation, you know. So anyway, thank you. Me and my sisters are doing our family’s genealogy now and I really relate to your story, and trying to track down the details! So we should pause, and transition, cuz Imma go off if I keep going. [laughs]
[both laugh]
un: Okay, so this is a good time for our break. So let’s listen to some music and when we get back we’ll play your pre-recorded audio story.
hj: Perfect, that sounds great.
un: Alright, we’ll be right back.
. . .
[Note to the reader: I encourage you to take a 5-10 minute break at this point. Listen to some music, walk around, or take deep breaths. One option for a song break is “Wade in the Water”]
un: Okay thank you listeners, we’re back. Hello, and welcome back. Shall we dive right into your audio story then?
hj: Let’s do it. Go ahead.
Audio Story: “To Be a Black American Seedkeeper”
. . .
un: Mmmm. Wow. That was such a gift. Mm. I need to pause a second to take that in.
[pause]
un: Wow. I guess, do you wanna say anything about that story? I know we don’t have much time left either, but I feel like we need to pause and just digest that.
hj: Well, thank you. Thank you for letting me share that story. Thank you to my ancestors for giving me that story
un: Ashe.
hj: Amen.
hj: So one thing I’ll say is that I actually didn’t listen to that story. Just now. While y’all listened.
un: Oh, you didn’t?
hj: No ma’am. [both laugh]
un: Why not?
hj: It’s actually very weird for me to listen to that story.
un: Mm. Can you say more about that?
hj: Well, I recorded it in one sitting, you know. It was like, I didn’t know the story I was going to tell. And then it just came spilling out of me. I mean, I knew the memory, in my body, of that moment, but I hadn’t said it yet. And I feel like my ancestors was speakin’ throu me. They were telling me when to pause. And sending so many tears into my eyes. And they wanted me to find the right words. And the right rhythm, you know.
un: Mmm. Mhm.
hj: And so yeah, it’s weird to listen to it. It doesn’t really feel like mine. It feels like a story that was sent to me to share, but it’s not really my story.
un: That’s amazing, and really interesting of you to share. I know that feeling, as a creator, as a creative, I think maybe we all kind of know that feeling where you just get like a– [snaps]– download or something, and then suddenly it’s art.
hj: Totally. This was more slow moving than that. Like I still had to live each breath of it, you know. But in some ways it was like that, for sure, it was like that.
un: And so why do you think your ancestors gave you this story to share?
hj: Ha! Ain’t that the 20 dollar question. Or wait, million dollar, is it supposed to be million dollar? 20 dollar ain’t nothin. That must be the ancestors still lingering ‘round here.13
[both laugh]
hj: I don’t know. Honestly it amazes me what they send me. And what they don’t. It’s a mystery too. But you know I’ve been asking for these lessons. I’ve been asking to get closer to my Black roots. And to Black cultural ecologies. I’ve been calling this in, in a way.
un: So would you say—
hj: —Oh! Oh I’m sorry I just remembered something.
un: Please, go ahead.
hj: I just remembered, I did call this in. I spent New Year's Eve last year, 2024, making this list of goals or manifestations for 2025. It’s this great ritual via a friend of a friend—I’ll ask them later if I can add their names and give the ritual details—but it involved writing down intentions and burning them, in order to give them to the Universe for support. And I wrote one down that was like—”Become a Black Tobacco Seedkeeper.” Or maybe it was just “Become a Tobacco Seedkeeper” I can’t remember. Either way, the Black part is implied [gestures to self] [laughs]. So wow, damn. I just remembered that and hadn’t thought about that ritual and intention as being connected to this experience with the ancestors in the garden.
un: Thank you for filling in that gap for us. It’s amazing the power of intention. And especially in this work, like you say, where the answers and the old information is not always going to be readily available, like something we can find in an archive or a book. That’s where ritual and direct communication with the ancestors can come in and support us.
hj: Absolutely.
un: Well, I’d love to talk more about your audio story, but we still have a couple closing comments here.
hj: I totally get it. Let’s move on.
un: Okay well first of all I just want to let listeners know that you are sharing a few more materials with them in the print version of this interview. So you mentioned rituals, there is one that you wrote up about cord cutting anti-Black ancestors or spirits and perhaps this new one from your friend. And there is also a transcribed version of the audio story.
un: And there is also so much more we wanted to talk about that we didn’t get to. I’m just going to read the topics for listeners so they can know about the other things you do and care about, and can follow your work.
un: One of the topics we didn’t get to was about ethics. You shared that you wanted to talk about ethics as they relate to seedkeeping, and knowledge keeping, especially keeping Black knowledge and keeping your family history, as well as sharing it and the ethics of sharing.
un: You also mentioned, going back to genealogy, this idea of “magical encounters” and what that’s like for history work and looking through archives, and what not.
un: And, of course, you mentioned growing Tobacco and that whole experience from Philly to Minneapolis and then back to Philly. At first getting the “Delaware Sacred Tobacco” seeds from the Build Your Home Apothecary14 cohort in 2018 in Philly, then bringing the seeds to Minneapolis where you were actually able to rematriate them back to your Nanticoke Lenni Lenape friend—yay, we love that—and then magically having Tobacco pop up in your garden a couple years later. And all of that bringing your connection with Tobacco back to Philly where you stewarded seeds as an apprentice at Truelove farm15 and now are working on distributing seeds to Black medicine makers.
un: Wow, okay, that was just me reading your notes, so I know there is a lot more there. And we didn’t even get into talking about that which is amazing to me.
hj: Yeah, sometimes the conversation goes where it needs to go.
un: Absolutely. 100 percent.
un: Okay, so that’s all the topics we intended to cover, we dreamed to cover, and we still dream to cover, right, manifesting…
hj: Riiiight [both laugh]
un: And I know that’s such a long list to leave you with and end on. But is there anything else you’d like to say or offer to us before departing? It’s been so generous—or you’ve been so generous—to be on our show and the conversation has been so generative. So I just want to give you a chance to share anything else still lingering after this beautiful conversation.
hj: Absolutely. Hmm. Thank you. [pause] I think you covered the topics well, even if fast. Well, about Tobacco again, a key part of that story is that the seeds I’m currently carrying, I don’t actually know where they come from. Like what tribe, what region of the Americas. I did have some seed that was sold by a company calling itself “Delaware Sacred Tobacco”–and though I could not learn more about the company or where they sourced from, that seed did go back to my Lenape friend and her family.16 But what I’m currently carrying is a different variety. And that took many moons to figure out. But I want to add that layer, because as much work as I’m doing to try to find out who is this plant’s Native nation, for now it’s unknown. And that’s, again, why I had this lesson sinking in about how sacredness does not depend on origin. Along this whole journey with Tobacco there have been a lot of unknowns. I like to say that Tobacco makes me a “fool.” [chuckles] But in a good way! In a very humbling way. Because every time I reach a point in our relationship where I think I understand things, something new comes along, and I just don’t. I don’t understand. The month that I was starting to write this piece I had pulled “Bubu the Fool” from my tarot deck,17 as the card to represent the month. And that deck defines the Fool as “Possibilities and Potential.” So that’s kind of what I learn from and with Tobacco, among other things. How to be a fool, how to sit in the unknown as a place of possibility and potential.
hj: And ethics. Obviously I can’t get into all of that right now. But I do just want people to know that I do not take the decision to be a Black Tobacco seedkeeper lightly. A sacred plant who is Indigenous to Turtle Island and to the peoples of Turtle Island. So stewarding the plant, stewarding knowledge of the plant, as well as knowledge of the ancestors, and of the family—you know, least we forget the family tree—all of that, we gotta show respect and gotta do it “in a good way”—as my Anishinaabe family would say.
un: Mhm, absolutely. Speak truth.
hj: Other than that… I guess it’s maybe a personal plug?
un: Yeah!
hj: [chuckles] Just to say I do have a website18 and I do like posting things there. Sometimes. You know, I’m kind of slow, but I do put stuff there. [laughs] And I don’t think I ever mentioned Oklahoma either, which is crazy. That’s another thing to acknowledge that’s really important in my work. I’m doing a history slash genealogy slash racial-social-environmental study about Black homesteaders in Oklahoma, and the Black and Native relations existing around that. It’s inspired by my great-grandparents who “homesteaded” in Oklahoma, as they put it. So that’s a big project of mine that is coming. I swear, it comin’. Just taking forever. [pause]
[laughs]
[both laugh]
un: Wait—what is it?
hj: oh my gosh, you know, nothin’. Maybe this isn’t a good note to end on. But I looked at my notes during the break. And tracked down that Sarah Broom story, the one about the archives. I feel embarrassed about how disjointedly I told that before. Can I just leave listeners with this little quote from her—just to do some justice to her work?
un: Oh please, I think that’s a great note to end on.
hj: Well first of all, I looked at my notes and she referred to it as shame—that obsession with the quote-unquote “evidence” of our ancestors. And she said she realized: “I would have to go within to create a story that mattered, I could not go without.”
[pause]
un: Mmhm. Wisdom. I love that.
un: Okay, and with that, thank you so much for being on hannah jo king. I sincerely appreciated this conversation, and appreciate you, and look forward to seeing what’s next. And maybe another interview!
hj: Thank you too. This was wonderful. I appreciate you. Ashe.
un: Ashe.
. . .
Gratitude: I’d like to give gratitude to some folks who helped bring this piece to life. Kiki Miles for encouraging me to steward Tobacco as a Truelove Seeds apprentice. The whole Truelove fam with their passion for heritage seeds, including Owen, Sarah, Ilya, Chesa, Miki, Hannah, and Maebh. Black medicine makers who inspire me, including at Build Your Home Apothecary and Pearl Street Solidarity Garden. A special bruja who dreams and learns with me, Aaliyah Michele Bell. Ashton Pemapanik Dunkley, my Lenape and Jamaican pal who is always willing to dive in Afro-Indigenity and land-based learning with me; and my pal Duaba Unenra who does the same. Mieke Duffly for turning me onto Everything for Everyone and The Telepathy Tapes. Also Kellen Cooks, Jessica Samuel, and chris keeve, my crew of Black geography scholars who read and reviewed this piece. Dr. Fayola Jacobs for her mentorship. Mentors who taught me about Tobacco and honoring the sacred, including in the Kawe Gidaa-naanaagadawendaamin Manoomin research collaborative and the Stop Line 3 movement. Ginger Brown Vanderveer and John Vanderveer for hosting me at Northside Valley in St. Croix. Dagny Elise Carlsson and Aliyah Jefferies, my awesome supportive editors! The Upstream crew for putting out this inspiring call and seeing it to fruition. And of course my family, ancestors, and Tobacco.
1.
Secrets of the Ancestors Oracle deck by Abiola Abrams (2023).
2.
These meditations were heavily influenced by The Telepathy Tapes podcast, which I was listening to at the time.
3.
I feel this interview style falls in line with Black feminist writing traditions of presenting raw interviews. Such as by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor in How We Get Free (2017) or Audre Lorde in “An Interview: Audre Lorde and Adrienne Rich” (1981, reprinted in 2007 in Sister Outsider). Patricia Hill Collins was the first person to validate this method for me when she said, “The narrative method requires that the story be told, not torn apart in analysis, and trusted as core belief” (258, Black Feminist Thought, 2000). I also want to acknowledge the influence of Everything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune, 2052-2072 (2022) and the many spiritual podcasts I was listening to at the time.
4. Storytelling and oral traditions are important ways of knowing in Indigenous communities, which influenced my approach. For a few examples see, Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples (2012); Vine Deloria, Jr. & Daniel Wildcat, Power and Place: Indian Education in America (2001); or Malidoma Patrice Somé, Of Water and the Spirit: Ritual, Magic and Initiation in the Life of an African Shaman (1994).
5.
Octavia Butler’s essay called “Positive Obsession” can be read in Bloodchild and Other Stories (2005).
6.
The research collaborative is called Kawe Gidaa-naanaagadawendaamin Manoomin, translating from Ojibwe as First We Must Consider Wild Rice. Learn more here: https://manoominpsin.umn.edu/.
7.
Stop Line 3 was an Indigenous-led movement to stop the construction of an Enbridge Inc. crude oil pipeline, called “Line 3,” through Minnesota and the Ojibwe treaty territories of 1863, 1855, and 1854. While resistance to the project began as early as 2015, a major frontline resistance took place between December 2020 - October 2021 during the pipeline’s construction.
8.
Call for Submissions, Upstream Issue 0: Source, https://upstreaming.world/call-for-submissions.
9. Sarah M. Broom, The Yellow House (2019).
10. “Sarah M. Broom: The Yellow House - A Conversation with Saidiya Hartman,” hosted and livestreamed by The 92nd Street Y, New York (Oct 28, 2020).
11.
One of many moments in the interview when the “unknown” reply I heard and felt was an echoing of what friends would say to me, as comrades who are reassuring me of the normalcy of that academic experience in a moment of care.
12. Census taking in the late 19th and early 20th century was biased by the examiners/interrogaters who wrote the ledgers. People of African heritage were racialized into categories like “Negro,” “Mulatto,” and “Indian” at their discretion or were sometimes left out of the census altogether. The process of tribal enrollment through the Dawes Act was similarly racialized with categories like “Citizens By Blood,” “Citizens by Marriage,” or “Freedmen” and tribal members left out of the rolls. These biased ledgers continue to harm Native communities and limit processes for tribal enrollment. Before emancipation, enslaved people of African descent were not part of the national census but were counted through the slave schedules which recorded only their ages and the names of their slaveholders. Together, these various census tools have been used by the state for Indigenous erasure and Black dehumanization.
13.
There were a lot of moments like this while writing which is one of the reasons for intermittent changes in dialect.
14.
Build Your Home Apothecary is a 9-month Philly-based community apothecary cohort to learn herbalism and gardening. Kelly McCarthy and Mandy Katz started the program and were my teachers. BYHA has since turned over to BIPOC leadership of Dominique Matti, Maebh Aguilar, and Mercelyne Latortue.
15. Truelove is a farm and seed company stewarding culturally significant and landrace seeds in partnership with communities across Turtle Island. https://trueloveseeds.com/.
16.
Indigenous rematriation of seeds returns varieties that were (often) stolen back to their original stewards, community or nation and is one mode of decolonizing our food systems.
17. Secrets of the Ancestors Oracle deck by Abiola Abrams (2023).