Coming up on Reel Midwest: Homegrown When we were on the verge of extinction, it was just a miracle that we found some of our corn.

I mean, what adventure it has been.

Follow a group of Seed Keepers in their ancestral homelands of Nebraska as they seek to regain sovereignty over the food system.

And then...

I would consider us to be first responders.

It feels like we're doing something actively to help.

A string orchestra in Milwaukee, Wisconsin redefines what it means to be a first responder.

That and more on this episode of Reel Midwest: Homegrown.

My mom said there was no straight spoon in the house when I was a little girl that I'd be outside digging all the time.

I've been growing plants it seems like all my life.

The flowers that I use, they're still the same flowers that I was growing when I was a teenager everywhere I moved I kept the seeds and kept growing them and kept collecting them.

My people the Aki Chadu the Pawnee didn't always live in Oklahoma.

Our homeland was in the land that later became Nebraska.

My great great grandparents couldn't take much that they took their sacred corn.

We held on to that corn from that walk all the way from Nebraska down to Oklahoma, a really difficult challenging time where many of our people were lost but some of us still held those seeds then it's just a really beautiful thing to me that decades later we found a way for those seeds to still germinate even if they were down to like a handful of seeds.

I like this one.

We call that the knife chief corn because we thought Dennis Knifechief had cross pollinated corn or something but he came up with this striped cord this red and white striped and about six feet down they they found a buffalo skull.

Well, the buffalo hadn't been there since 1863.

And inside the buffalo skull was that seed.

The corn didn't reach its full potential in Oklahoma, the Oklahoma soil weakened the seed.

So our Pawnee put the seeds away.

One of the first questions I asked is, hey, where is our corn.

I mean, that's what we're known for.

It took a long while to answer that question.

Our culture committee, our chiefs, asked families and they would produce what they had.

And some of it we couldn't get to grow because it was stored so poorly.

But some are kept in bundles, and there'd only be 20 seeds in there.

One day, I got an unexpected call from Nebraska.

That gave me hope that we could grow our corn again in our homeland.

I worked at the Archway in Kearney over I-80 that teaches a lot of history about the trails and transportation and I had needed his telling me you really need to teach more about the 1000 years before that.

So that's how I met Deb Echo-hawk was I wanted to start a program about the Pawnee because we're in a homeland here in central Nebraska so wanted to have gardening as part of that because I've always I grew up on a corn farm, and I've always gardened she sent me just 25 seeds in 2004 the first year and I put I planted them like we do we plant corn in late April here in Nebraska.

So I went out and did that and I was all excited They all rotted in the ground was too early and too cold.

So the next year, she sent 25 kernals.

She said, I have 25 left.

This is it I can't part with last 25, we have to be able to show our children what it looked like once.

Ronnie O'Brien she's my my little corn sister.

In fact, we gave her her name in Pawnee.

Yeah, I think she cried for days when when that happened.

We talk almost daily and sometimes several times a day.

Other Nebraska farmers wanted to plant Pawnee corn too.

One was Del Ficke a man that I would later call friend.

Del: We wouldn't be here if it wouldn't have been for the Pawnee helping my family.

When they homesteaded just a mile south of here.

In 1869, there was a Pawnee encampment, another mile south of them.

It was the Pawnee and they ended up you know, trading food and things with them.

And it's evolved into a love affair and a like I say in a very spiritual way it's become the connection with the Pawnee people.

They are truly family.

This is a manicuring of a precious resource from a historical and spiritual base.

That is teaching us how we need to be in the future.

It is teaching the next generations.

♪ Oh, hi.

Oh, hey, oh, oh.

♪ To see and to hear Del, you know, when they're when his great grandparents, you know, homesteaded this place and tell them how the Pawnees helped them through that winter.

They felt they owed something to them Pawnees It's pretty awesome he feels that way.

I mean, that was a long, long time ago, you know, and things die off, you know, but that's still in his heart.

And his family's heart, you know, to recognize that.

That really tells me a lot about about him and his family.

That they're really good people.

Yeah, so it really makes a nice drink.

And, you know, you don't have to heat it.

Just infuse it.

Each fall, we travel to Nebraska to pick and prepare corn for ceremonies, and to restore our traditional diet.

There's always a feeling for me when I am here with this land of being home.

Which in a sense, you know, maybe I feel a little bit silly to say because I've never lived here, but it's true.

I love to remind Nebraskans that we were the first Cornhuskers We're smiling more than we have in a long time, there's a little bit of teaching that goes into almost everything that we're doing.

Yeah, it's been beautiful to see it all play out into a camp setting.

So this year, we're processing Eagle corn, we've been working towards this moment for a long time to be able to serve Eagle corn, to the people at our dances at our spring ceremonies where everybody could try it everybody could know what it tastes like.

I like the eagle corn to taste because when we shell it, you know just we get the whole thing.

We're careful about how we take the kernals off the cob, but when you cook it, you know well blanche, roast it, and then take it off the cob.

But then when you cook it, it turns like super round.

And it just kind of pops in your mouth.

And to me it's got this really incredible nut light taste, that's definitely my favorite.

And we'd like it when it looks like an eagle with his wings spread out.

It's fun to find that design in there and a lot of other designs.

It's just like an art show every day.

You know, looking at all the different varieties lots of prayers have gone into this corn in all phases of production and anytime you pray to brings out the healing properties of plants.

We've been putting wrong foods in our bodies.

So if we get back to a food that our DNA our bodies recognize then, you know, hey, we're gonna have healthier people.

We use corn as most tribes do in every celebration, there is.

Pow wows, ceremonies.

And there's just so much reverence to it.

When we were on the verge of extinction, it was just a miracle that we found some of our corn I mean, what adventure it has been mother corn is very, very very sacred to have something that's that was passed down generation to generation to generation and we're still able to to consume it, to taste it.

It touches the soul that to realize you know, our grandma's you know, great grandma's took care of this enough to supply us.

(♪ music ♪) (♪ music ♪) (music and sirens) On the basis of the data alone, Milwaukee stands out.

You can get to a place where you believe that this is the normal and just throw your hands up and just say whatever.

It sounds cliched but I felt compelled to do something.

I am Dayvin Hallmon, founder an director of the Black String Triage ensemble.

The Black String Triage ensemble is a group of Black and Latin-X musicians, violin, viola, cello upright bass that play at the scene in the immediate aftermath of tragic events.

We in Milwaukee have chosen to prioritize shootings, reckless driving occurrences, and drug overdoses so that the seed of destruction that gets planted in your mind from either what you've seen or what you've heard, does not continue to play over and over and over and over and take root and grow.

And so the music that we play, the programs I try to design are structured in that way to help move you across that river.

(♪ music ♪) I feel like shootings and violent situations have become such the norm that we don't honor our dead at the moment of that traumatic situation.

My name is Alida LaCosse and I am originally from Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

A night on call looks like we show up at a designated meeting place whether that's someone's house, or wherever it is where we're going to set up camp for the night.

But we're together with the instrument, music, music stand like.

Ready to go out if an emergency occurs.

We watch the police calls, right.

We have a couple of different formats that we watch.

We follow the call log.

And then we collectively make a decision when shots fired comes up if there's enough information for us to just roll out and go.

Normally, if you'd have to play a typical concert, you know, okay, my concert is at 7:00.

I gotta be at the Hall at 6:30 and you show up at 6:30 Maybe your dressed maybe you're not.

Come 6:45 And you're thinking about what it is that you have to play like you're getting your entire body and mind ready.

The challenge for musicians in the Black String Triage Ensemble is that you have to be in that state of being for a good four to six hour period.

(♪ music ♪) Wait a minute.

wait, wait, wait, wait this just popped up this one I feel pretty confident about just pull it over there it's a 13 minute drive away North 10th Street in the last row there's a lot of stuff that happens over there and sort of yeah we should we should go if we waited to go a day later a week later a month later then what has happened and has already set in for people Churchill: To be honest, I really don't like the reasons that we go out and play obviously.

Initially I go through this I don't want to do this I don't like what happened and I don't want to really be there because it rankles in my head that somebody's going but on the other hand, music is something that I can use to help somebody else that kind of makes me feel better.

I would consider us to be first responders.

It feels like we're doing something actively to help because a lot of times when situations happen first responders come yes you know you have your EMTs and ambulance and fire department but once they're gone or once someone's dead you know what's the rest of you will be left to do and feel This powerful man for real I mean who would've thunk it on night in Milwaukee.

on 20th & Hopkins Music calms the soul This is what we call a positive distraction A lot of the music that we play you might hear in churches, places of worship, but wherever we show up and we play together is a place of prayer.

It is an official place of worship.

It is an official place of you know supplication and praise and asking for peace.

We know what we're there for we know what our purpose is.

We just don't always know that everybody else is going to know.

(music rises) (♪ music ♪) This is awesome I love y'all Speaker 1: Can we just do this one and go?

Dayvin: Is that what everybody's feeling?

Speaker 1: I think with the amount of noise that is recently just shot up I'm feeling a little bit uncomfortable.

Dayvin: No, my bowing technique is not...

So, I know my focus is... Spectator: I love everything that ya'll doing.

I think the thing that strings us together is our passion for music.

But it's not just that it is also I think it's our love of, of our people.

I think we love out loud through our music.

And I think that's what makes us unique.

My hope for the Black Strings Triage Ensemble in the immediate is that the people in that space will come away feeling unburdened in like a different reality is possible.

That what has happened does not have to be the everyday nor should it.

Nature for those of us as people of color in the United States is we don't just get to accept this.

Acceptance is not enough.

There must be something that convinces you there must be something that lights a fire to drive you to tell you that it is going to be better.

the substance of things hoped fo the evidence of things not seen.

So you don't know.

You can't rationally prove it.

You can't scientifically measure it out But something has spoken to you and pushed you beyond all rationality so that you know this will be better and the only thing that does that is fate.

In whatever, however, it is still fate.

(♪ music ♪)}