calls them the four sisters because of how they work together. The beans fertilize the corn as they climb the stalks. Sunflowers hold them up against the wind. Squash keep the raccoons at bay. There are also tomatoes, okra, gourds, sage and sweet grass.

Keen, a business instructor at Creighton University, was never a corn grower, but his ancestors were. Keen is a member of both the Omaha Tribe in Nebraska, and the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma. To him, it's ironic that some early developers of commercial seed corn like Oscar Will in North Dakota built their businesses off of genetics acquired from Plains Indian tribes.

"Corn, especially here in Nebraska, is synonymous with apple pie," Keen says. "But 'Indian corn' is only ornamental and is sold only around Thanksgivingkitchen.

"I totally think that these items belong on menus," Watts says. "You can make a great cornbread with it. You can grind it down into polenta, grits, tortillas, and the nutrient load is massive."

Watts says indigenous ingredients also fit in with the trendy local food scene. Some varieties are sold by heirloom seed dealers like Seed Savers in Iowa or Baker Creek in Missouri.

Sacred Seed also taps into the growing food sovereignty movement in Indian Country, a movement where food traditions mix with identity politics.

"This is a movement to really reclaim agriculture at a local scale," says Robin Kimmerer, an ecologist and writer, and a member of the Potawatomi Nation. "It's political because it resists industrial agriculture. It says there's another way."

Planting indigenous seeds instead of high-tech hybrids