(birds chirping) (birds chirping) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) [Deb] My mom said there wasn't a straight spoon in the house when I was a little girl that I'd be outside digging all the time.

I've been growing plants, it seems like all my life.

The flowers that I use they're still the same flowers that I I was growing when I was a teenager.

Everywhere I moved, I kept the seeds and kept growing 'em and kept collecting them.

(upbeat music) My people, the Akiikatu the Pawnee, didn't always live in Oklahoma.

Our homeland was in the land that later became Nebraska.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music) My great-great grandparents couldn't take much but they took their sacred corn.

(upbeat music) [Electa] We held onto that corn from that walk all the way from Nebraska down to Oklahoma.

A really difficult challenging time where many of our people were lost but some of us still held those seeds.

Then it's just a really beautiful thing to me that decades later we found a way for those seeds to still germinate, even if they were down to like a handful of seeds.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (birds chirping) (door creaks open and close) [Deb] I like this one.

We called it the knife chief corn because we thought Dennis knife chief had cross pollinated corn or something.

But he came up with this striped corn this red white striped, and about six feet down they they found the buffalo skull.

Well, a buffalo hadn't been there since 1863 and inside the buffalo skull was that seed.

(gentle music) (gentle music) [Deb] The corn didn't reach its full potential in Oklahoma.

The Oklahoma soil weakened the seed (gentle music) so our Pawnee put the seeds away.

(gentle music) [Deb] One of the first questions I asked is, "Hey, where's our corn?"

I mean, that's what we're known for.

It took a long while to answer that question.

Our culture committee, our chiefs asked families and they would produce what they had and some of it we couldn't get to grow 'cause it was stored so poorly, but some were kept in bundles and there'd only be 20 seeds in there.

(gentle music) (birds chirping) (birds chirping) One day I got an unexpected call from Nebraska that gave me hope that we could grow our corn again in our homeland.

[Ronnie] I worked at the Archway in Kearney over I80 that teaches a lot of the history about the trails and transportation, and I had natives telling me "You really need to teach more about the thousand years before that."

So that's how I met Deb Echo-Hawk, was I wanted to start a program about the Pawnee because we're in the homeland here in central Nebraska, so wanted to have gardening as part of that because I've always...

I grew up on a corn farm and I've always gardened.

(gentle music) She sent me just 25 seeds in 2004 the first year, and I planted them like we do.

We plant corn in late April here in Nebraska.

So I went out and did that and I was all excited and it all rotted in the ground.

It was too early and too cold.

So the next year she sent 25 kernels.

She said, I have 25 left.

This is it.

I can't part with the last 25.

We have to be able to show our children what it looked like once.

[Deb] Ronnie O'Brien, she's my little corn sister.

In fact, we gave her name in Pawnee.

Yeah, I think she cried for days when that happened.

(gentle music) We talk almost daily and sometimes several times a day.

(gentle music) Other Nebraska farmers wanted to plant Pawnee corn too.

One was Del Ficke, a man that I would later call friend.

(gentle music) [Del] We wouldn't be here if it wouldn't have been for the Pawnee helping my family.

When they homesteaded just a mile south of here in 1869 there was a Pawnee encampment, another mile south of them.

It was the Pawnee and they ended up, trading food and things with them and it's evolved into a love affair and, like I say, in a very spiritual way.

It's become the connection with the Pawnee people.

They are truly family.

This is a manicuring of a precious resource from a historical and spiritual base that is teaching us how we need to be in the future.

It is teaching the next generations.

(Native American Music) (Native American Music) [Pat] To see and to hear Del, when his great grandparent homesteaded this place and how the Pawnees helped them through that winter.

They felt they owed something to them Pawnees.

It's pretty awesome that he still feels that way.

(gentle music) I mean that was a long, long time ago, and things die off but that's still in his heart in his family's heart to recognize that.

That really tells me a lot about about him and his family, that they're really good people.

(gentle music) [Deb] Yeah, so it really makes a nice drink and you know you don't have to heat it, just infuse it.

Each fall we travel to Nebraska to pick and prepare corn for our ceremonies and to restore our traditional diet.

(gentle music) [Anna] There's always a feeling for me when I am here with this land of being home.

Which in a sense, maybe I feel a little bit silly to say because I've never lived here, but it's true.

(gentle music) [Deb] I love to remind Nebraskans that we were the first corn huskers.

(gentle music) [Electa] We're smiling more than we have in a long time.

There's a little bit of teaching that goes into almost everything that we're doing.

Yeah, it's been beautiful to see it all play out into a camp setting.

So this year we're processing eagle corn.

We've been working towards this moment for a long time to be able to serve eagle corn to the people at our dances at our spring ceremonies where everybody could try it.

Everybody could know what it tastes like.

[Deb] I like the eagle corn to taste 'cause when we shell it, we get the whole thing.

We're careful about how we take the kernels off the cup but when you cook it, you know we'll blanche roast it and then take it off the cob.

But then when you cook it, it turns like super round and it just kind of pops in your mouth.

And to me it's got this really incredible nut like taste.

That's definitely my favorite.

And we like it when it looks like a eagle with this wings spread out.

It's fun to find that design in there.

And a lot of other designs it's just like a art show every day.

You know, looking at all the different varieties.

(birds chirping) Lots of prayers have gone into this corn in all faces of production.

And anytime you pray to brings out the healing properties of plants, we've been putting wrong foods in our bodies.

So if we get back to a food that our DNA, our bodies recognized, then hey, we're going to have healthier people.

(gentle music) We use corn as most tribes do in every celebration there is.

Pow wows, ceremonies, and there's just so much reverence to it.

When we were on the verge of extinction it was just a miracle that we found some of our corn.

I mean, what an adventure it has been.

[Pat] Mother corn is very, very, very sacred.

To have something that was passed down generation to generation, to generation, and we're still able to to consume it, (gentle music) to taste it, it touches the soul (gentle music) to realize our grandma's, (gentle music) great grandma's took care of this enough to supply us.

(gentle music) (gentle music) (birds chirping) (Native American music) (Native American music) (Native American music) (Native American music) (Native American music) (Native American music) (Native American music) (Native American Music)