(birds singing) (gentle music begins) - [Deb] My mom said, there wasn't a straight spoon in the house when I was a little girl, that I'd be outside digging all the time.

I've been growing plants, it seems like all my life.

The flowers that I use, they're still the same flowers that I was growing when I was a teenager.

Everywhere I moved, I kept the seeds and kept growing 'em and kept collecting 'em.

My people, the Akeetahdu, the Pawnee, didn't always live in Oklahoma.

Our homeland was in the land that later became Nebraska.

(gentle music continues) (birds singing) My great-great-grandparents couldn't take much, but they took their sacred corn.

- We held onto that corn from that walk, all the way from Nebraska down to Oklahoma, a really difficult challenging time where many of our people were lost, but some of us still held those seeds.

Then it's just a really beautiful thing to me that decades later, we found a way for those seeds to still germinate, even if they were down to like a handful of seeds.

(gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) (traffic) (birds singing) (gentle music fades) (door creaking) (door lock clicks) - I like this one.

We called it the, "Knifechief corn," because we thought Dennis Knifechief had cross-pollinated corn or something.

But it came up with this striped corn, this red and white striped, and about six feet down they found a buffalo skull.

Well, a buffalo hadn't been there since 1863, and inside the buffalo skull was that seed.

(gentle music begins) - [Deb] The corn didn't reach its full potential in Oklahoma.

The Oklahoma soil weakened the seed.

So our Pawnee put the seeds away.

(door creaking) One of the first questions I asked is, "Hey, where's our corn?"

I mean, that's what we're known for.

It took a long while to answer that question.

Our culture committee, our chiefs, (music pulsating) asked families and they would produce what they had and some of it we couldn't get to grow 'cause they, it was stored so poorly, but some were kept in bundles (seeds clacking) and there'd only be 20 seeds in there.

(gentle music fades) (birds singing) (corn husking) - [Deb] One day I got an unexpected call from Nebraska.

That gave me hope that we could grow our corn again in our homelands.

- I worked at the Archway in Kearney, over I-80, that teaches a lot of the history about the trails and transportation.

And I had natives telling me, "You really need to teach more about the thousand years before that."

So that's how I met Deb Echo-Hawk, was I wanted to start a program about the Pawnee because we're in the homeland here in Extension Nebraska.

So... (gentle music begins) Wanted to have gardening as part of that because I've always, I grew up on a corn farm, and I've always gardened.

She sent me just 25 seeds in 2004, the first year, and I planted them like we do.

We plant corn in late April here in Nebraska.

So I went out and did that and I was all excited, and it all rotted in the ground.

It was too early and too cold.

So the next year, she sent 25 colonels.

She said, "I have 25 left.

This is it.

I can't part with the last 25.

We have to be able to show our children what it looked like once."

- [Deb] Ronnie O'Brien, she's my little corn sister.

In fact, we gave her her name in Pawnee.

Yeah.

I think she cried for days when that happened.

We talk almost daily and sometimes several times a day.

(gentle music fades) Other Nebraska farmers wanted to plant Pawnee corn too.

One would still fight a man that I would later call, "Friend."

- We wouldn't be here if it wouldn't have been for the Pawnee helping my family.

When they homesteaded just a mile south of here, in 1869, (native american chanting) there was a Pawnee encampment another mile south of them.

It was the Pawnee and they ended up, you know, trading food and things with them.

And it's evolved into a love affair, in, like I say, in a very spiritual way.

It's become the connection with the Pawnee people, they are truly family.

This is a manicuring of of a precious resource from a historical and spiritual base that is teaching us how we need to be in the future.

It is teaching the next generations.

(native american chanting continues) - To see and to hear Del, when his great-grandparent homesteaded this place and how the Pawnees helped them through that winter, they felt they owed something (chanting fades) to them Pawnees.

(gentle music begins) It's pretty awesome that he still feels that way.

I mean... That was a long, long time ago.

(chuckling) And things die off, you know, but that's still in his heart, in his family's heart, to recognize that.

That really tells me a lot about him and his family, that they're really good people.

- Yeah, so it really makes a nice drink and you don't have to heat it, just infuse it.

- [Deb V/O] Each fall we travel to Nebraska to pick and prepare corn for our ceremonies and to restore our traditional diet.

(indistinct chatter) - There's always a feeling for me, when I am here with this land, of being home, which in a sense, maybe I feel a little bit silly to say, because I've never lived here, but it's true.

- [Deb] I love to remind Nebraskans that we were the first corn huskers.

- We're smiling more than we have in a long time.

There's a little bit of teaching that goes into almost everything that we're doing, yet it's been beautiful to see it all play out into a camp setting.

So this year, we're processing Eagle Corn.

We've been working towards this moment for a long time to be able to serve Eagle Corn to the people at our dances, at our spring ceremonies, where everybody could try it, everybody could know what it tastes like.

- I like the Eagle Corn to taste (gentle music fades) 'cause when we shell it, it just, we get the whole thing.

We're careful about how we take the kernels off the cob.

But when you cook it, we'll blanche, roast it, and then take it off the cob.

(indistinct chatter, laughing) But then when you cook it, it turns like super round and it just kinda pops in your mouth.

And to me, it's got this really incredible nut-like taste.

That's definitely my favorite.

And we like it when it looks like a eagle with its wings spread out.

It's fun to find that design in there and a lot of other designs.

It's just like a art show every day, looking at all the different varieties.

Lots of prayers have gone into this corn in all phases of production.

And anytime you pray to, brings out the healing properties of plants.

(gentle music begins) We've been putting wrong foods in our bodies.

So if we get back to a food that our DNA, our bodies recognize, then, you know, hey, we're gonna have healthier people.

We use corn as most tribes do in every celebration there is, pow wows, ceremonies, and there's just so much reverence to it.

When we were on the verge of extinction, it was just a miracle (music building) that we found some of our corn.

I mean, what an adventure it has been.

- Mother corn is very, very, very sacred.

To have something that was passed down, generation to generation to generation, and we're still able to consume it, to taste it.

It touches the soul, that to realize, our grandma's, you know, great-grandma's took care of this enough to supply us.

(gentle music continues) (gentle music fades) (birds singing) (native american music begins) (native american music continues) (native american music continues) (native american music continues) (native american music fades)