Indigenous Food Sovereignty Zine
After being involved in local food system work for a couple of years, I was excited to channel my experiences into a piece for Beauty All Around Us. The zine, curated and edited by Tommey Jodie (Diné), was published just last week by Abalone Mountain Press.
As Jodie shares: Beauty All Around Us is a community-led zine featuring poetry, prose, and storytelling from 15 Indigenous youth from across Turtle Island. Centering Indigenous Food Sovereignty, Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK), and the power of story, this zine is a celebration of Indigenous communities' relationships to land, memory, and one another. Beauty All Around Us honors Indigenous youth voices who are creating, remembering, and resisting through their words.
Pre-Order a Physical Copy of the Zine Here!
Your purchase helps support the reprints of the zine to give out for free to Indigenous orgs / communities / youth!!!
Indigenous youth, students, and Indigenous-led organizations can request free copies by filling out this form — available while supplies last. Priority given to those facing financial constraints and also to youth orgs / Indigenous student orgs!!!
(de)Seeded by Marianna G. M. Cota
Listen to the Poem and Prose!
The Story Behind the Contribution
The poem and prose I contributed came into being when I visited family in the Philippines during a long-awaited homecoming to the land that sustained my mother's side.
While there, my maternal grandparents often left early in the morning to go to the palengke (market), bringing back mangoes, barbeque banana, and other local goodies for us to enjoy.
One morning, with juice dripping down my hands and arms as I ate the mango flesh off the pit, my grandmother commented on how I even enjoyed the bone of the fruit, much like my older cousin, who spent her early years there in the Philippines.
Her comment made me pause and reflect on the living and sensuous nature of bones, seeds, and memory.
In my reflections, the realization that bones are the seed of our blood memory slowly took root in my conscious awareness. Like the living tissue within bones and seeds, we carry borrowed wisdom from the generations before us that is alive and waiting to be awakened.
Despite suppression by oppressive forces, this inherited yet formless sense of intelligence remains available, encouraging us to grow, adapt, and heal for the sake of all generations, past, present, and future.
Yet, we must tend to the conditions that allow that borrowed wisdom to thrive, not just survive.
At its core, my contribution to the zine aims to plant this seed of knowing in those who read it, too. May it be nurtured and come to fruition through relational care and connection.
With love,
mgmc
Thanks for reading INDIGENEXUS!⋆｡𖦹°⭒˚｡⋆
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