Pat Gwin, Administration Liaison for the Cherokee Nation Heirloom Seed Program, discusses the importance of the program to Cherokee citizens in a recent video.

The Heirloom Seed Program actually started out as a seed bank, Gwin explains in the video. But once it took off, they were inundated with requests for seeds. “Each year we average giving away about 2,000 to 5,000 packages of seed,” Gwin says. “We’re not a large commercial operation, we’re more of an educational research-type project,” he says.

The program also has educational pamphlets that go with the seeds to help people grow them.

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