“Basket of Life”

by Toni Truesdale

The Indigenous people of the Americas developed many

Crops for their nutritional value, taste and durability;

Selectively, over hundreds of years.

Before contact, there were at least five hundred kinds of corn.

Varieties also of beans, squash. potatoes, chili and melons were cultivated 

In gardens, often under the harshest of circumstances;

Stone was used as mulch, water directed and hoarded, 

As desert water was directed into dry gardens, waffle, irrigated fields.

In the heights of Peruvian mountains, hundreds of types of produce

Were developed in the experimental terraced gardens, 

Including a rainbow of  potato varieties.

Ancient seeds of beans long thought extinct,  

Found in caches in the arid canyons of Cedar Mesa, have been re-cultivated.  

The diversity of our food returns to become importance,

At the cusp of the disappearance of many varieties of fruits and vegetables;

Seed banks of native plants are now being stored.

So essential were the life-giving crops that many Creation Stories

Refer to the sacred women known as Three Sisters; Corn, Bean and Squash of the Iroquois and the Corn Maiden/Mother of the southwest. 

In a traditional tale from Sky City, a divine sister holds  the “Basket of Life”,

Reminding us to preserve, in the cycle of seasons; 

The rich diversity of our food for future generations.