National Seed Distribution Trip Report

As spring turned to summer, not long ago, members of the Not A Cornfield project team left the NAC warehouse, heading east, on a national seed distribution trip. Team member Sarah McCabe files this travelogue:

"On Monday, June 19th several members of the Not A Cornfield team set off on a journey to Rosebud, a Lakota Indian reservation in South Dakota. Our mission was to help complete a ceremony house being built for the Lakota community and their medicine man Roy Stone. The trip there and back we used as an opportunity to plant our corn seeds in places where healing was needed.

"The first leg of the trip took us through the Mojave Desert where we visited the world’s first large scale thermoelectric power plant called Solar One. Finding it in disarray we decided to make it the site of our first symbolic corn planting.

"We then traveled through Nevada and Utah. In Green River, UT we found a uranium tailings dump site, open and exposed, right next to the town’s water tower. Again, we planted seeds of healing on the nearby riverbank.

"In Colorado we we’re warmly welcomed at the Naropa University in Boulder. After meeting with Anne Waldman and giving a talk to a group of poetry students we planted a corn garden on the campus grounds. Here we learned of yet another heavily uranium contaminated site near Boulder called Rocky Flats. We paid a visit, filmed and planted corn.

"On the fifth day we arrived in Rosebud, South Dakota. The second poorest county in the United States, this reservation is home to the Rosebud Sioux Tribe. This reservation and the adjacent Pine Ridge hold a rich history and promise for the future. This is the home of the descendants of famous Indian heroes such as Sitting Bull, Red Cloud and Crazy Horse. These leaders gave their lives to defend their families and Native American way of life. A lifestyle that seemed to have no value a century ago in the Industrial Revolution but now appears to have great value in a world facing grave environmental challenges.
Only hours after we arrived we were ushered into a sweat lodge being held to help heal the medicine man, Roy Stone himself. This was and incredible experience for all of us and we got to enjoy many sweat lodges during our stay.

"Over the next five days we worked beside the Volunteer Network International team in a race against time to finish the Ceremony House before our scheduled departure on June 30th. Learning about dry walling, electrical work, plastering and fake logs as we went, we put the finishing touches on a house that had been largely built the previous year. True to our roots, the NAC team also put their efforts towards building a fence with the colors of the medicine wheel around a spiral cornfield that had been planted with NAC corn months before.

"On the final day there was a large celebration to honor those who had worked on the house. Music was made, gifts were shared… the wife of Roy Stone danced and sang like she hadn’t done in years. It was a sweet departure knowing that we had made friends among the Lakota and this would not be our last journey to these people and this land. -- Sarah McCabe, for the Not A Cornfield blog