Producer

The Saena Seed Project is a farm-based land and identity project. Our goal is to grow food and seed for our communities, while in the process connecting people to their seed relatives as a means of fostering personal and collective growth. We believe in the power of plants to heal and nourish us, to remind us where we've come from, and to empower us to take back what has been lost. We farm on Wasco and Wisharm, Yakama, Cayuse, Umatilla, Walla Walla, and Confederated Tribes of the Siletz Territory. Our main focus is Iranian heritage vegetables and vegetable seed. We believe that food and seed plays an important role in reclaiming our health, our communities, our cultures, and our sovereignty.

The Saena seed project was birthed from the idea that engaging with culturally relevant seeds and plants can be a powerful tool for personal and collective empowerment and reclamation. We aim to create healthy landscapes, healthy humans, and healthy relationships through seed and plant work and to rewrite the way we connect to our environments, ourselves, and each other. One way we aim to do this is through connection: connection to the land and connection to our loved ones; connection to our foods, our cultures, and the communities in which we come from. For many of us, our histories, our culture and our stories have been lost. I say this because I know my story has been lost for a long time and I have been finding it again through the seeds and soil.