Native Food Hub Alliance

Greetings, my name is Kenny Perkins, Kaniekehaka Mohawk of the Hotinonshonni Confederacy and Founder of The Akwesasne Seed Hub. I am actively trying to rematriate 480 acres of Indigenous land at 520 Ridge Road in Schodack Landing N.Y. The land was occupied by our Mohican cousins who have all but lost their culture. The Akwesasne currently only have a 6 mile by 6 mile reservation that supports 20,000 people. We need more land to have food security for our people. We are building a network of hubs to serve this purpose.

This property will serve as the central food hub for other Indigenous and non-Indigenous hubs we have been piecing together in a corridor from our Eastern homelands to our Western homelands (The Akwesasne Seed Hub, Hudson Valley Farm Hub, Sky Woman Forever Farm, Pan Yan and Cayuga Nation). In the corridor that this land lays within, we traditionally took care of each other, the Mohawk, the Cayuga, the Seneca, the Tuscarora and the Ondongaga. We’re considered the Eastern Doorkeepers, and we alsohad partnerships with other Indigenous people like the first United Nations. This land was part of our original corridor of trade routes where we would go to exchange song, dance, culture, laughing and food.

This land could once again be where all of us can meet in a safe place.

By rematriating this land, we will be able to accomplish the following:

● Protect the integrity of our traditional seeds

● Increase the traditional seed grow out

● Nixtamalization,dehydrating and freezing of traditional white corn and storing for distribution.

● Growing out and processing traditional varieties of beans and squash for distribution

● Utilizing property as central meeting place for all mentioned hubs (eco mapping, conferencing and

retreats for wellness/healing)

● Continue traditional practices on property(hunting, fishing and medicine gathering)

We as Onkwehonwe (Original People), were given the Ohenton Kariwatekhwa (The Words Before All Else). These words are a spiritual agreement between the Natural World and our Hotinonshonni (People of the Longhouse). The agreement is that we would give thanks to Mother Earth, to steward the land, care for it,love it and share the beauty she provides us. We acknowledge the smallest blades of grass to the Sky World and everything in between. We still practice the words in our everyday affairs and ceremony. However we have been displaced from those original lands where we picked our medicines, hunted, fished and grew our sacred foods.

We very much lived in harmony with our environment but now we acknowledge our original homelands from afar. In order for the land and the original people to heal from the traumas we suffered, we need to reunite with our sacred environments again. Our lands need to know that we are still giving love and gratitude, we still have our language to talk to them, we still have our songs, dances, ceremonies, we are still carrying out our original instructions. I believe by returning to our homelands we can heal ourselves and help people who may have lost their original instructions. We haven't lost our spirituality so please help us so that we can help you the way we wanted to so many generations ago.