Palestinian seeds of survival, shelter, and subversiveness, ft. Vivien Sansour
What can we learn from Palestinian resistance?
“I fell in love even more deeply with the seed world because it’s a world that looks like it’s dead but actually it is subversive. It is very insisting, quite resilient, and full of life.”
What can grief teach us about being truly alive? And how might seeds, and the compassionate acts of tending to them, be the “helpers and teachers” of mediating our collective grief?
In this episode, we are honored to welcome Vivien Sansour, founder of the Palestinian Heirloom Seed Project—an initiative centered on caring for and preserving seeds as keepers of ancestral connection and models of subversive advocacy.
Join us as Vivien shares about the systemic violence of disconnection and relational severance, the colonial-imperial atrocities inflicted upon Palestinian farmlands and their stewards, the socio-economic pressures turning many historically food-centered farms into monocultural plantations of commercial tobacco for export, and more.
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“For the world that claims to care about ecology, if you don't care about Palestinian life and you think we are animals, fine, we're human animals. I'm proud to be a human animal. But supposedly you care about animals? But fine, don't even care about that. But maybe, maybe you can care about the ecology that's being completely destroyed…
We are paying with our own bodies, and if people can't see that and cannot stand against that and don't have it in them to really ignite their own humanity, then I feel very sorry for them because then I feel even in our death, we're more alive than a lot of people.” – Vivien Sansour
Vivien comes full circle with…
a recommendation: “I've been reading a book called Existential Physics, and that is very impactful because it helps me have a bigger picture about our size as a human species and everything that's happening to us. I'm also very influenced and I love to read a lot by Gabor Maté… His recent book is called The Myth of Normal, and I think it's a brilliant piece of work.”
a grounding reminder: “One that's been coming up for me a lot the last couple of days is, it's not on my business. Meaning, like, I do the best that I can, and the outcome is not on my business.”
a personal inspiration: “It's so weird to say what I'm about to say, but I'm being inspired right now by a lot of love, like a lot of tenderness and love that's coming out from unexpected and unusual places and people, and in little ways, but that they've been so big in a moment where there's just so much pain and sadness. To just find ways that people figure out to offer love in simple ways has been the only inspiration I've had really…”
and some words of guidance…
“Don't accept the mediocrity that is being shoved down our throats, whether it's in your thinking, in what you eat, in what you buy, and even in who you talk to.
There has to be a daring, a high level of daring to tell the truth no matter the cost and no matter the pain because that's the only way to be free not just in Palestine but anywhere at any time.”
Vivien Sansour is an avid lover of nature and the arts. She has sprouted many projects out of the Palestine Heirloom Seed Library, including her co-founding of El Beir, Arts and Seeds studio in Bethlehem, the Traveling Kitchen project, and several other collaborative projects internationally. The Seed Library and its associated projects are now located in the village of Battir, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Palestine.
A culinary historian, enthusiastic cook and columnist, Vivien wants to bring threatened varieties “back to the dinner table to become part of our living culture rather than a relic of the past.” While born in Jerusalem, Vivien was raised in both Beit Jala in Palestine and in the US, and proudly calls herself a PhD drop-out. She is currently a Religion, Conflict, and Peace Initiative Fellow at Harvard University and is writing an autobiography that weaves together the stories of seeds with her own personal experiences in Palestine and abroad — both involving elements of challenge and triumph.
Vivien attributes her work to the generosity of farmers across the globe, sharing: “[They] inspired my imagination as an artist and my ability to love science as a practice of observation that can change the world.”
What inspirations or curiosities are still lingering with you from this episode?
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