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Living Traditions Podcast: The Appalachian Rekindling Project Is Restoring Indigenous Relationships With the Land [1]
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Date: 2025-08-13
Welcome to Living Traditions, a podcast about folk and traditional arts in central Appalachia.
In our latest episode, we talked with Tiffany Joy and Shiloh Delaronde of the Appalachian Rekindling Project. The Appalachian Rekindling Project is based in southeast Kentucky and southwest Virginia. Its mission is to restore Indigenous relationships with the land, support cultural revitalization, and foster ecological care in Appalachia. In the interview, Joy and Delaronde share about their work around seed saving and other growing practices.
Enjoy this short written preview of the episode:
At this point in the summer, gardens and farms throughout Appalachia are full of ripening tomatoes and towering corn stalks. It takes growers a lot of planning and effort to make it to this stage. For some, that work includes the practice of seed saving. This involves saving the seeds of the best plants from one growing season, in order to sow them the following season. Seed saving allows growers to refine their crops year after year by selecting seeds based on desired traits such as disease resistance, tolerance to environmental conditions, and, of course, flavor.
Seed saving’s been around since agriculture started over 10,0000 years ago. And it’s a vital component of food sovereignty—that is… peoples’ right to healthy, culturally appropriate food that’s produced in harmony with the ecosystem. In fact seed saving is so important that it’s sometimes weaponized.
On August 2nd, The New Arab reported that Israeli forces destroyed a Palestinian seed bank in the West Bank, a deliberate attack on an Indigenous people’s connection to their land.
Unfortunately, this isn’t a new story, and it’s part of the history of Appalachia, too.
Indigenous peoples were the first to practice seed saving here in the mountains. But because of centuries of colonization, forced removal, and targeted cultural oppression, Native communities have been denied the practice of this tradition on their ancestral lands.
One group is working to change that.
This article is part of the Living Traditions project, featuring an assortment of stories and podcasts about folklife in central Appalachia. Read More Living Traditions Sign up for email alerts.
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