历史学家知道turkey and cornwere part of the第一个感恩节, when Wampanoag peoples shared a harvest meal with the pilgrims of Plymouth plantation in Massachusetts. Traditional Native American farming practices tell us that squash and beans likely were part of that 1621 dinner, too.
For centuries before Europeans reached North America, many Native Americans grew these foods together in one plot, along with the less familiar sunflower. They called the plants sisters to reflect how they thrived when they were cultivated together.
今天，三分之三的美国美国人的预订，主要是在城市地区。全国，许多美洲原住民社区缺乏进入健康食品。作为一个scholar of Indigenous studies专注于与土地的原生关系，我开始怀疑为什么原主农业实践有所下降，并且可以让他们回来的效果是什么效益。
关于预订，美国政府官员劝阻原生妇女培养大于小花园情节的东西，并强迫当地人，以练习欧美风格的单一栽培。
回答这些问题，我正在使用农艺师Marshall McDaniel.,园艺师Ajay Nair.,营养学家唐纳·威纳姆和爱荷华州，内布拉斯加州，威斯康星州和明尼苏达州的本土园艺项目。我们的研究项目“重新统一三个姐妹”探讨了从人民角度来到这片土地的负责任的看护人意味着，他们一直平衡农业生产的人数数百年。必威体育2018
Abundant harvests
Historically, Native people throughout the Americas bred indigenous plant varieties specific to the growing conditions of their homelands. They selected seeds for many traits, such as味道，纹理和颜色。
Native growers knew that planting corn, beans, squash and sunflowers together produced mutual benefits. Corn stalks created a trellis for beans to climb, and beans’ twining vines secured the corn in high winds. They also certainly observed that corn and bean plants growing together tended to be healthier than when raised separately. Today we know the reason: Bacteria living on bean plant roots pull nitrogen — an essential plant nutrient — from the air and将其转换为豆类和玉米可以使用的形式。
壁球厂通过用宽叶将地面遮蔽，防止杂草在土壤中生长和保留水。遗产南瓜品种也有刺，气馁，吞噬鹿和浣熊参观花园零食。围绕花园边缘种植的向日葵创造了一种自然围栏，保护其他植物免受风和动物的吸引力。
植入这些农业姐妹生产的丰富收获，即持续大型本土社区和spurred fruitful trade economies。The first Europeans who reached the Americas were shocked at the abundant food crops they found. My research is exploring how, 200 years ago, Native American agriculturalists around the Great Lakes and along the Missouri and Red rivers fed fur traders with their diverse vegetable products.
Displaced from the land
随着欧美最永久定居fertile North American lands and acquired seeds that Native growers had carefully bred, they imposed policies thatmade Native farming practices impossible。1830年，安德鲁·杰克逊总统签署了印度删除法案, which made it official U.S. policy to force Native peoples from their home locations, pushing them onto subpar lands.
关于预订，美国政府官员劝阻原生妇女培养大于小花园情节的东西，并强迫当地人，以练习欧美风格的单一栽培。Allotment policies assigned small plots to nuclear families, further limiting Native Americans’ access to land and preventing them from using communal farming practices.
Native growers knew that planting corn, beans, squash and sunflowers together produced mutual benefits.
当地人被迫参加寄宿学校，他们没有机会学习本土农业技术或保存和制备土着食物。相反，他们被迫吃西餐，让他们的口味远离他们的传统偏好。这些政策组合在一起almost entirely eradicated three sisters agriculture来自20世纪30年代中西部的本土社区。
恢复原生农业
今天，美国的本地人正在努力工作reclaim Indigenous varieties of corn, beans, squash, sunflowers and other crops。这种努力对于许多原因很重要。
改善本地人的健康，文化合适的食物将有助于降低速度糖尿病和肥胖, which affect Native Americans at disproportionately high rates. Sharing traditional knowledge about agriculture is a way for elders to pass cultural information along to younger generations. Indigenous growing techniques also protect the lands that Native nations inhabit, and potentially can benefit the wider ecosystems around them.
But Native communities often lack access to resources such as farming equipment, soil testing, fertilizer and pest prevention techniques. This is what inspired Iowa State University’s Three Sisters Gardening Project. We work collaboratively with Native farmers attsyunhehkw, a community agriculture program, and theOhelaku Corn Growers Co-Op论威斯康星州的奥迪达预订;该内布拉斯加印度大学在内布拉斯加州提供奥马哈和Santee Sioux;和梦想狂野的健康是一个努力重新连接Minneapolis-St的非营利组织的非营利组织。保罗，明尼苏达州，具有传统的本土植物及其烹饪，药用和精神用途。
We are growing three sisters research plots at ISU’s Horticulture Farm and in each of these communities. Our project also runs workshops on topics of interests to Native gardeners, encourages local soil health testing and grows rare seeds to重新解决它们或者将他们归还给他们的家庭社区。
生产大部分美国食品供应的独立工业农业系统harms the environment, rural communities and human health and safety in many ways。通过在研究情节中种植玉米，豆类和壁球，我们正在帮助量化间作有益于植物和土壤。
通过documenting预订杂货店有限的营养产品, we are demonstrating the need for Indigenous gardens in Native communities. By interviewing Native growers and elders knowledgeable about foodways, we are illuminating how healing Indigenous gardening practices can be for Native communities and people — their bodies, minds and spirits.
Our Native collaborators are benefiting from the project through rematriation of rare seeds grown in ISU plots, workshops on topics they select and the new relationships they are building with Native gardeners across the Midwest. As researchers, we are learning about what it means to work collaboratively and to conduct research that respects protocols our Native collaborators value, such as treating seeds, plants and soil in a culturally appropriate manner. By listening with humility, we are working to build a network where we can all learn from one another.
本文已重新发布谈话under a Creative Commons license.
