Corn conference creates connections
Courtesy Brooke Rice
Brooke Rice was representing Kahnawake and sharing ideas with Onkwehón:we from across Turtle Island and the world at the seventh edition of the International Indigenous Peoples Corn Conference, this year held in the Maya Center Village of Stann Creek District in Belize.
“It was really geared towards how important Native people are in climate mediation and mitigation, and how important our regenerative planting is, how it can keep so much biodiversity,” Rice said.
The conference was co-hosted by the Traditional Native American Farmers Association (TNFA), Ich-komonil, the Itzamna Society, and International Indian Treaty Council (IITC), and groups discussed everything from seed keeping to land defending at the three-day conference, which wrapped up on May 11.
Rice said it was particularly special to be around so many other Native people, brainstorming paths forward for their communities.
“I was looking around the room and just seeing myself in these people, just seeing how similar we are,” Rice said, adding that she even met individuals that shared similar corn tattoos to her, and that several individuals shared stories of how their ancestors would’ve interacted and built trade networks in the past.
“Through storytelling and oral histories, we were showing evidence that we were sharing and gathering and connecting many, many moons ago, and so now I feel like we’re continuing those networks and creating these gathering places,” Rice said.
“We’re cultivating that relationship with the north and the south, and that was really inspiring.”
