Join your neighbors reading
The Seed Keeper by Diane Wilson
Winner of the Minnesota Book Award
A haunting novel spanning several generations, The Seed Keeper follows a Dakhóta family’s struggle to preserve their way of life, and their sacrifices to protect what matters most.
Rosalie Iron Wing has grown up in the woods with her father, Ray, a former science teacher who tells her stories of plants, of the stars, of the origins of the Dakhóta people. Until, one morning, Ray doesn’t return from checking his traps. Told she has no family, Rosalie is sent to live with a foster family in nearby Mankato—where the reserved, bookish teenager meets rebellious Gaby Makespeace, in a friendship that transcends the damaged legacies they’ve inherited.
On a winter’s day many years later, Rosalie returns to her childhood home. A widow and mother, she has spent the previous two decades on her white husband’s farm, finding solace in her garden even as the farm is threatened first by drought and then by a predatory chemical company. Now, grieving, Rosalie begins to confront the past, on a search for family, identity, and a community where she can finally belong. In the process, she learns what it means to be descended from women with souls of iron—women who have protected their families, their traditions, and a precious cache of seeds through generations of hardship and loss, through war and the insidious trauma of boarding schools.
Weaving together the voices of four indelible women, The Seed Keeper is a beautifully told story of reawakening, of remembering our original relationship to the seeds and, through them, to our ancestors.
Book Distribution
Starting January 27, books will be available while supplies last at the Van Horn Public Library, Pine Island City Hall, and Pine Island License Bureau.
Pine Island before Pine Island
February 13 @ 6:30pm (Pine Island History Center) – Chris Dietz
Pine Island Area Historical Society Board Member, Chris Dietz, shares the story of our area before white settlement.
Seed Keeping
February 17 @ 6:30pm (United Methodist Church)
Keeping seeds for planting in the future is an important aspect of The Seed Keeper. Kelly Kirkpatrick, owner of The Garden Lab, cofounded the national recognized seed library at the Rochester Public Library. She will discuss the importance of saving seeds and walk attendees through doing it themselves.
Book Club
February 19 @ 10:30am (Library)
The Dakota War
February 20 @ 6:30pm (Pine Island History Center)
The US-Dakota War of 1862 is an important catalyst to the story told in The Seed Keeper. John Robertson, Tribal Historian of the Lower Sioux Indian Community and Historic Site Manager of the Lower Sioux Agency in Morton, MN, shares some of this conflict’s history and will offer insights on how it impacts Minnesotans of all backgrounds through to today.
Why Treaties Matter
Wednesday, February 26, 9am-5pm
Thursday, February 27, 12pm-8:30pm
Friday, February 28, 9am-5pm
Saturday, March 1, 9am-5pm
(United Methodist Church Fellowship Hall)
“Why Treaties Matter: Self-Government in the Dakota and Ojibwe Nations” is a nationally recognized, award-winning exhibit made in partnership with the Minnesota Indian Affairs Council and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian.
The exhibit explores relationships between Dakota and Ojibwe Indian Nations and the U.S. government in this place we now call Minnesota. Learn, through 20 banners featuring text and images, how treaties affected the lands and lifeways of the indigenous peoples of this place, and why these binding agreements between nations still matter today.
Provided by the Minnesota Humanities Center.
Author Visit
February 27 @ 6:30pm (United Methodist Church)
Meet author Diane Wilson, who will read selections from her book, answer audience questions and sign books.
Diane Wilson (Dakota) is a writer and educator, who has published four award-winning books as well as essays in numerous publications. Her first picture book, Where We Come From, co-written with John Coy, Sun Yung Shin, and Shannon Gibney, was released in October, 2022.
Wilson’s 2021 novel, The Seed Keeper, (Milkweed Editions) received the 2022 Minnesota Book Award for Fiction. Her memoir, Spirit Car: Journey to a Dakota Past (Borealis Books) won a 2006 Minnesota Book Award and was selected for the 2012 One Minneapolis One Read program. Her 2011 nonfiction book, Beloved Child: A Dakota Way of Life (Borealis Books) was awarded the 2012 Barbara Sudler Award from History Colorado. Wilson’s middle-grade biography: Ella Cara Deloria: Dakota Language Protector, was an Honor selection for the 2022 American Indian Youth Literature Award. Her essays have appeared in many anthologies, including: Kinship: Belonging in a World of Relations (2021); We Are Meant to Rise (2021); and A Good Time for the Truth (2016).
Wilson has received a 2013 Bush Foundation Fellowship as well as awards from Minnesota State Arts Board, the Jerome Foundation, and a 50 Over 50 Award from Pollen/Midwest.
Wilson is the former Executive Director for Dream of Wild Health, an Indigenous non-profit farm, and the Native American Food Sovereignty Alliance, a national coalition of tribes and organizations working to create sovereign food systems for Native people.
Wilson is a Mdewakanton descendent, enrolled on the Rosebud Reservation.
All events are free and open to the public.