“They Belonged to This Land, Just As I Did"

Diane Wilson’s The Seed Keeper is a contemporary groundbreaking eco-fiction that addresses the environmental cost and psychological toll caused by settler colonialism in Upper Midwest, specifically Minnesota and Dakhóta of the United States of America. Wilson, through fiction, demystifies the idealist notion of growth introduced by capitalist industries. This article first unpacks the consequences of settler colonialism in Native American territories by discussing Native Americans’ history of colonization and their survival through resilience and cultural practices. The following section digs into the relationship between Native Americans and the environment. It frames how the preservation and cultivation of heirloom seeds by Native Americans contrast with the commercial practices of most of the White American settlers across generations. These investigations lead to the claim that seed-keeping is a form of Native American resistance to colonization and decolonizes indigenous lands from the aggression of settler colonialism.