Perennial Ceremony
Lessons and Gifts from a Dakota Garden
In this rich collection of prose, poetry, and recipes, Teresa Peterson shares how she found refuge from the struggle to reconcile her Christianity and Dakota spirituality, discovering solace and ceremony in communing with the earth. Perennial Ceremony brings us into this relationship, as Peterson guides us through the Dakota seasons to impart lessons from her life as a gardener, gatherer, and lover of the land.
Perennial Ceremony is a powerful, necessary gift for our times. Teresa Peterson writes with passionate grace of Dakota practices and teachings that nourish our world and transformed her life. With compassion, humor, wisdom, and courage, she offers a path through the disastrous fires of our own making. A book I'll return to again and again for solace, guidance, delectable recipes, and most of all: inspiration.
Mona Susan Power, author of A Council of Dolls
In this rich collection of prose, poetry, and recipes, Teresa Peterson shares how she found refuge from the struggle to reconcile her Christianity and Dakota spirituality, discovering solace and ceremony in communing with the earth. Observing and embracing the cycles of her garden, she awakens to the constant affirmation that healing and wellness can be attained through a deep relationship with land, plants, and waters. Dakota people call this way of seeing and being in the world mitakuye owasin: all my relations. Perennial Ceremony brings us into this relationship, as Peterson guides us through the Dakota seasons to impart lessons from her life as a gardener, gatherer, and lover of the land.
We see the awakening of Wetu (spring), a transitional time when nature comes alive and sweet sap flows from maples, and the imperfect splendor of Bdoketu (summer), when rain becomes a needed and nourishing gift. We share in the harvesting wisdom of Ptaŋyetu (fall), a time to savor daylight and reap the garden’s abundance, and the restorative solitude of Waniyetu (winter), when snow blankets the landscape and sharpens every sound. Through it all, Peterson walks with us along the path that both divides and joins Christian doctrine, everyday spiritual experience, and the healing powers of Indigenous wisdom and spirituality.
In this intimate seasonal cycle, we learn how the garden becomes a healing balm. Peterson teaches us how ceremony may be found there: how in the vegetables and flowers, the woods, the hillsides, the river valley—even in the feeding of friends and family—we can reclaim and honor our relationship with Mother Earth. She encourages us to bring perennial ceremony into our own lives, inviting us on a journey that brings us full circle to makoce kiŋ mitakuye: the land is my relative.
Perennial Ceremony is a powerful, necessary gift for our times. Teresa Peterson writes with passionate grace of Dakota practices and teachings that nourish our world and transformed her life. With compassion, humor, wisdom, and courage, she offers a path through the disastrous fires of our own making. A book I'll return to again and again for solace, guidance, delectable recipes, and most of all: inspiration.
Mona Susan Power, author of A Council of Dolls
Equally inspiring for gardeners and cooks and readers who love a good story, Teresa Peterson’s generous-hearted sharing of her spiritual journey through gardening is both nourishing and uplifting. Her tender gleaning of practical, seasonal wisdom invites us to remember a relationship with the land that is ceremony, a life-sustaining, daily communion with creation.
Diane Wilson, author of The Seed Keeper
Full of Indigenous knowledge, family stories, and tasty recipes, Perennial Ceremony is a love letter to Dakota homeland. In poetic passages and precise prose, Teresa Peterson teaches us what it means to acknowledge plants, creatures, water, and the earth as our relatives. Here is a circle of respect enacted through a life story of eating and exploring, grieving and healing, and the momentum of continual, seasonal return. This book will be cherished for all the delights it offers and all the wisdom it bestows.
Heid E. Erdrich, author of Original Local: Indigenous Foods, Stories, and Recipes from the Upper Midwest
Sharing relatable recipes containing easily procured ingredients, Teresa Peterson tells intergenerational stories of life, loss, ceremony, change, hurt, and healing. Through her narrative, she brings readers into her garden, where they meet her family, work the soil, harvest a cornucopia of nourishing ingredients, and contemplate the lives and various doings of our winged, rooted, and four-legged relatives.
Wendy Makoons Geniusz, editor of Plants Have So Much to Give Us, All We Have to Do Is Ask: Anishinaabe Botanical Teachings
Contents
Introduction: Gardening Is Ceremony
Wetu Spring: The Time of Blood
Bdoketu Summer: The Time of the Potato
Ptaŋyetu Fall: The Time of the Otter
Waniyetu Winter: The Time When the Snow Lives
Lessons and Gifts to Consider and Cultivate
Further Reading and Resources
Acknowledgments
