Mexico is one of the most diverse places in North America, and the state of Oaxaca has the most endemic species in the country. Preserving and sharing this life-giving biodiversity is a strategy for climate resilience and cultural preservation. Our communities deserve access the ancestral harvest throughout the year, so Oaxacan seeds can move more widely, more frequently.
The space we hold seeks to increase and support ethnobotanical knowledge, deepening our connection with the plants that support us as we support them. we collect plant stories rather than focus on formal testing and classification, centering the connection more than the science. seed displays include origin and location information, time stamp, care advice and donor data. Bring seeds to offer, and take seeds with you.
Herbs, medicines, vegetables, ancestral natives, pollinators, flowers, fruits, fibers, wood, dyes. Teach, learn, share. support abundance and community, and increase diversity for a resilient future. In addition to its function as a public library, in its off days, the space operates as a community space, available free of charge to oaxacans who need space for their workshops, classes, healing sessions, group facilitations, circle conversations, small events, dinners and ceremonies, especially those that center women, ecology and healing practice

seed sovereignty and equity, abundance and anticapitalism  

we believe we shouldn't be enslaved by the industrial food or medical complex that patronizes and infantalizes us by creating false needs and scarcity, and erasing people and knowledge that would liberate us. we hold the keys to food, medicine, ceremony and care, because they are contained within seeds. all people should be free and able to provide for themselves, and growing your own food and medicine is one way in which indigenous national sovereignty expresses itself. no one should be reliant on high priced products or the manipulation of transnational companies who attempt to patent and withhold what madre tierra gives freely. we don’t need to charge each other money for what the earth shares with us abundantly and generously. capitalism creates a climate of lack, competition, and resource hoarding. when we embrace the abundance  that she provides, and view ourselves as stewards, rather than consumers, we do better to honor each other and all our non-human kin.