The Seed Keeper Quotes
"The garden. What did you think when you walked into my small room?"
"In each container, I placed a single seed after wetting it first in my mouth."
"If I told you it came to me in a dream, would you believe me?"
"It was for you I started growing these plants, with the hope that they could help me."
"Learning my great-aunt’s unspoken language was no different from understanding the ways of plants."
"You have to go back to the time before, See what happened to the families, especially the children."
"We know these stories to be true because Dakhóta families have passed them from one generation to the next."
"The old ones said the Dakhóta first came to this sacred place from the stars."
"The prairie showed us for many generations how to live and work together as one family."
"Routine tasks, comforting in their simplicity. No need to think, to plan, to remember."
"Maybe we all carry that instinct to return home, to the horizon line that formed us."
"I woke to the clatter of snowshoes on a wood floor, the way the wind turned white in a storm."
"Everything I teach you is for survival. Every day is a test of your readiness."
"If you know the stars and the plants, you will never be lost or alone."
"We lived on this land for many, many generations."
"I felt its sorrow, the loss of generations who had lived here before me."
"You’re an Iron Wing, Rosie. Always be proud of who you are."
"They wanted me to forget everything about my life before that day."
"Anyone could see her brokenness. But she was kind to me."
"Girl wasn’t shy; she was just listening and gathering the little details that make a story come alive."
"Maybe her loneliness was so deep she was filling it the only way she could."
"I carried my trophy inside, where Laura was paying bills at the kitchen table."
"The silence was pierced every now and again by the drowsy, high-pitched hum of a cicada."
"I fell asleep trying to remember how he made a healing tea from the inner bark."
"We were meant to be together, a couple of coyote pups, who learned to hunt as a pack in order to survive."
"We can’t outrun them. We’ll have to survive until your father can find us."
"This food has no spirit," Iná had told me. "What will become of us when this is all we have?"
"She knew, too, that if the food ran out, these seeds would have to be hidden from her own people."
"We all depend on each other to survive. The plants we gather give their lives; the deer gives its life. Someday we will give ours, too."
"If kids are picking on him because he’s Indian, he can’t just run away."
"Animals had to earn their keep, like our old hound Boomer, who was a good hunting dog in his day."
"Rabbits rarely sought shelter this close to a house, preferring to hide their nests out in the open."
"Staying alive meant I had to stoke the fire before drifting off to sleep, wake in the night to add more wood, and leave my warm bed at dawn to reload the stove and heat water for coffee."
"I watched him from the bedroom window as he made a leap from the truck to the woodpile, picked a careful path from one log to the next, jumped to the roof of the outhouse, made a final, desperate leap to a low-hanging branch of the oak, and clawed his way down the trunk to the food."
"What you taught me helped me get through the hard years, after I was taken away."
"Find the place that Indians talk about. The place of spirit where all things are created."
"A lone sandhill crane landed in the field across the road, making a slow circle before deciding it was safe."
"I watched him spread his wings, riding the wind better than any man has ever ridden a horse."
"The Missouri River still winds its way south and the wind still sings across the open plains."
"What the white settlers called progress was a storm of fury thundering its way across the land."
"Every day I offered a prayer of gratitude for the corn that had helped feed us through the winter."
"The face that stared back was not me; a stranger had taken my place."
"I couldn’t get it smooth, as the white teachers did."
"The air was crisp and clean, a welcome relief from the parched heat of summer."
"The minister says it is a sin to hate; well, then, I am a sinner."
"Let love be your vengeance, your honor restored because you did not surrender to their violence."
"I felt much older. This was true for everyone who had survived the years at Crow Creek."
"The Year of Reconciliation is about healing from the harms of the past."
"I had promised I would one day place beneath the cottonwood trees near the river."
"I thought you were working with your dad today."
"They say the Holy Spirit alone is most great. I suppose, for that reason, now we men are now in prison."
"My dear wife, because of you, I am sad every day."
"If I listened closely enough, I could almost hear the sap rising in the trees."
"The air was sweet with honeysuckle, scented by long grasses warmed in the sun."
"For the first time in my life, I felt the sweet gift of purpose."
"You have to forgive your mother. And yourself."
"We need to fall back in love with the earth."