Student Project Brings ‘Healing and Honoring Garden’ to Akwe:kon

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This story was condensed from a feature in the Cornell Chronicle.

By Caitlin Hayes

One night in late January, two groups of students came together to plan a garden. With markers and crayons, they drew their aspirations and ideas on large sheets of paper. They talked about plants and meaning, about culture, hope, and healing.

Because this wasn’t just any garden.

A group of Indigenous students from the American Indian and Indigenous Studies Program (AIISP) had brought their idea of a medicinal garden to students and staff from Cornell Botanic Gardens’ Learning by Leading program.

Together, they established the Akwe:kon Full Circle Healing and Honoring Garden, which aims to further bond Cornell’s Indigenous student community and to honor Indigenous students and their connection to the land.

“We’ve been talking about a garden for a long time,” says Yanenowi Logan ’24, an environment and sustainability major in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and a citizen of the Seneca nation.

“But it’s not just a garden—this was an opportunity to build community with each other and with the land we have. With the native plants and traditional plants—it contributes to this whole ecosystem of Indigeneity.”

Students from AIISP and the Learning by Leading program planted the garden at the entrance of Akwe:kon, the nation’s first university residential hall devoted to celebrating American Indian culture and heritage. Learning by Leading is a new program that allows students to take the lead on project teams related to sustainability, outreach, and horticulture.

“Akwe:kon was established to give Indigenous students a sense of community, a special place where they could connect, both over their Indigenous experiences, and through culture, through engagement,” says Leslie Logan, associate director of AIISP and a citizen of the Seneca nation (and Yanenowi’s mother).

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“The garden is another opportunity for students to cement those relationships, not only between themselves, but with the land and natural resources, which is so much a part of many of our cultures’ identities.”

It’s not just a garden—this was an opportunity to build community with each other and with the land we have.

Yanenowi Logan ’24

Designing and populating the garden required multiple collaborative sessions that benefited both groups.

Ten students from the Learning by Leading Sustainable Landscapes Team and a core group of about 15 AIISP students explored possibilities and revised plans based on the availability and viability of different species, also taking into consideration how the garden could offer something in every season. Learning by Leading students went to Akwe:kon; AIISP students went to the greenhouses at Cornell Botanic Gardens.

“We’ve really built a relationship with people who bring different sets of knowledge,” says Coco Dawkins ’24, a landscape architecture major in CALS. “And both groups have literally had their hands in the garden, whether it’s drawing or planting seeds, transplanting plants, to ultimately planting the garden together. I think that’s pretty unique.”

The garden will include native plants known to be used in Indigenous communities, many with ceremonial uses, including sage, strawberries, tobacco, and sweetgrass.

(One non-native plant, daffodils, will be included to honor and remember Daniela Lee ’22, a citizen of the Mohawk and Tarahumara nations and ardent nature lover who died last year.)

A circular plot of grass in front of Akwe:kon provided inspiration—and the group settled on a design that shares characteristics with a medicine wheel, a sacred symbol in many Native cultures.

“The circle has so much power in traditional beliefs and symbolizes how hope and wholeness is restorative and reciprocal,” says Yanenowi Logan. “For that to be the shape of the garden was just perfect.”

All photos by Sreang Hok / Cornell University.

Published May 24, 2023

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