Niweskok

From the Stars to Seeds

A collaboration of Wabanaki food and medicine providers, rematriating the Penobscot Bay region as an Indigenous foodhub.

Mission

Niweskok, a collaboration of food and medicine providers, rematriates Wabanaki lifeways through engaging with our kinship responsibilities and reclaiming traditional foods & healing. We prioritize restoring the Penobscot Bay region as a Wabanaki foodhub.

Vision

Encoded within Wabanaki traditional languages are our cosmologies. Niweskok in the Penobscot language translates to “dried seeds for planting”, as well as “essence of life” and “spirit”. Wabanaki cosmologies embed us in broad kinship networks which illuminate our interconnections, extending from the stars to seeds. Collectively, we dreamt Niweskok into existence, and with this has come clarity on pαkatəkkʷéwehla, our echo, our impact into the future that we have a responsibility to nurture.

As Wabanaki food providers, herbalists and birth workers, we enact our responsibilities to our traditional matriarchies and to the generations forward, while grounded in the wisdom of our ancestors. We contribute to restoring matriarchies through centering nurturing in all our decision making. Niweskok embodies the transformative power that comes from moving away from extractive practices of exerting power over the land and our relatives (the animals, plants, water, people) towards the balance that comes from acknowledging the earth as our first teacher once again.

Who We Are

We are food & medicine providers who have been organizing as Eastern Woodlands Rematriation Collective (EWR) since 2018. Within that time, local capacity and leadership in Wabanakik (so-called Maine) has thrived and we moved with this growth into our new iteration– Niweskok: From the Stars to Seeds. We are responsible to our communities, our peoples of the Wabanaki Confederacy (Penobscot, Wolastoqiyik, Mi’kmaq, Passamaquoddy, Abenaki).

Board members of Niweskok are Heather Augustine (Mi’kmaq), Jasmine Thompson-Tintor (Penobscot), Andrea Francis (Mi’kmaq), Jus Crea Giammarino (Penobscot), Kessi Watters Kimball (Mi’kmaq), Nicole Francis (Mi’kmaq) & Alivia Moore (Penobscot).