Honoring our Elders and Seeds

MA-amaranth-2019-Event

We invite you to gather with us to honor of the Elders who kept the seeds alive through abundant times and times of war, genocide, and hardship. We give thanks for their remembrance which connects us to traditional knowledge passed down from our Grandmothers and Grandfathers.  

It is in gratitude to the Mother Earth that we honor the cycle of life through the harvest of the Amaranth. We honor the connection we have to the soil, water, sun, animals, birds, insects, and ancestors. We continue to strengthen our ties to the Earth and our communities as we recall our ancestors’ knowledge.  From sowing to harvest, we are in harmony with all living things.

This is a time where all the people that Qachuu Aloom and The Gardens Edge have planted with can come together in celebration and reciprocate the gift of Amaranth seeds back to the Elders of Qachuu Aloom. 

The seeds grown from your garden will make their journey back to Guatemala with the Elders and will be planted in the Qachuu Aloom garden, as a symbol of our deep connection, interdependence, collective resistance and hope for the future.

Schedule

1 pm Garden is open, holding space for the community. 

1:30 pm Elders Arrive   

2 pm Welcome 

2:15 pm Honoring the Elders gifting of the Seeds, please come early if carrying Amaranth seeds to be 

        gifted to the elders. 

3:30 pm Preparation of the altar

4:00 pm Ceremony 

5:40 pm Pot Luck Dinner, please bring a dish to share  

Please come with Amaranth seeds and stories from your harvest to share with the Elders. These Amaranth seeds carry the stories of each of the gardens where they have grown; they hold the memories from each site planted, whether an urban center or high in the mountains, wide-open spaces or the crack between the sidewalk. The seeds and stories will travel with the elders back to Rabinal, Guatemala to be planted in Qachuu Aloom’s Solidarity Garden in 2020. 

Amaranth grows wild, it resits, it adapts, it feeds animals, insects, and people. But it does not need people to thrive, we need Amaranth to thrive and from the Amaranth, we learn how to live in harmony with the elements.