The Wisdom of Seeds With Vivien Sansour
6/9/202637 min
What can seeds teach us about memory, resilience, and the possibility of renewal? This week, Willow sits down with Vivien Sansour, seed keeper and founder of the Palestine Heirloom Seed Library. They explore how seeds carry stories across generations and why protecting threatened varieties is a way of preserving the knowledge and traditions they hold, particularly during times of loss. From childhoods spent foraging in the hills to the role food and seeds play in connecting people to place, Vivien reflects on what it means to remember our connection to land, to each other, and to the stories that continue to shape us.
For more about Vivien Sansour: https://viviensansour.com/
For more about the Palestine Heirloom Seed Library: https://www.palestineheirloomseedlibrary.com/
For more about the Traveling Kitchen: https://viviensansour.com/Traveling-Kitchen
Palestine’s Seeds in Diaspora: https://atmos.earth/political-landscapes/palestines-seeds-in-diaspora/
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Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsVivian Sansour· Guest0:00
[gentle music] I love seeds because they represent, uh, infinite possibilities of life. That every time we think this is the end, you discover that, oh, well, maybe there is a transformation and a possibility for something else.
Willow Defebaugh· Host0:24
When I first discovered the work of Vivian Sansour, I was so moved. As the founder of the Palestinian Heirloom Seed Library, she spent the last 12 years tending a living archive, collecting seeds and stories of the Palestinian people, seeds and stories that might otherwise be erased. Vivian reminds us that life is as inevitable as death is, and that seeds themselves and the worlds they grow into can be our teachers.
Vivian Sansour· Guest1:01
The seeds and the crops really are a great vessel to remind you of who you are, what you're made of, uh, what kind of mud you are, we say, and what kind of person you wanna be in the world, which I think is, uh, even a, a, a bigger question every day.
Willow Defebaugh· Host1:20
[upbeat music] I'm Willow Defebaugh, and this is The Nature of, where we look to the nature of our world for wisdom and ideas that