Mayo, who’s both Diné (Navajo) and Koyukon Athabascan, knows this firsthand. She remembers her grandmother’s garden as “a green field in the middle of the desert,” marveling at her ability to grow vegetables in what seemed to be dry, sandy land. “She would grow pumpkins, squash, zucchini, and even a peach tree, too. I don’t know…. She had magic in her hands,” Mayo adds. Her grandmother combined her vegetables with livestock purchased from neighboring families to make traditional meals.

Mahlewa is also familiar with the arid soil of the Southwest. Her family has practiced “dry farming” on Hopi land for generations, training the seeds — called “family seeds” — to become progressively more drought-tolerant with each passing season. Hailing from the Corn Clan, a matrilineal clan responsible for providing food to the rest of the tribe, Mahkewa says her family grows squash, beans, melons, onions, bell peppers, carrots, potatoes, and more, along with her clan’s namesake, corn.

“We're the seed keepers of our community, so it's really ingrained in me to protect these seeds and to carry this tradition on to my kids and to future generations and to share with others,” she explains. “A lot of our seeds are passed down from our grandparents or from my uncles or whoever was the farmer before us in our family. And we just keep cultivating those seeds generation after generation. Our seed varieties are very special to us.”