OUR STORY

The Seeding Sovereignty Project was born at Sacred Stone Camp following a request to Janet MacGillivray, an water lawyer, by Chief Arvol Looking Horse to speak with LaDonna Bravebull Allard of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe about establishing a resistance camp on her land at the Cannonball River.

On April 1, 2016, Camp was established. On August 31, 2016, the Oceti Sakowin youth requested to partner for strategic mentorship, legal support, media training, and a bridge to elders for the transference of traditional knowledge and cultural preservation.

Earlier, in December 2015, Janet MacGillivray chose not to attend the Paris United Nations Climate Conference of the Parties and instead accepted a unique invitation to join the Kogi people in the remote Lacandon Jungle of Mexico. Five hundred years ago, when colonizers came to South America, the Kogi of Colombia and the Lacandon of Mexico retreated into areas the colonizers would not dare venture: the caves of the Kogi’s sacred mountain and the Lacandon’s jaguar-filled jungles. The Kogi have long been trying to send a message from the South to the North about the prophecy of the Condor and the Eagle, which calls for a return to nature’s ways and a path of human compassion and community renewal at a time of humanitarian crisis and a planet in peril.

A historic reunification was planned with these two intact tribal communities, and Janet was invited because she was a “woman lawyer from the North with a large network to carry the message.” After a four-day ceremony, the Kogi divined with the Mother (Mother Earth) using their sacred oracle, water. They told her that the Mother had offered Janet a seed because she “would not put it on a shelf,” but that Janet needed to decide whether or not she would receive it. It was a decision to accept this seed from Mother Earth, and she did.

After her return, Janet traveled to Standing Rock and worked with the youth from many tribes. Having visited numerous communities across Turtle Island, Janet had witnessed the extractive nature of environmental work, where large organizations come to work temporarily but leave after a new and more exciting cause arises. Communities feel abandoned, their stories and images extracted and taken—another form of colonization and a repeated cycle of disrespect and disempowerment.

After Standing Rock ended, several of the youths wanted to continue their work, to lead, and to have a voice. Keeping her promise to them, of honoring word and relation, Janet started a place for the work and relationships that began at Standing Rock to grow. The seed from the Kogi’s message became Seeding Sovereignty.