The environmental activist group Bold Nebraska and its off-shoot, Bold Oklahoma are in the midst of raising $3,000 to plant what they call the “Seeds of Resistance” in Virginia and West Virginia to fight two major proposed fracked gas pipelines.
Both Bold groups say they’re working to protect land, water and climae in the two states. The fund-raising drive will send Ponca Nation member and Bold Oklahoma coordinator Mekasi Horinek Camp, Nebraska farmer Art Tanderup and Bold Nebraska’s Jane Kleeb to plant sacred Ponca corn as a strategy of blocking the two pipelines.
The groups are half-way toward the $3,000 goal. They intend to plant the corn June 6-9 on land in Virginia and West Virginia that lies in the paths of the Atlantic Coast and Mountain Valley fracked gas pipelines. It was in 2014 when the first “Seeds of Resistance were planted by the Cowboy and Indian Alliance.” The sacred Ponca corn was returned to the tribe’s ancestral homeland in Nebraska for the first time in 137 since the tribe was forcibly removed from Nebraska. The 3 and a half acres of corn was planted in Neligh, on land that lies both in the path of Keystone XL and on the historic Ponca Trail of Tears. The land was certified by the U.S. Department of Agriculture making it now protected from the Keystone XL.
Since then, the activists use the ongoing corn harvests to continue to help propagate more Seeds of Resistance.