Indigenous companion planting in the great churn: Three sisters in Kalapuya ilihi

Abstract

This article addresses place, culture, community, and mobility in relation to Indigenous food sovereignty and TEK (traditional ecological knowledge). We start with a reflection on what it means to live in the Pacific Northwest of the United States for people from tribes that use Three Sisters agriculture. Two of the authors grew corn, beans, and squash using wintertime, indoor hydroponics and other methods in a performance art mode in Kalapuya ilihi (Western Oregon, USA). Growing these sacred companion plants out of soil, out of sun, out of season, and out of place served as a meditation on our own senses of dislocation and disjuncture as well as modes of connection as Southeastern Natives living in the Pacific Northwest. The politics and practice of growing and/or tending traditional Indigenous food plants in both traditional and non-traditional ways and places provided new language for understanding Indigenous cultural and social health in relation to Indigenous traditions, mobility, and relationality. The three authors (two from Southeastern tribes, one from a Northwestern tribe) provide a model for collaborative intercultural Indigenous ecological projects as a mode of learning, a mode of relational Indigenous mobility, a mode of community-building, and a mode of engaging in Indigenous food sovereignty. Working on community and educational projects together helped us understand companion planting as an analogy, an aesthetic, a method, and a mode for building relational futures.