We interview Angela Ferguson, a fiercely dedicated seed saver, corn grower and food sovereignty practitioner and advocate who continues to maintain and revitalize Indigenous trade networks. She is the supervisor of the Onondaga Nation Farm, a working farm that provides traditional foods for families throughout the Onondaga Nation. It serves as a place where cultural learning around food and farming are practiced.

Throughout the interview, Angela shells bean seeds, and with seeds clicking and popping in background, she tells us about food as currency, alternative trade networks, pre-monetary currency, practices of reciprocity that are being revitalized and food as the common thread.

Angela notes how a lot of the work at the farm is about integrating people with the foods and sacred knowledge that comes from elders and the connection that pulls it all together.  I think this is part of the definition of sovereignty:

Can we feed ourselves?

Can we still perform our ceremonies?

Can we still speak the language?

Are we still willing to learn and pass on that oral tradition?

We have begun using food as currency. We have eliminated using the US dollar as a form of value placed on our goods and resuscitated the thought process getting back to old trade routes using food as value.

"A lot of places in my food travels had a lot of people calling their seed places a seed bank, and I thought, well, banks are full of promissory notes. That’s what a dollar bill is— an IOU. I don’t feel that our seeds are an IOU, they are something so sacred that they need to be honored. I did not like the word ‘bank’. When you give things, you give them unconditionally, so you don’t expect anything back. The seeds do that for us, the food does that for us."

"There were people who starved to death on the Trail of Tears but they didn’t eat the food that was in their pocket because they knew they had to keep those seeds going for the next generations to come. That is very intense thinking when it comes to food and I think people have gotten so far away from that mindset, that if they can reconnect again -- it is what will eliminate the value of a dollar. If someone would hand me a jar of seeds or $20, for me the $20 has no value but the seeds can feed a generation. They can support a lot more than those $20 could."

(Intro and outro music by Polvora and Barcelona Afrobeat)