Sovereign Storytelling

We were driving too fast. I held tight to the steering wheel and whipped around roads in the Wind River Reservation.

Melvin navigated and narrated from the passenger seat. He talked fast, like he always does, jumping between the project, the history of his people, the Northern Arapaho, and his visions for them in the future, in this place. But how should we ask gardeners to share their stories, interviews?

I asked I wanted him to focus on what my academic brain could understand stop. He said. He pointed to a small building I would have driven right past it one winter in the late 1800s he told me, Sioux warriors approached on horseback and surrounded the barracks there, planning to attack the Eastern Shoshone people and white soldiers inside, they heard a large group preparing for battle and retreated in fear, but it was really a noisy Christmas celebration, food, laughter, song when the celebrators emerged from the building hours later, they saw the hoof prints in the snow and realized how close they had all come to slaughter. Why was he telling me this? I was frustrated, mostly with myself.

What did any of this have to do with our research? He turned to me and said, that's what this research is. How do we sustain this beyond the project and the funding, and bring food sovereignty back to the community, the people sovereignty? It clicked, food and celebration. Everyone lived another day despite the enveloping violence.

His hope for gardens to heal the people in the Wind River Reservation, the people should control their food system and how they tell and share their garden stories in Their Own Voices. I'm still Learning how to listen.