Hi friends! I’m Akhila Bandlora, and I’m an octopus lover, No Stupid Questions & Ologies enthusiast, and aspiring map maker. I’m a rising sophomore at Forbes (4th floor annex folks where are y’all at?!). I’m planning to concentrate in Psychology or Ecology and Evolutionary Biology with Certificates in creative writing, urban studies, and environmental studies. On campus, I’m a member of Songline Slam, an EcoRep, and a research assistant for Professor Desmond! In my free time, I enjoy exploring water bodies, hiking, and gardening!
This summer, I interned at Native Seeds Search as a Bogle Fellow. During my first semester, I signed up for a class on seed saving. Before going into the class, all I knew about seeds was that there was a massive freezer somewhere that would hopefully help us survive the apocalypse. Needless to say, I had much left to learn. And I learned a lot.
Seeds were at the epicenter of everything I cared about: people, our earth, and storytelling. Seeds, in their being and becoming, are our being and our becoming. Like every generation of seed remembers all it’s held in its passing down, so do we: our lineages, our cultural practices, our past selves, even if they are buried far, far down. Needless to say, seeds stuck with me.
After my seed saving class, I saved my sunflower seeds. But, I wanted more. I wanted to see real seed saving in action. During my class, we looked through seed saving catalogs, and one of them was the Native Seeds/SEARCH catalog. Instantly, I was enthralled with NS/S’s commitment to both Indingeous peoples of the Southwest and their seeds. I knew NS/S was where I wanted to spend my summer.
With the exception of one incredibly hot week in June, I’ve had a really good, eye opening summer. What I learned most abundantly is that food is so important and so complex, as is Tucson. I hadn’t spent time in Tucson in any large way before this summer, but now, I want to, again and again. This place is bursting with community and groundedness, something NS/S really emulated for me. For an internship to teach of the land it’s situated on as much as the work it performs is something I’m really grateful for.
So what did I actually do at Native Seeds Search? Well, a wide breadth of things. My favorite thing we did this summer was go on a trip to the Gila River Nation and the Salt River Nation to visit our community partners to learn from their multiple models of community gardens and farms. On a more weekly schedule, every Tuesday and Thursday, I worked in the garden doing a variety of tasks: putting up fences, pulling out Buffelgrass, transplanting Tobacco, seeding all of the monsoon plants, and pulling out rows and rows of I’itoi onions. Additionally, I was responsible for filming the Friday Garden Updates, which you should totally keep up with on our instagram, @nativeseedssearch. On Mondays and Wednesdays, I worked on several projects: going through old files, outreach to Indigenous organizations in the Southwest, or working in the seed lab! Additionally, I wanted to leave something behind at NS/S as both a testament to how much I’ve learned and for other young people who are interested in getting involved in their local community gardens and farms but don’t know where to start! I made a map of a few of the community gardens and farms around Arizona. Originally, I wanted to make the map using ArcGis, a software I began learning this summer, but NS/S didn’t have a subscription to ArcGis so I made my map through Google Maps so it’d be easily editable.
I’ve found so much joy at Native Seeds Search: shucking the June Corn, crushing tomatoes for seed harvesting, the feasts that are Native Seeds potlucks, volunteering at the plant fair, and overwhelmingly, all the wonderful, wonderful people who work here.
Here are some of my favorite moments, picturized!
Our trip to the Gila River Indian Nation!
The first tomato I plucked at Native Seeds Search!
