The Traditional Corn Conundrum

Corn may be one of the first agricultural staples associated with Indigenous agriculture in North America, and as an element, it’s as ubiquitous in non-Native food cultures as Doritos and Coca-Cola. But long before packaged chips took up an aisle at the grocery store, before colonial settlers arrived on the shores of the New World, hundreds of unique corn varieties once existed—and even flourished.

The sad reality is simple: Several of these varieties, and the traditional techniques used to dry kernels. Grind them into products like corn flour and cornmeal, have only barely made it back from the brink of extinction . As their clever slogan hints, “It’s aMAIZEing.” Reviving organic, heirloom, small-batch products like these might seem quaint in today’s sometimes-precious food landscape, but for the Iroquois White Corn Project, it’s a way to revitalize a culture that’s been stripped away by centuries of genocide.

In 1687, French forces invaded the Seneca Nation’s Fort Hill, a gigantic palisaded granary in upstate New York, once filled with stored corn; an put at 1,000 acres of their land and 1.2 million bushels of corn were destroyed. “They went to the fields with swords and cut down all the growing corn and burned it,” states G. This time, forces were led by George Washington, one of America’s founding fathers, who was also called by another name: Conotocarious , the “Town Destroyer.” He was responsible for ordering the Sullivan-Clinton Campaign to burn another 160,000 bushels of corn, bringing the total deficit from these attacks to more than 76 million pounds.

The 23-year-old Seneca of the Heron Clan has been safeguarding his ancestors’ practices ever since he was a teenager, and he now serves as the production manager of the Iroquois White Corn Project, which was founded around 1998. The project aims to restore the farming, consumption, and distribution of traditional Iroquois white corn to Haudenosaunee communities first while offering those same products to non-Indigenous ones as well.

Jimerson is in charge of processing, shucking, washing, husking and drying the corn, which comes from Indigenous holdings like the Seneca Nation’s Gakwi:yo:h Farms just outside of Buffalo, New York. She states that they’ve received hundreds of pounds of corn each season from Gakwi:yo:h alone, processing traditional corn into food products for their community first, then selling the rest commercially.

One of these popular brands that’s been on grocery store shelves since the 1950s is Indian Head, made by Wilkins Rogers Mills, formerly Maryland’s largest flour mill firm , founded 267 years after the initial genocide at Ganondagan. The unnamed red-faced Native American with a feathered headdress on the bags, who might once have been seen as a frightening villain in a spaghetti Western film, became a benevolent friend, and the ambassador of a popular cornmeal name—one trusted, as the business boasts, “ by generations of families .” But not among the Iroquois White Corn Project.

That’s when Jemison realized that the IWCP “didn’t belong there.” They morphed their vending approach into an “as needed, as ordered” business model—selling primarily to natural food trades, Indigenous and farm-to-table chefs, Haudenosaunee communities, colleges and universities—and even at the gift shop at the Ganondagan State Historic Site. Who are they going to pay?” There are still plenty of obstacles that tribally owned food operations must face—just to bring their products to the retail trade.

One of them is the seasonality of their traditional production methods, which aren’t meant to compete with year-round factory production goods. Even for Indigenous food makers who have survived generations of genocide and cultural appropriation of their peoples that’s still perpetuated today, there are still plenty of obstacles that tribally owned food operations must face—just to bring their products to the retail marketplace.

One of them is the seasonality of their traditional production methods, which aren’t meant to compete with year-round factory production goods. The first or second Saturday in October is dedicated to “Husking Bee days,” a tradition where 25 to 35 volunteers descend upon Ganondagan, arriving at a barn where the corn husks are separated into three parts and then braided by hand, binding the ears together tightly enough to be hung, suspending over 50 pounds of corn in the air.

Another option is to boil the corn in a pot of water for about a half-hour to an hour, depending on the particular type of corn being used. “They all have their own different traits,” Jimerson explained. “When we get a new lot, we have to kind of experiment with it and see what that lot of corn needs.” Next, the ears are hand-rinsed and their pH is tested. The IWCP is only able to process 36 to 48 pounds of corn on any given day, limited by the size of their 500-square-foot traditional processing facility.

Though the facility and operation might seem small, their output is impressive—nearly 2,000 pounds of processed corn every year.