The Seed Keeper

The Seed Keeper, written by Diane Wilson and published in 2021, is the fictional tale of a Dakhóta woman’s journey to rediscover and reconnect with her family, culture, and history. Wilson is a Dakhóta writer who is a descendant of the Mdewakanton subtribe. The novel’s protagonist is Rosalie Iron Wing, who enters the foster care system at age 12. The narrative depicts Rosalie’s struggles to survive and understand her place in a society that would rather erase all knowledge of the Dakhóta genocide than understand her people’s existence. Though told primarily from Rosalie’s perspective, the story also includes the perspectives of her great-great-grandmother, her great-aunt, and her best friend, each of whom reveals the effects of either the 1862 US-Dakota War, the removal of Indigenous children from their families, or modern farming practices on the water and land. The Seed Keeper won the 2022 Minnesota Book Award in Fiction.

This guide refers to the first edition published in 2021 by Milkweed Editions.

Content Warning: This study guide references extreme violence, including rape and genocide.

Plot Summary

Spanning several generations of Dakhóta women from 1862 to 2002, The Seed Keeper starts with Darlene Kills Deer’s recounting of when Rosalie Iron Wing, her great-niece, returned to her family decades after social services took her away and put her in foster care. Darlene’s tale sets the stage not only for loss and broken families but the importance of prayer, plants, dreaming, and seeds—all of which Darlene uses to call her long-lost great-niece home and which Rosalie uses to reconnect with her family and heritage. The novel’s narrative is nonlinear, jumping through time and occasionally shifting perspectives. Revelations about past events are often given either in characters telling stories, recalling memories, or flashbacks. This summary synthesizes those details to give a comprehensive overview of the plot.

Rosalie Iron Wing’s story begins when she is a child living with her father in a rustic cabin near the Minnesota River. Her father, Ray Iron Wing, was a high school science teacher who lost his job after incorporating Indigenous science about humanity’s origins in the stars in his classes. Untrusting of most other people, Ray teaches Rosalie at home, showing her how to forage plants for food or medicine and trap animals, among other survival skills. He passes on to her his love of reading and his reverence for Iná Maka (Mother Earth). He does not, however, give Rosalie the one bit of knowledge she craves: the circumstances surrounding her mother’s death when Rosalie was four.

At age 12, Rosalie is left home alone—an increasingly frequent occurrence—when Ray goes out to trap. He has a heart attack and dies, so social services come and take Rosalie to a foster home. The first placement ends when Rosalie attempts to help her foster mother with dinner by trapping and skinning a rabbit. The second placement, lasting up to her 18th birthday, is dominated by the unkind Shirley, who sees her foster daughter as little more than a government paycheck. The bright spot of Rosalie’s teen years is her friendship with Gaby Makespeace, another Dakhóta girl, until Gaby is arrested in a drug raid on her boyfriend’s apartment and is sent away to a home for unwed mothers.

On her 18th birthday, Rosalie marries a young farmer named John Meister, for whom she worked over the summer to get away from Shirley. The marriage is largely one of convenience to keep the neighbors from gossiping. John knows she needs a safe place to stay to get out of the foster care system, and he appreciates being around someone quiet, thoughtful, and who shares his love of the land. Though Rosalie initially expects that his dark side will emerge, she eventually grows to trust him. She finds John’s mother’s seed packets and starts a garden, even though she still plans to leave once she saves up enough money. However, she becomes pregnant and realizes that she has been absorbed into life on the farm, so she gives up her dreams of moving away and finding out more about her Dakhóta family.

The time around Tommy’s birth is prosperous for the farm and family. Rosalie teaches her young son about the plants, animals, and river, hoping to pass on Dakhóta culture to him. However, a drought causes a farming crisis, and Rosalie takes a job writing obituaries and other articles for the local paper to make ends meet. John starts drinking again and wants Tommy to start learning how to run the farm.

As the years go on, Rosalie feels Tommy growing away from her as he tries to please his father. He is called racist slurs at school, which makes him want to distance himself from his mother’s background. As a young man, Tommy becomes his father’s business consultant, taking over the financial aspects of running the farm. A crisis point arrives when Mangenta, an agrochemical company, sets up a facility near town and encourages farmers to sign contracts to buy genetically modified seeds. Gaby, now a lawyer working with an environmental task force, and Rosalie both get shut down in the meeting with Mangenta. Rosalie’s editor guts her article about the company, too. Even worse, Tommy convinces John to sign the contract.

After John dies at an early age, Tommy takes over the farm’s management. Rosalie feels she has no place in his life and hastily leaves for the cabin where she grew up, hoping to reconnect with her past and identity. Between her despair and the rough winter conditions, Rosalie struggles to survive, only making it with the help of a neighbor named Ida, whom she vaguely knew when they were children. Ida introduces Rosalie to Wilma Many Horses, who knew Rosalie’s family and tells her she still has a great aunt living in the area. Both Rosalie and Tommy meet Darlene Kills Deer, who gives Rosalie her great-great-great-grandmother Marie Blackbird’s seed basket, who escaped with it during the 1862 US-Dakota War. She gives Tommy a corn cob that has been preserved for generations. Darlene also informs them that her three siblings, including Rosalie’s grandmother, were taken away to boarding schools and returned years later, hard and damaged. Rosalie’s mother, Agnes, grew up with this trauma, and during a mental health crisis, tried to throw young Rosalie off a bridge before jumping to her death.

Rosalie decides to remain at the cabin and start a garden using her ancestors’ seeds. When a hailstorm destroys most of the first year’s crops, Rosalie has a mental health crisis. She wakes days later to find Ida and Wilma, another elder, taking care of her. While she was sleeping, they cleaned up the garden and salvaged what they could. Tommy also visited a few times, and the elders subtly worked on him, hoping to influence his relationship with the land and seeds as he now works with Mangenta. Ida finds the cache pit Marie Blackbird’s mother created to preserve Dakhóta seeds and culture for future generations. Rosalie, with her newfound community, offers a prayer.