The Seed Keeper by Diane Wilson

This book has three perspectives--one is keeping true to the traditions of your culture as a way to re-anchor yourself, the second is incorporating American Indian values of respecting the earth, our only potential home, in the era of climate change butting heads with corporate greed, and the last is an interesting way to portray the effects of generational trauma. These elements weave together in the story of Rosalie Iron Wing, a Dakhóta woman whom we first meet during a major turning point in her life. Wilson, who is herself Dakhóta, composes a narrative that moves back and forth in time, filling in Rosalie’s backstory and family history. During these movements through time, we meet Marie Blackbird, Rosalie’s great-great-grandmother. Marie describes running from US Indian Agents who, among other things, took children away from their families and placed them in boarding schools to convert them to Christianity. Rosalie is, body and mind, a product of the transgressions and violations her family and the Dakhóta have endured, from the loss of their lands to the loss of their traditional food and their children. This book asserts that much of the past does not go away, but continues to exist in the present. It details the way history runs through the bloodstream, through the DNA, through the bones, through the water, and through the land, affecting every life that steps forward into the present. We primarily experience this idea through the eyes of the Dakhóta, but during one scene, Rosalie’s white husband, John, takes her to see a monument commemorating the Sioux Indian War of 1862, one of the many events that transformed and devastated Rosalie’s family—but also John’s family. I did not like the time travel in this, skipping between times throughout the book--I find it a little dizzying, especially when it is all over the place and not just two time periods, but overall would recommend.