Date of Submission

Spring 2021

Academic Program

Human Rights

Project Advisor 1

Christian Ayne Crouch

Abstract/Artist's Statement

Mainstream campaigns for better food within the United States – including local, organic, and regeneratively grown – fail to contend with the violent realities of America’s foodways. Growing “good food” on stolen land in a system created by the exploitation of Black bodies, Native knowledge, and reproductive capacities requires complete reformation of current systems. As a counter to existing human-nonhuman relationships that emphasize extraction, ownership, and commodification, this paper explores the ways seed saving and sharing allows us to imagine alternative realities. Seeds are a source of matrilineal power, ancestral continuance, and community care and can be used to counter the violent systems of American agriculture. I weave personal narrative and various artworks as an example of my own experiences in practicing nonhuman allyship, employing traditional scholarship, conversation, and alternative media sources for research.

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Open Access

Creative Commons License

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

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