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About The White Corn Project

The Iroquois White Corn Project, originally Pinewoods Community Farming, began as the vision of Dr. John Mohawk (Seneca) and Dr. Yvonne Dion-Buffalo (Samson Cree). Their desire to bring White Corn back as a staple of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) diet began a decade-long project that has returned to its original home, Ganondagan.

White Corn is traditionally managed and protected to create nutritious corn products from heirloom seeds dating back at least 1,400 years in Haudenosaunee communities. Hand-grown, hand-picked, and hand-processed, White Corn products are non-GMO, gluten-free, and have a low glycemic index.

Black and white photo of Dr. John Mohawk

Dr. John Mohawk (Seneca), founder of the Iroquois White Corn project

Our goal is to restore the farming, consumption, and distribution of traditional White Corn (also know as "Tuscarora White") to Native American communities and to offer White Corn products to the community at large.

White Corn, along with beans and squash, is often called "Three Sisters." Learn more by reading the "Legend of the Three Sisters."

White Corn is available for purchase in the Seneca Art & Culture Center  Gift Shop

Volunteer at the White Corn Project

The White Corn Project uses volunteers for husking, hulling, and sorting corn. If you would like to volunteer please check our volunteer page for sign-ups.

White Corn Recipes

cornstalks in a field
“The mission of the White Corn Project is to encourage Haudenosaunee farmers to grow the corn and for people in our communities to eat it for more than just special occasions or ceremonial use, making it something they eat every day,” 

Jeanette Jemison (Mohawk, Snipe Clan),

Friends of Ganondagan Program Director

John Mohawk - Survive and Thrive | Bioneers
21:36

John Mohawk - Survive and Thrive | Bioneers

In this expansive tour of human civilization leading to today's climate crisis, Native American scholar John Mohawk explores the interrelationship of climate change and human evolution. For most of our history as hunter-gatherers and farmers, we retained an intimate knowledge of the natural world that supported us, especially plants. That knowledge, he observes, is being lost at radical rates today. Re-establishing our intimacy and kinship with the plant world is key to surviving dramatic climatic changes. He shares insights about the "Native American pragmatism" that successfully balanced the practical with the spiritual for thousands of years. "All of the survival techniques we learned about our relations to cultivars and everything at this hour stands in peril. And our relationship to wild plants stands in peril. The big human relationship to our cultural heritage is on the verge of extinction, and we need to change that." This speech was presented at the 2004 Bioneers National Conference and is part of the Indigenous Knowledge, Vol. 1 and Nature, Culture and Spirit, Vol. 1 Collections. Since 1990, Bioneers has acted as a fertile hub of social and scientific innovators with practical and visionary solutions for the world's most pressing environmental and social challenges. To experience talks like this, please join us at the Bioneers National Conference each October, and regional Bioneers Resilient Community Network gatherings held nationwide throughout the year. Learn more about the Bioneers Indigenous Knowledge Program at http://www.bioneers.org/pages/indigeneity-program/ and stay in touch via Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/Bioneers.org) and Twitter (https://twitter.com/bioneers).

Video Resources

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