In this segment from Good News York, Michelle Shenandoah discusses food sovereignty through the work of Angela Ferguson, a community member from the Onondaga Nation located just south of Syracuse. Shenandoah explains how Ferguson has dedicated herself to reconnecting indigenous peoples across the Americas with ancestral seeds that have been lost to their communities for generations, sometimes hundreds of years. She describes the profound significance of growing and eating the same foods that ancestors cultivated, emphasizing the deep connection between people, their homeland soil, and the seeds their great-great-great grandmothers once tended. Ferguson serves as caretaker for a collection that includes seeds from peoples who no longer exist, preserving an irreplaceable agricultural and cultural heritage. The conversation illustrates how food sovereignty represents more than nutrition, it embodies cultural continuity and the restoration of relationships severed by historical displacement.
