On a brisk fall morning in 2021, a couple dozen Native students at Stanford piled into cars destined for a meager patch of land behind the Stanford Dish. After a brief stop to pick up tools, the students arrived, took up a deep breath, and broke ground on the site of the Native Plants Garden, the newest project of the Native student community to nurture Indigenous culture at Stanford’s campus.
The Native Plants Garden is a collaboration between many campus entities: the Native American Cultural Center, Muwekma-tah-Ruk, campus archaeologist Laura Jones, Native American Studies professor Mike Wilcox, and the Stanford American Indian Organization. Working together, these partners are striving to create a space behind the Dish where Native students can cultivate plants from their home communities as well as plants native to the California Bay Area. Alongside the planting comes a significant dimension of community empowerment.
Professor Mike Wilcox addresses students during a class session. Keoni Rodriguez
The Native Plants Garden is meant to replace a site of significant cultural practice for past Native students. Previously, a sweat lodge stood on campus where students were able to perform cultural ceremonies respective to each of their communities and conduct meetings with Native guest speakers, the Muwekma Ohlone tribe, and other notable Indigenous visitors. However, the lodge was identified as sitting in a conservation zone and had to be dismantled. In its absence, Native students at Stanford have primarily gathered at indoor spaces such as Muwekma-tah-Ruk, the Native theme dorm on campus, and the Native American Cultural Center, but the desire for an outdoor space conducive to certain cultural ceremonies has long been expressed.
Dr. Mike Wilcox said that this effort came through a combination of efforts. In particular, students leaders such as Ramiro (Miro) Hampson-Medina, David Espinoza, Cher Nomura, and Rio Patton drove the establishment of the project, even so far as helping to choose the site alongside Wilcox and Jones. Once they knew where to put the garden, they got to work on planning how to put plants into the ground.
Hampson-Medina started out by harnessing the student energy in the Muwekma-tah-Ruk, where he served as an Ethnic Theme Associate during the 2021-2022 year. As Muwekma-tah-Ruk is a theme dorm, residents are required to dedicate 10 hours every quarter towards a community project relating to Native student life at Stanford. As an ETA, Miro was tasked with leading one such community project, where he offered the option to assist with the Native Plants Garden.
Through a series of ideating meetings and a synthesis of research from residents of Muwekma- tah-Ruk, Miro set the date for the groundbreaking. After months of planning, Native students were excited to finally make their mark on the site. Their first task was to mark out a circle where the garden would sit and level the land within the circle – a simple, yet physically strenuous charge. After two hours of shoveling, tamping, and lifting, a bare circle outlined with rocks lay where previously untouched weeds ruled. Hampson-Medina and Nomura surveyed the land together, inviting the students they led to do the same.
Students introduce themselves at the garden site. Keoni Rodriguez
A year later, a new offering in the Stanford course catalog titled “Muwekma Community Engaged Learning, Cultural Heritage and Native Plants Garden Field Project” taught by Professor Mike Wilcox would give students from around campus the chance to contribute to this project. Colloquially known as the “Native Plants Garden” class, students meet on Friday afternoons to work with Mike Wilcox on how fulfill the goals of the original project.
The class gained a significant amount of praise from the university, including a feature from the Stanford Report during the 2022 fall quarter, which featured the class, including Dr. Wilcox and Native students Jasmine Kinney ’24 and Ryan Duncan ’24. Most importantly, students feel that the garden is a necessary feature of campus life. Kyran Romero ’24 said, “The garden is an important way for us to just get together and feel like we can make campus more like home.”
Students pose around a artichoke root ball at a work day at the Oak Road farm. Keoni Rodriguez
Their hope took a significant setback during the winter break of 2022 - an atmospheric river caused a flood event that impacted large parts of the Bay Area, including Stanford campus. Alongside felling multiple trees and filling Lake Lagunita, the storm revived a perennial stream that had been dormant due to years of drought.
The stream’s footprint runs straight through the circle where the garden sits. This development has charged the winter cohort of the “Native Plants Garden” class with assessing how to work around (or with) the newly discovered water feature. Students roamed throughout the area, making observations about sun angle, water damage and plant species presence.
Though the sudden disruption took the group by surprise, students seem optimistic about the possibilities for the future. Wilcox suggested that the stream run through a series of raised beds that would constitute the garden. On a whiteboard, a list of goals sits in an abandoned structure at the garden, giving students a series of things to work for: a greenhouse, curriculum development, trail building, raised beds.
In a closing address to the class, Dr. Wilcox emphasized the intergenerational importance of the project: “This is your chance to cement your legacy here so that the people that come after you from your community can come here and say ‘Hey, here we are’”.
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Keoni Rodriguez is a coterm master's student in Earth Systems in the Environmental Communication track from San Diego, California. Their storytelling focuses in on Indigenous issues, Pacific Islander history, and environmental justice. In their free time, they enjoying watching video essays, reading from their mostly-unread bookshelf, and playing volleyball with friends.
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