Preserving Indigeneity

Ryan and Aly brought their youngest son, Callan, and their dogs to Armory Park to sell an array of produce, including Asian pears. As farmers with Native American ancestry, Ryan and Aly strive to maintain Indigenous agricultural practices. Ryan, who has Seneca blood, shares his connection to farming as Aly, who has Iroquois blood, tends to their customers. 

We were born and raised in Rhode Island. We're from Woonsocket. To make it affordable, we had to buy a property in Sterling, Connecticut. From the property we bought, I could throw a stone and I could hit Coventry, Rhode Island. So that way, once we got big enough and had enough money, we could afford to buy a property, which is actually where we're at right now. We're going to be purchasing a farm, hopefully this year, the paperwork will be signed, and we'll have an orchard that's in Coventry. 

My family used to own a pretty large-sized farm in Lincoln, Rhode Island. So where Lincoln Mall is, that exit you take, that farm used to be right there off that exit. It was 400 acres. So, I grew up with the stories, and then I used to help my father out when he used to be a diesel mechanic. He'd work and fix on other farms, like in North Smithfield. What really opened my eyes is when I was in Afghanistan, and watching actual herdsmen herding a thousand head of goat or lamb, whatever, through the mountains, and cattle. That's where it piqued my interest, like there's better ways to raise livestock than confinement. If they can do this, then why can't the rest of the people? You know, the “modernized” world. 

We love to use this word that we're modern, but it's not always. The people who are indigenous to our culture, those ways actually work better. And what's funny is a lot of these farmers who are, like, eight generations, if they look back two generations, their parent, their grandparent, great-grandparents were regenerative farmers. If you look at a lot of the fields in New England, they're all partitioned in five to ten acre paddocks. With stone wall. That was to be able to progressively move livestock as they graze it down. The average rockwall you could build, I want to say it was like ten feet a day. Which isn't sustainable. We have technology on our side to be able to use indigenous principles. 

I have buddies I was in the military with who were farming 10,000 acres. They have the land mass. So they don't have to worry about intensively managing what they have because they don't have that finite resource. In Texas they have all-year growing. Here, we have six to seven months where we can grow grass. You know, in a perfect world. So, we have to be more conservative in what we do. That's why using those regenerative and silvopasture techniques. 

We just don't go against the grain, you know? Mother Earth created this structure and how we should live and we're like, ‘no, we're smarter.’ She's gonna win every time, she's our creator. If you look at Indigenous Native American folklore and they talk about how they were told to be. The full job of us isn't to be in this society that we've built. Our whole society was to be thinkers and to be able to ask questions. How do you enhance society in any aspect if we're just doing what we're told? You don't learn unless you know why.