An Invitation to Relationship With Marja Eleheimo

Every aspect of natural dyeing involves a relationship.

Join ethnobotanist Marja Eloheimo for a presentation and demonstration exploring these connections, with hands-on opportunities to engage in the process. Participants will hear more about the colors derived from plants featured in the exhibition and learn the steps involved in safe, kitchen-based dyeing techniques. Eloheimo will share the histories of these plants, and participants will take home naturally dyed materials to use in a simple project of their own.

About Marja Eloheimo

Based in the Pacific Northwest, Marja Eloheimo, Ph.D., is a Finnish American ethnobotanist, writer and artist with Indigenous Sámi roots. She is deeply interested in reconnecting people with plants, and culture with place, through heritage, arts and herbalism. Marja is grateful to have worked with the Botany of Nations project, where she focused on plants and Indigenous Knowledge Keepers from west of the Rockies.

With Courtney Street of Native Roots Farm Foundation

More information coming soon!

About Courtney Streett

Courtney Streett (Nanticoke Indian Tribe) is President/Executive Director of the Native Roots Farm Foundation (NRFF). Sheco-founded NRFF and uses her knowledge of Indigenous communities, horticulture and visual storytelling to lead the organization.

Native Roots Farm Foundation (NRFF) is a Native, woman-led nonprofit organization that reunites Native people with aspects of our heritage and shares this knowledge with the wider community through original, educational initiatives. NRFF programs use art, food and horticulture to highlight native plants, recognize Native resilience and knowledge and encourage connections with the natural world.

A Storytelling Circle and Seed Swap

Join us for an interactive, hands-on, seed storytelling circle followed by a seed swap. We will begin by shelling seed pods and hearing from four expert seed keepers from our region about the seeds they steward for their families, communities and diasporas. Participants will also have a chance to share about the seeds they hold dear.

We will close with a facilitated seed swap between participants. Space is limited in this program, so be sure to reserve your spot. We are eager to welcome fellow seed savers who will bring storied seeds to share from their gardens and farms.

On Truelove Seeds

Truelove Seeds is a farm-based seed company offering culturally important and open pollinated vegetable, herb and flower seeds. Our seeds are grown by more than 50 small-scale urban and rural farmers committed to community food sovereignty, cultural preservation and sustainable agriculture. This collaboration is an opportunity for growers to share their own ancestral seeds and stories and to bring in extra financial support for their food sovereignty and agroecological projects. In Philadelphia, in particular, growers from many community farms regularly gather to focus on developing our seed keeping practices as a way to build up our communities. For stories of seeds and the growers who tend to them, listen to our podcast Seeds and Their People or follow @seedkeeping.

With Nate Kleinman of Experimental Farm Networks

Join Nate Kleinman, co-founder of the Experimental Farm Network (EFN), to meet (see, smell and taste!) a wide variety of culturally significant plants and participate in a guided introduction to seed-saving techniques. Kleinman will also share sustainable approaches to plant breeding, crop domestication and regional adaptation as tools for resilience in the face of climate change.

The Experimental Farm Network (EFN), a Philadelphia-based non-profit cooperative, works to facilitate collaborative plant breeding and sustainable agriculture research in order to fight global climate change, preserve the natural environment and ensure food security for humanity into the distant future. EFN also runs a small seed company to make important crop varieties, landraces and breeding populations available to farmers and gardeners and to support small farmers and independent plant breeders.

Registration is not required for this program. Participants may drop in anytime between 1 and 3 p.m. to participate.

About Nate Kleinman:

Nate was born in Philadelphia. He is a farmer, plant breeder, activist, organizer and co-founder/co-director of The Experimental Farm Network Cooperative (EFN), a Philadelphia-based non-profit organization founded in 2013. He is also a founding member of Ujamaa Cooperative Farming Alliance (UCFA), serves on the board of the Philadelphia Orchard Project (POP) and the Palestine Heirloom Seed Library (PHSL) and is a former board member of the Northeast Organic Farming Association of New Jersey (NOFA-NJ). Nate lives and farms on Lenape land in Elmer, New Jersey. Through EFN's participatory plant breeding work with perennial staple crops, he aims to help shift our farming system from being a major driver of climate change to being a weapon against it.

With Tomahawk Catering

Chef Joe of Tomahawk Catering welcomes Botany of Nations guests into the world of traditional Native American foodways. Join us for a tasting and educational experience featuring seasonal Indigenous ingredients like cedar bark, sumac panicles and heirloom native corn. Deepen your understanding of the stories, knowledge and living histories connected to each plant and the tribal communities who have stewarded them for millennia.

Registration is not required for this program. Participants may drop in anytime between 1 and 3 p.m. to participate.

On Chef Joe Haber

Chef Joe Haber is the chef/ owner of Tomahawks Private Dining and Catering Services. Originally going to school to be an X-ray technician, Joe found his passion for food while studying in college and has been using it as fuel to learn and rediscover his Mohawk roots since then. Hailing from a long line of Mohawk Ironworkers who helped build the great cities of the northeast, Chef Joe comes down from that high elevation to ground level, where whole ingredients and natural processes help shape the pantry and the cooking techniques he uses to explore Mohawk food through his "untrained" eyes.