Shiloh Maples is an Anishinaabe seed keeper, educator, and community organizer who has dedicated over a decade of work to Indigenous food sovereignty and justice. She is a citizen of Little River Band of Ottawa. Since receiving her degree in social work from the University of Michigan with a focus on community organizing, her work has continuously centered around food systems and food justice. After graduating, she partnered with the Native community in Detroit to start a food sovereignty initiative called the Sacred Roots program. This program focused on creating space and opportunities for Indigenous people to practice and preserve their ancestral foodways in an urban landscape. She went on to work in Indigenous food sovereignty at the national level for the Native American Food Sovereignty Alliance, serving as both a seed network coordinator and program manager to support seed sovereignty work. She is currently a visiting scholar with the Center for Braiding Indigenous Knowledges and Science (CBIKS) here at MBGNA. She hosts a podcast about Indigenous food sovereignty, Spirit Plate, that you can listen to here or wherever you get your podcasts. In the conversation below, Shiloh discusses her career in food sovereignty, her current research, seed rematriation, and her relational worldview of native and non-native species. 

Could you share about your background in food systems and food justice and how you came to do this work?

I came into food systems work initially because I was not raised with much of my Anishinaabe culture because of what has happened to my family and community through colonization. My whole life, I have been on this journey of coming back to myself, and coming back to my community. My undergraduate program initially led me to social work to understand the historical, social, and political context in a deeper way of what happened to Indigenous communities in North America–and figure out ways of preventing that from happening again- not just treating the symptoms but also the root causes of the social and health disparities that we see today. At that same time that I was doing this classroom learning, I was also on this journey of reconnecting and reclaiming my culture. I had an internship at a community garden, and it was at that time that I first began to see the powerful potential of food systems and land to heal both individuals and communities as a whole. I started asking myself some deep questions: what are my ancestral foods? What are the practices of my ancestors? And trying to reconnect with those. 

Those interests in land and food carried over into my master's program. I went right into my master's of social work here at the University of Michigan, where I focused on community organizing– more macro social work, looking at larger systems and how you mobilize people around common priorities or issues. I used all of my class assignments as an opportunity to dig further into these topics around food systems and land, and how they are sites for social change. I looked at some of the history of food movements, and how food movements and food systems could be a continued site for significant social transformation.

Since graduating, my career has focused on food systems. I worked in partnership with the Native community in Detroit to start a food sovereignty initiative, which we called the Sacred Roots program. It focused on creating space and opportunities for Indigenous people to practice and preserve their ancestral foodways in the urban landscape. 

Many Native food initiatives that I was seeing at the time were based on reservation lands or trust lands and were initiatives started by Tribal communities. Those communities have a land base, legal systems or systems of governance, and other structures in place to think about what food sovereignty means to them. But as an urban Native community, we didn't have a land base or a governing structure. This program became a space for us to be in conversation as a community about what food sovereignty looks like as an urban, Indigenous community. 

From there, all these pieces of the program came together– the seed library, the cooking classes that included nutrition education, and gardening workshops that were focused on revitalizing ancestral knowledge and practices. And it wasn't  just staff facilitating those, we were creating space for community members to share their knowledge with each other.

 Although we were coming from an Anishinaabe perspective, we welcomed people from any cultural tradition or background to bring their culture and traditions into the space as well and to be a part of the conversation with each other. That was really the beginning, I think, of the real work. Now, I've been working in Indigenous food sovereignty work for about 14 years, first in Detroit and then I worked nationally with an organization called the Native American Food Sovereignty Alliance (NAFSA).  When I first joined NAFSA, I coordinated the Indigenous Seed Keepers Network here in the Upper Midwest. Then, I moved into a program manager role for a few years. A lot of my work with the organization was focused on supporting Indigenous growers and seed keepers with a range of things related to their seed sovereignty initiatives, including seed rematriation work.

What is your role at MBGNA, and what projects are you currently working on in that position?

I'm wearing a couple of different hats here. One of them is a visiting scholar with the Center for Braiding Indigenous Knowledges and Science (CBIKS), a new research center out of the University of Massachusetts. Matthaei is one of the co-leads for the Midwest hub along with the College of Menominee Sustainable Development Institute. This summer, I am helping with a community-based research project. Some of the details are still emerging. The research projects with CBIKS are really intended to be community-based and led by Tribal partners. So we don't know the form it will take yet. But it's looking like it's going to be related to seed rematriation and reconnecting Native communities to both their seed relatives and some of the information that was collected alongside the seeds that are housed here at the University of Michigan's Ethnobotanical Collection.

Although seed rematriation work is happening in different spaces involving seed banks, museums, seed companies, and community groups, there isn't a standard model or process for rematriation. And so part of what we're looking at with our Tribal partners is what a process for that could look like here. CBIKS is a really excellent opportunity for us to do this work because part of the larger goals of CBIKS is figuring out how to ethically and effectively braid different types of knowledges together to address some of the most pressing issues today, such as climate change, global food security, and the preservation of cultural places.

I am really interested in focusing on how we do this work ethically. How do we braid Indigenous knowledges and the knowledge generated here at the University to address these challenges? I believe that our seeds carry a lot of knowledge and important information, and they, being the seeds themselves, are important partners when addressing these issues. They themselves are partners, but we're not working at full capacity if they are remaining in a collection.

So, it's really important, for many reasons, to reconnect Indigenous communities to their seed kin, but also for us to collectively be working at a fuller capacity. We need to be reunited with each other.

The second hat I'm wearing is that of a co-lead with the Indigenous Collaborative Garden (ICG), a small protected garden space between two of the greenhouses here.

The Indigenous collaborative garden was started in 2017. Some folks at the university had been in conversation with Tribal representatives about rematriating ancestors from the collections back to their communities. Through some of those conversations, a Tribal elder asked if the university has any seeds that belong to our communities in its collections. And they do. It is believed that the University has one of the largest Ethnobotanical collections in North America outside the US and Canadian governments. That spurred some initial conversations about potential collaborative projects between Tribal partners, the collections, and the university at large. Out of those conversations emerged the Indigenous Collaborative Garden as a potential pilot site for seed rematriation to happen. So, if and when any seeds come out of the collection, there is a dedicated space for those seeds to be grown out and the daughter seeds could be rematriated, if their communities of origin determine that's something they want to do. They could also go directly back to the community. 

That space was started in 2017, but to this point, no seeds from the collection have been grown in that space. However, that space continues to be held and available for that purpose. Remaining aligned with that larger aim, staff at the Gardens have been working in partnership with different Tribal representatives over the last several years to determine what should be done with that garden space each year. Native community members have been the lead each year, determining what seeds should be grown out. Everything is grown in a way that Tribal partners think should be done, this usually includes ceremony and using traditional agricultural practices. Those same partners determine what happens with the seeds and foods gathered at harvest. This year, myself and a colleague, Rosebud Bear Schneider, are leading the ICG. We have a three-sisters garden of Bear Island Flint corn, Odawa beans, and Gete Okosomin squash that we’re growing in that space, and working with the Native American Student Association (NASA), and some community members to care for the garden. This is the 1st year that one of the summer interns for the ICG is a NASA student, which is really exciting. This year, we're also piloting some additional programming connecting to the ICG; a monthly garden gathering where we're sharing Indigenous knowledge around agriculture and traditional foods, and then some seasonal gatherings like the planting ceremony, harvest feast, and things like that. It will be interesting to see, as we get further into the project with CBIKS around seeds, whether or not that space will be utilized by the Tribal partners involved in that work. From my understanding, there are communities that have expressed interest in learning more about utilizing that space.

Can you briefly explain the term rematriation and the significance of this practice?

Rematriation is a variation of a term that people may be more familiar with: repatriation. Repatriation is often used when talking about returning the human ancestors, funerary objects, and other sacred items from institutions to their communities of origin where they belong. In 1990, The Native American Graves and Repatriation Act was passed, a federal law that outlined the process and mandate to return ancestors and funerary items and items of what they call “cultural patrimony” back to Native communities. 

Rematriation is sort of a variation on that. I've heard different ways of describing it, but it can be seen as both a return to Mother Earth and a return to life-giving origins. I've also heard it being used to talk about a return of relatives to the hands of the people who have stewarded or cared for them. In the context of seed rematriation, as Indigenous communities work to revitalize their traditional food systems and work towards food sovereignty, access to culturally-significant seeds plays a crucial role. In many Tribal communities here in North America, the role of being a seed keeper is often part of women's responsibilities. By returning seeds, you're returning them back to the women in communities who are responsible for seed keeping: selecting which seed will be used for food, grown out, etc. For me, as a seedkeeper, a core part of that role is taking responsibility for the care and stewardship of our seed relatives. So, I often find myself reflecting on the spiritual responsibilities that can't be fully actualized until we are reunited with our seed relatives. 

I've also read some really interesting literature from Indigenous scholar Robin Gray recently about how rematriation is “a feminist paradigm and an embodied praxis of recovery and return, mode of resurgence and refusal”. Gray discuss how repatriation is framed within US legal systems and everything contained within that worldview, whereas rematriation centers Indigenous systems of governance, relationality, and rights of return– and that in itself is a refusal of colonial institutions. One of my main takeaways from this article, and what I’ve seen in my own practice experience, is that rematriation is a more culturally affirming and responsive process. One thing I've come to understand from our cultural teachings is that it's not just what we do that’s important, but it's also how we do it. Yes, it's important that ancestors, other relatives, and sacred belongings are returned– but it matters how they're returned, as well. In other words, the law is the absolute floor. But institutions should be striving to do more than the minimum of what the law requires. Being in good relationship with Indigenous communities requires more than compliance with the law.

There's tremendous healing potential within these types of intercultural collaborations between communities and institutions. There's a lot of messages of reconciliation and hope within the rematriation process, and we can learn a lot about being in good relationship with each other.

This month at MBGNA, we often think about native plants. Could you share some of your thoughts on how you view plants, both native and non-native? 

People create all of these separations in their minds: separation between people and the natural world, native versus non-native plants, but I think it's important to question the over simplistic narratives and point out that there really is no separation, only the one that we have constructed within our own minds and societies. There really is no separation. Likewise, in conversations about native versus non-native plants, people often focus solely on the places of origin of plants, where certain species first emerged. But just as with human communities, migration of plants has always happened. It wasn't until more recently in history, with the formation of geopolitical borders, that we humans started to try to contain or restrict the movement of plants. These borders have also restricted human movement and migration. But migration has been a natural part of life on this planet.

I've heard some elders and teachers from Anishinaabe communities discuss two questions that emerge around this conversation of native versus non-native, invasive, or opportunistic plants, whatever we want to call them. 

First is: Why have they come here? This question is more about asking ourselves what we have done to alter the environment to invite or bring them here. In my mind, this asks us to think about our role or responsibility in that.

The second question is: Now that you are here, how can we coexist together? Too often people take the approach of trying to eradicate or completely eliminate plants they designate as invasive. People find themselves trying to restore lands to some previous historical state, which I don't think is really feasible in its entirety; and I don’t think any of that work can be done ethically or effectively without the Indigenous cultures and knowledge systems that have stewarded these lands.  

So we have to ask ourselves, what does coexisting look like moving forward? You're here, I’m here– how are we going to live in balance with one another? Part of that requires us, as humans, to really think about the gifts that our more-than-human relatives are offering to us. Are they offering food? Are they offering medicine, fuel, or some other gift? Just because we don't see it right away doesn't mean it's not there. In some of the teachings I've received, a big part of our role and responsibilities as humans is to be good stewards. Part of that role requires us to ask ourselves: how do we help to maintain that balance? I don't think that requires eradicating anything. 

That shows a contrast or distinction between worldviews as well. Some of the more dominant worldviews or perspectives view the natural world as full of resources for humans to consume or utilize for our own benefit or pleasure. From an Indigenous, relational worldview, I look out at my homeland and see a landscape of relations. All these human and more-than-human kin that I have a responsibility to. When you come from that relational worldview or even start to reorient your mind and your heart in that way, you start to interact with the rest of the world in a different way. My teachers have said something along the lines of: people tend to use or exploit something that they merely value; but when you love a relative, you defend them, and you care for them in a very different way than if you just see it as a commodity. I think this difference in worldviews informs people’s different approaches to thinking about native versus non-native plants.

Something else I have noticed, is that when people talk about ecosystem conservation or restoration, people are often talking about putting the landscape back to a particular time in history. This is a static view of the environment: that it’s supposed to remain a certain way, and it's never supposed to change. But nature is change. Likewise, some people think of Native communities and cultures in a similar way. As unchanging, and their ideas of us are past tense or belonging to another time, rather than as people who have always adapted to both environmental and social changes. 

As Indigenous peoples, our cultural teachings are our Original Instructions, telling us how to be good humans and live sustainably within our homelands. These place-based traditions have guided our communities for as long as we have been here and continue to guide our daily lives. But that doesn’t mean we don’t continue with every generation, to add new knowledge based on additional observations and learning.

Often in this conversations about native versus non-native plants, people will take it in the direction of talking about Indigenous communities and settler communities as well. I often see those conversations going in similar places. I think we could really ask ourselves some similar questions about that, like, why have they come? And now that you’re here, how do we coexist? 

What hopes and visions do you have for MBGNA as a site of relationship-building and transformation between the institution and Native nations? 

I think the work with CBIKS is a catalyst for transforming the relationships between Indigenous communities and the Academy and how research is done. The botanical garden is in a prime position to be a site for some of these conversations and transformations to take place. For a lot of reasons. Several staff members have been building meaningful relationships with Indigenous communities for many years and have been quite thoughtful and intentional about that relationship-building. Also, as a part of the institution that is so land-based, the gardens are positioned as a great space for these conversations.

David Michener, one of the curators here, has talked about how the gardens are much more than their aesthetic beauty; they are a place to make meaning. And I've been reflecting on that a lot this summer. What does it mean to be an Indigenous person here at the Gardens, my relationship to land in this space that we're in together? What does it mean for descendants of settlers here, their social position both in land stewardship and being on Anishinaabek homeland, and how can they be in respectful or right relationships with Tribal nations? I think about the positionality of folks involved with the refugee garden. I’ve thought about how I, as an Indigenous woman of this place, can be a good host and understand their positionality and the reasons why they've come here. All of us have our unique social positions and experiences, whether it be our ethno-racial identities, economic class, ect. All of these different social identities put us in a unique position here as individuals in the gardens.

 What can we learn here about being in relationship with the land and each other? I don't have answers for that yet, but I think this is a place to create and invest in our collective futures.

We've all had individual, very unique, powerful journeys of how we've ended up here. But what does that mean for tomorrow, for next year, and for the next generation? And what are we creating together? What could co-stewardship of the gardens look like? I don't have any answer for that, at least not yet. And I don't think that I will be the person to necessarily have that all myself. But again, I think this opportunity that CBIKS presents is about how we ethically and effectively braid different types of knowledge together, bringing together community members, cultural knowledge holders, and the knowledge being generated here within the academy. How do we braid all that together and be in conversation with each other? The gardens are in a unique position to provide a venue for that and for all those knowledges and folks to be in conversation and dialogue with each other.

In addition to Spirit Plate, do you have any other resources you would recommend to folks who are interested in learning more about Indigenous food sovereignty? 

If people want to learn more about braiding different types of knowledge and why this work is important, I always encourage folks if they're not already familiar with it, to read Robin Wall Kimmerer's book, Braiding Sweetgrass. It is beautiful book and an excellent resource. In terms of food and seed sovereignty, I also like to uplift my seed keeping mentor, Rowan White, founder of Sierra Seeds. She has a blog on her website where she writes on a lot of these topics, and she's a beautiful writer.