Seeds of Wisdom: Toward Healing a Cultural Divide

Abstract

Seeds of Wisdom:Toward Healing a Cultural Divide Sarah Blomquist (bio) Sometimes the world will play with you, and that's how people get lost. — A Yaqui elder Click for larger view View full resolution Encased desert seeds harvested within southern Arizona: Purple speckled pods on the outer left, mesquite; light green pods on the outer right, mesquite; spiky footballs, cocklebur; red round wrinkled berries, manzanita; white fluffy seeds below manzanita, ocotillo; smallest dark brown paper seeds at bottom center, dock; lighter brown papery seeds to the right of dock, sotol; black center seeds, devil's claw; brown speckled pods above sotol, ironwood; light brown pods between spiky footballs and devil's claw, palo verde. Mark Blomquist, © 2021. Around the bend, past the lichen-encrusted boulders and magnificent desert views, I stopped at the patch of land where I envisioned harvesting food. The desert chia and saguaro were mostly as I remembered them, except now the saguaro was dripping with luscious, crimson fruits and [End Page 529] the desert chia was dried and papery, storing away tiny seeds that I intended to gather. As I have learned to do from my many teachers, I trod the earth lightly and collected sparingly, offering gratitude to the seeds and the plants as I disturbed their habitats. The stately saguaro cactus, Carnegiea gigantea, an iconic plant in the Sonoran Desert region, bears sweet fruits that have been a staple for the Tohono O'odham people for thousands of years. Desert chia, Salvia columbariae, likewise has served as food and medicine to the Indigenous peoples of the desert Southwest. Cactus fruit and mesquite flours have re-emerged as mainstream edible options, particularly in the regions where they are abundant. This is one among the many trends rekindling interest in and respect for the foods, medicines, and traditions rooted in the rich landscapes that contemporary humans now occupy. Collectively, we are standing at both an exciting and delicate crossroads in our relationship with foods, medicines, and land. Western technology and science are in their infancies when it comes to understanding the technologies and traditions of native peoples. Such technologies and traditions have often been stolen or not used respectfully by non-natives. However, people who have occupied these lands for millennia may still hold a wealth of knowledge and culture, if it has not been lost to processes of modernization. It is a difficult task to translate information and perspectives across these different cultural media, given the stark juxtaposition of the Click for larger view View full resolution Hands holding dried chia flowers with desert scrub in the background. Mark Blomquist, © 2021. [End Page 530] cultures, as well as the divide created by traumas past and present. As we apply our modern mindsets and tools to our ancestors' world and their relationship with the land, I wonder how we might collectively navigate this cultural mixture with more kindness, respect, and grace. Nutritional Science and Evolutionary Biology Back in the laboratory, I spent the day extracting fatty acids from the wide array of desert seeds I had harvested with care. A primary focus of the laboratory in which I conduct research is lipid biochemistry. Fatty acids are a type of lipid, where lipids represent one of the main macronutrient groups, which include carbohydrates and proteins. In this project, we are examining the nutritional profile and properties of foods of the ancestors who lived in the Sonoran Desert. As humans have evolved over many hundreds of thousands of years, they have adapted to their environments in order to survive. Multiple environmental conditions have shaped our current biology: the domestication of animals, differences in exposure to sunlight, exposure to bacteria (both symbiotic and pathogenic), and interactions with the dietary landscape. When compared to the deep historical past, for the last several hundred years of our development, in particular starting with industrialization, human beings have faced quite novel living conditions. While our bodies and biology remain more or less those of our ancestors, our modern environments are unique. Over the course of this history, most ancestral ways of being have been brutally extinguished or at least have deteriorated significantly due to modern forces. It is...