ON A MORNING in early May, a pale blue sky blends into boundless mesas about 70 miles north of Phoenix. Michael Kotutwa Johnson, wearing a wide-brimmed black hat and sunglasses, walks through rows of corn sprouting under a hot sun. As a light breeze ruffles the stalks, he bends to study each plant, then uses a hoe to scratch at the soil. “I don’t like weeds on my field,” he says. “There should be nothing but corn.”

Kotutwa Johnson, who teaches the science of dry farming at the University of Arizona in Tucson, has planted white and blue corn on about an acre here at Arcosanti, an ecological and architectural experiment in the Arizona desert. The community, set up in 1970, was envisioned as a built environment rooted in sustainability. Kotutwa Johnson chose the spot because of its isolated location in a valley and its access to water. He learned to farm as a boy from his grandfather on the Hopi Nation, about 175 miles away. The Hopi were early stewards of an arid landscape, skilled in the techniques of dry farming, which banks summer rain and winter snowfall to retain moisture in the desert soil. For the Hopi, farming is about more than food. Corn is used for ceremonies to mark important milestones. The pudding from Hopi sweet corn is used in baby-naming ceremonies, for example, and ground white corn is used for prayers and other special occasions. Agriculture, especially growing corn, has always been “at the center of our society,” Kotutwa Johnson says.

Researchers believe corn farming began in the Sonoran Desert in modern-day Arizona, possibly as far back as 2000 BC. But that farming tradition faded with Western colonization. For decades, the US government enacted policies aimed at separating Indigenous people from their land, history, culture, and farming practices. This fostered a reliance on government-sponsored, processed food, and unhealthy diets. Kotutwa Johnson’s Hopi ancestors used to grow at least 17 types of corn seeds. Now, just three are in common use: white, blue, and yellow.

Kotutwa Johnson’s crops are part of a project that he hopes will prove the endurance of their corn varieties and return that seed diversity to the Hopi. He hopes to instill in the next generation an appreciation for tradition. “I’m just trying to bring these seeds back home,” he says. “We need to do this.”

With help from a $500,000 grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, Kotutwa Johnson is building an alliance of tribes across the Southwest who will work together to safeguard Indigenous knowledge that stretches back thousands of years. That includes creating a model for governing data on native seeds and Indigenous dry-farming techniques, and ensuring Indigenous farmers have first access to this data rather than corporations and even government and nonprofit groups.

As the effects of climate change grow more severe, the value of Native seeds and traditional dryland farming practices rises. Along with these changes, Indigenous growers like Kotutwa Johnson, as well as policymakers and legal scholars, are working to protect the intellectual property value of Native seeds and knowledge. This will not only help with Indigenous sovereignty, they say, but with humanity’s growing needs in a warmer future.

THE PROTECTION OF lost seeds and the traditional knowledge about their cultivation is one of the big questions at the center of the Indigenous data sovereignty movement, which focuses on the rights of Indigenous people to manage data about their communities, resources, and land. The concept is not new, but the effort has gained momentum in the last decade.

Many nations today take the movement’s tenets seriously. In May, the UN World Intellectual Property Organization adopted a treaty that requires businesses seeking a patent based on genetic resources to disclose the source and country of origin of the genetic resource and any traditional knowledge used, as well as any Indigenous community that provided that knowledge. Nations that sign the treaty have to agree to follow the disclosure stipulations, but those that have not will not be legally bound to do so. As of October, about 30 countries had signed the treaty, though the US was not one of them.

The treaty is a “big deal,” says Rebecca Tsosie, a law professor at the University of Arizona. It marks the first international effort to protect Indigenous seeds and knowledge. But it’s just a start, she says. “We need to have a statute that does protect Indigenous rights here in the US. That would be my dream.”

Nature can’t be patented, but heirloom seeds contain genetic material that farmers have developed through selective breeding over thousands of years. Knowledge regarding how Indigenous heirloom seeds should be grown, and about the seeds themselves, has been passed down through the generations and is specific to place and geography. This type of knowledge is not currently recognized under US law, which focuses mainly on plant breeders’ technological innovation and economic protection, Tsosie says. “Sometimes the (Indigenous) knowledge is part of an integrated system. They have a level of knowledge of the environment that is unmatched,” she says.

“Indigenous sovereignty — whether over data, seeds, or anything else — requires Indigenous control over how information is stored

In addition to creating legal protections for heirloom seeds, Kotutwa Johnson believes that at least part of the money generated from popular, commercially grown corn varieties with Indigenous traits — like those related to the height of the corn, the length of the ear, or the drought-resistance of the corn — should go back to the communities where they originated. “It took thousands and thousands of years for the original geneticists, who were the Indigenous people, to cultivate it (corn) to come to what we’re eating right now,” he says. “All the new varieties that they’re coming out with now are going back to that source, but we, as Indigenous people, aren’t benefiting at all from that.” He cited varieties of blue corn, as well as other vegetables like string beans and various gourds, all as products of Pueblo knowledge, a fact that goes unrecognized.

In recent years, though, tribes have been making strides in protecting their intellectual property and sovereignty through Western and tribal laws, says Trevor Reed, a law professor at Arizona State University. “Indigenous people are in a great place to reclaim that,” says Reed, who is an enrolled member of the Hopi Tribe. “Now, we build for the future.”

The push for Indigenous knowledge and data protection is closely tied to Indigenous sovereignty. In many Indigenous cultures, land is treated “like an ancestor,” with whom a deep relationship has developed over time, says Keolu Fox, a genome scientist and assistant professor of anthropology at the University of California, San Diego. “Our genomes reflect the place that we’re from. We are a reflection of the places we hold sacred.”

However, Indigenous sovereignty — whether over data, seeds, or anything else — requires Indigenous control over how information is stored, says Fox, who is also cofounder of the Native BioData Consortium, a nonprofit research institute led by Indigenous scientists. That connection to the land should not be exploited for widespread economic profit, he says. “Some knowledge is not meant to be shared. It’s earned. It doesn’t have a value in capitalism.”

Recognizing the larger presence and meaning of the seed for Indigenous people is critical to understanding seed sovereignty, says Andrea Carter, director of agriculture and education for Native Seeds/SEARCH, a Tucson-based nonprofit that conserves, sells, and donates Indigenous affiliated and desert-adapted seeds of the Southwest and Mexico. “It’s the right of the seed itself, as our child, as our ancestor, to form a relationship with whomever, whenever, as a living entity.” The injustices of the past must always be acknowledged, Carter says. “OK, we’ve survived. We’ve made it this far, which is pretty incredible. We’re still here. How do we protect what is still here?”

The legal protection of seeds is one way to acknowledge the value of Indigenous knowledge. In April, Native Seeds hosted a conference where seed sovereignty and legal protection were the focus. This was necessary, advocates say, because laws that control the intellectual property rights of seeds and plants have grown over time. For Carter, meanwhile, the hope lies in young people who want to farm with traditional methods. She also sees value in others learning from the farming traditions of Indigenous people who have lived in the desert for thousands of years, if it is done respectfully. “Let’s share,” she says. “Let’s adopt these practices but let’s acknowledge those before us and those among us.”

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS, including patents, already play a critical role in the world of seeds and plant breeding. In 1980, the US Supreme Court ruled that General Electric and inventor Ananda Mohan Chakrabarty could patent a bacterium he developed to treat oil spills. The case is credited with opening the door to patents on new varieties of plants, allowing companies to protect and restrict the use of their genetically modified plants. This marked a new era in global agriculture, where agribusinesses began to dominate the markets and plant breeders were no longer able to share patented seeds or develop new genetic resources and varieties of patented plants.

Prior to this era, seeds for new varieties were commonly shared among farmers and plant scientists, who believed that such practices served the public good by promoting stronger crops and a more reliable food supply. Proponents of the modern open-source seed movement believe in that philosophy.

“Seeds should be shared,” says Jack Kloppenburg, professor emeritus of environmental sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a founding member of the Open Source Seed Initiative, a nonprofit group dedicated to maintaining open access to seeds. The group was founded in 2012 in response to concerns over a handful of companies controlling the intellectual property rights to seeds for essential crops, like corn and soybeans. Through the initiative, members agree to allow anyone to use their seeds, including for breeding, as long as they do not restrict use of their descendant seeds. “Freedom is what we’re all about,” Kloppenburg says. “It’s a freed seed. Develop it. Share it. Build it for your community.”

“I’m not necessarily growing just crops,” Kotutwa Johnson said. “I’m growing children.”

Irwin Goldman, professor of horticulture at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, agrees that seed patents — and the money they generate — mark a significant change in the historical use of plants. Seeds have long been “viewed as the common heritage of all humans,” Goldman says. “Using the tools of the law — patents, contracts, licensing — will not get us closer to a system that’s fair. The patent represents a monopolistic practice.” But Goldman also notes that if patenting continues to be practiced, then Indigenous people, whose seeds have been appropriated without their consent, should have the right to patent their varieties. “I think that if the people want to restrict it or share it, it’s theirs to decide.”

Roger Fragua, co-founder and executive director of Flower Hill Institute, a Native-owned nonprofit focused on cultural preservation, economic self-sufficiency, and food sovereignty and security, says that tribes should patent their seeds to protect their purity and strength, to serve the public good. Fragua, a lifelong farmer based in Jemez Pueblo, in northern New Mexico, is working with Kotutwa Johnson to gather data and impart traditional knowledge. The ongoing cross-pollination of foods with additives, herbicides, and pesticides will continue to weaken traditional seeds, he says. “Food is medicine. We feed humanity. Keep it separate. Protect those seeds.”

AS THE DESERT air breathes a solitary hush over his field, Kotutwa Johnson pauses, leans on his hoe, and peers across the rows of plants. The back of his left arm bears a tattoo of an ear of corn, perhaps the symbol of a promise to keep. Indeed, this field of white and blue corn may produce the first of what Kotutwa Johnson hopes will be many crops for the Hopi tribe. He will send the corn he grows here back home and grow it the following year on Hopi land.

By restoring lost seeds, Kotutwa Johnson hopes to revitalize a healthy American Indian food system throughout the Southwest. He plans to collect the nutritional value of the different corn varieties, as the US Department of Agriculture requires, find ways to produce the quantities needed for broader distribution, and eventually bring traditional varieties of corn to Hopi school lunch menus.

Ultimately, he wants to create an all-Pueblo Agricultural Alliance, encompassing 22 tribes in Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas, to sustain the dryland farming techniques that have helped them grow food through centuries of climate fluctuation. The tribes, all Pueblo people from ancient Indigenous communities who have been farming in the Southwest for well over 3,000 years, will share their knowledge with each other.

Kotutwa Johnson hopes to nurture the next generation of farmers. In any given planting, he never knows what will grow. But with climate change, he says, adapting, not stopping, is the way forward. “It’s just practicing the art of humility through doing,” he says. “Nature has a humiliating presence. Humility brings gratefulness.” He recalls helping his grandfather as a boy and learning early the value of reciprocity ­­— giving back to help take care of family, elders, and community. “I’m not necessarily growing just crops,” Kotutwa Johnson said. “I’m growing children.”

Kotutwa Johnson has planted two of the three Hopi maize varieties most in use, white and blue, along with beans. Over the next 10 to 20 years, he wants to see all the corn varieties out there: speckled, dark purple, starburst, and rare red. “It’s just trying to get the others back,” he says. “Nobody that I know … raises red corn anymore.” And while all the varieties have cultural significance, he said, “the main thing is that we continue to farm.”