OSUN Center for Human Rights and the Arts and Fisher Center Present

To Be Home, To Be Sown: A Conversation on Seed Rematriation

A conversation on seed rematriation. A part of Common Ground, an international festival on the politics of land and seed. Please register here. 

What does it mean to be in a community with seed? How can we treat seeds with autonomy and respect? In the face of colonization, climate chaos, and biotech patenting, returning diasporic seeds to their geographic and cultural homelands is an act of emergence and survival. Join us for a conversation between Vivien Sansour of the Palestine Heirloom Seed Library, Joe Baker of the Lenape Center, and K Greene of Hudson Valley Seed Company and Hudson Valley Farm Hub to explore these questions and learn about their work in seed rematriation.

K Greene is a long-time advocate of seed access, rematriation, and sharing seed stories. As cofounder and creative director of Hudson Valley Seed Company (founded in 2004 as the Hudson Valley Seed Library), K keeps the seed company true to its original mission of protecting seeds, increasing seed diversity, fostering an ethical seed landscape, and celebrating the art of seed. K is currently working with Hudson Valley Farm Hub as an advisor to their Seed Growing program which is partnered with the Lenape Center and the Akwesasne Seed Hub in rematriation work.

Vivien Sansour is an artist, researcher, and writer. Vivien uses installations, images, sketches, film, soil, seeds, and plants to enliven old cultural tales in contemporary presentations and to advocate for seed conservation and the protection of agrobiodiversity as a cultural/political act. Vivien founded the Palestine Heirloom Seed Library as part of this work with local farmers and has been showcased internationally, including at the Chicago Architecture Biennale, Victoria and Albert Museum in London, Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven, Berlinale, Istanbul Biennale, Fotoindustria, and the Venice Art Biennale. Vivien works to bring threatened varieties “back to the dinner table to become part of our living culture rather than a relic of the past.” This work has led her to collaborate with award-winning chefs, including Anthony Bourdain and Sammi Tamimi. A former Harvard University Fellow, Vivien is currently teaching at Bard College in the Experimental Humanities department where she is developing a course on human and nature design in the Hudson Valley entitled, “The Belly is A Garden,” El Batin Bustan, 2022-2023.

Joe Baker is an artist, educator, curator, and activist who has been working in the field of Native arts for the past 30 years. He is an enrolled member of the Delaware Tribe of Indians of Oklahoma and cofounder, executive director of Lenape Center in Manhattan. Baker is an adjunct professor at Columbia University's School of Social Work in New York, and was recently visiting professor of museum studies at Colorado College in Colorado Springs, Colorado. In partnership with Farm Hub in the Hudson River Valley, Baker and Lenape Center are championing the return of ancestral seeds in the homeland through a seed rematriation project. This seed saving project, now in its second year, has done much to contribute to the cultural foodways of the Lenape diaspora.

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For more information, call 860-992-6472, or e-mail [email protected].

Time: 3:00 pm – 4:30 pm EDT/GMT-4

Location: Manor House Cafe

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