About Sovereign Seeds

We envision a world where Indigenous people are living thriving, ancestrally-guided food sovereignty and food culture realities for the health of our communities, our more-than-human relatives, the climate, and the territories we belong to.

Through collaborative education, community-led research, and leadership amplification, we strengthen Indigenous food sovereignty and climate resiliency by creating meaningful opportunities by-and-for Indigenous communities to restore, live, and steward their food cultures and systems.

Food sovereignty and cultural vitality for Indigenous people is intimately linked to decolonial, just, and sustainable futures. Indigenous people have an inherent and inherited right to vibrant and unobstructed relationships with the land, ecosystems, teachings, and practices that comprise their sustenance systems. We aim to destabilize the erasure, dispossession, and colonial oppression Indigenous people experience in pursuing their food lifeways. We ground our efforts in Indigenous ways of being and doing, and we work to center consent, care, equity, self- determination, relationality, accountability, anti-oppression, and solidarity-building in our approach. We know that the seeds and the food species we depend on as sovereign nations and communities themselves, and that they are kin we have a responsibility to nurture, respect, and protect. We honour the past and current legacies of existing community food leadership, and we understand our responsibility to uplift and amplify these voices and efforts. We believe that the value of our contributions as a workplace, partner, and community network in the Indigenous food sovereignty movement is dependant upon our lived commitment to our values and integrity.

our mission

our values

our vision

Sovereign Seeds is an Indigenous-led initiative dedicated to the revitalization of Indigenous seed and food sovereignty in so-called Canada.

Our Goals

Support Indigenous seed leaders in their leadership and nurture emerging seed learners as future Knowledge Holders

Revitalize our seed teachings and the cultural and spiritual practices that guide our seed relationships

Restore sleeping knowledge and birth new knowledge in community food practice, food culture, and food spirituality systems impacted by colonization

Strengthen our climate change resiliency by increasing our seeds' preparedness, for the health of our seeds, our people, and the ecological networks we depend on

Increase decolonial seed governance by centering Indigenous women’s and Indigenous 2SLGBTQQIAAP+ community members’ contributions, experiences, and decisions

Strengthen, adapt, and renew culturally-significant seed stocks

Uplift, amplify, and mobilize Indigenous seed leadership and voices

Nurture ancestrally-informed Indigenous food science and innovation

Provide accessible opportunities for mentorship, co-learning, and seed knowledge transmission

Generate a network of Indigenous peer support in navigating threats to our seed relations, including environmental racism, industrial agriculture, and biopiracy

Offer healing from the impacts of historical and ongoing colonization through a return to ancestral seed relationships and responsibilities

Improve Indigenous cross-community seed and sustenance collaboration