CS16 – Essential Crops and Edible Weeds: Traditional Indigenous Backyard Gardens

Explore the history of indigenous gardens, an overlooked area of garden history. Join Devon Mihesuah as she brings to light the wisdom and gardening techniques used by the Five Tribes (Cherokees, Chickasaws, Choctaws, Muskogee-Creeks and Seminole Native American nations). Learn about:

• Their large community gardens and how the harvest was divided.
• The formal rules for planting, maintaining, and harvesting.
• Favorite foods and medicinal plants found in individual family gardens.
• How the family gardens and community gardens worked together to sustain the tribes.

Devon Mihesuah is an enrolled citizen of the Choctaw Nation and a previous editor of the American Indian Quarterly. She is the Cora Lee Beers Price Professor for the Humanities Program at the University of Kansas. An historian by training, Devon is the author of numerous award-winning non-fiction and fiction books. Her career has been devoted to the empowerment and well-being of indigenous peoples and she regularly speaks nationally and internationally on these topics. She has received numerous awards including the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Ford Foundation, and the American Council of Learned Societies.