2022-23 Projects

Short-term Visitors

Diane Wilson

Diane Wilson

Diane Wilson speaks at the Princeton Public Library on March 8, 2023.

Diane Wilson (Dakota) is a writer, educator, and environmental advocate who has published two award-winning books as well as essays in numerous publications. Her new novel, The Seed Keeper, was published by Milkweed Editions in 2021. She discussed her most recent book, “The Seed Keeper” in conversation with Tessa Desmond (School of Public and Interational Affairs) on March 8 at Labyrinth Books. She also gave a guest lecture in AMS 415 “Land and Story in Native America” co-taught by Desmond and Sarah Rivett (English, Effron Center).

Courses

Land and Story in Native America

AMS 415 / ENV 415 / HUM 415 / ENG 435
Tessa L. Desmond (School of Public and International Affairs) and Sarah Rivett (English, American Studies)

Amirah Mitchell teaches at the Seed Farm. Student plant corn. Students squatting by a stream.

Left to right: Farmer, seedkeeper, educator Amirah Mitchell with students at The Seed Farm; planting corn at Three Sisters Farm; students visit Stony Brook.

This spring 2023 AMS course will explore the relationship between land and story, emphasizing seeds as sources of sovereignty and repositories of knowledge across generations. The course will invite guest speakers and work directly with the Munsee Three Sisters Farm and other community partners, as well as conduct archival research on seeds for Princeton’s Seed Farm.

Literature and Society: New Schools

ENG 574 / HIS 591 / HOS 591 / HUM 574
D. Graham Burnett (History) and Jeff Dolven (English)

Wooden two-story building, spruce trees and mountain

Outer Coast, Sitka, Alaska

During spring 2023, this graduate class will visit Sitka, Alaska, as guests of Outer Coast, a new institution recently started on the campus of the old Sitka Industrial Training School. Once there, the Princeton students and faculty will learn about the joys and challenges of sustaining the rich traditions of the region while helping to make materials for the upcoming herring egg harvest.

Projects

Lunapehoking Timetree – Jeffrey Himpele (Anthropology), director of the Ethnographic Data Visualization Lab, received a Research Partnership grant from the Center for Digital Humanities. Rebecca Sutton Koeser, lead research software Engineer at the CDH, created an artistic visualization as well as an original timetree codebase depicting the interwoven histories of the Lenape peoples of Lunaapahkiing, “the land of the Lenape,” and continuously since 1756, the Princeton University community. The timetree highlights both tensions around dispossession, and the path toward recognition and healing.

The Seed Farm @ Princeton: The LLA initiative supports ongoing programing at The Seed Farm, a place where Princetonians grow rare, culturally-meaningful seed crops with community partners and pursue relevant research questions about the art and science of heirloom plants.

Students planting seeds by hand in tilled soil

The Seed Farm offers students, scholars, and community partners across a range of disciplines and different life experiences to learn from each other while working toward a common focus of repairing relationships with land, soil, plants, the environment, and each other while thinking about the essential role that mutualisms play in processes of repair.   Funding through LLA supports farm workshops, guest visits and lectures, undergrad stipends, administrative and logistical support, and volunteer days which are regularly communicated to the Princeton community.

Events

Tlingit scholars

Tlingit scholars at the Feb. 10, 2023 symposium "Tlingit Art, Spirit, and Ancestry: Healing Histories of Dispossession" in Chancellor Green Rotunda at Princeton University. Photo by Kristina Giasi

October 27-29: Munsee Language & History Symposium

February 10: Tlingit Art, Spirit, and Ancestry: Healing Histories of Dispossession

February 15: Second Annual Munsee Delaware Story Evening

March 8: Author Talk: Diane Wilson

April 2: Trip to NYC to see The Thanksgiving Play on Broadway

April 26: Panel: The Ramapough and the Ringwood Mines Superfund Site — History, Culture, Education and Environmental Justice