Protecting Indigenous foodways, feeding community, and empowering youth
By Anya Kaats
The Acequia Institute, located in San Luis, CO, has emerged as a beacon of community empowerment in the realm of agriculture and environmental justice. Among the Institute’s many endeavors is a 35-year-old seed sanctuary. The Acequia Institute’s founder, Devon Peña, has collected seeds over the years for the sanctuary — mainly corn, beans, and squash. These three foods are main agricultural crops for various Indigenous peoples in Central and North America and are often referred to by the Haudenosaunee (The Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy) as “The Three Sisters”.
The three crops are traditionally planted together in a technique called companion planting, where each crop supports the health and vitality of the other two. Peña’s collection, called the Almunyah Seed Library, is committed to “in situ/in vivo methods for conservation of native crop genetic diversity,” emphasizing the importance of studying biological phenomena within their natural context.
“We had two Bolita beans that had been inside of a garage since the 1970s that hadn’t been planted in 20 years, making them free of introgression from the Adobe mills,” said Peña. Another staple of the Almunyah Seed Library is white flint Maiz de Concho, a native corn crop known for its genetic purity and considered an endangered heritage food. “Our sanctuary is about protecting the genomic integrity of our wild land, and our wild land races,” Peña explained. In 2018, Peña was invited to join the Council of the Indigenous Seed Keepers Network (ISKN), which helps to promote Indigenous cultural diversity for future generations by collecting, growing, and sharing heirloom seeds and plants.
The Acequia Institute also runs a youth internship program, which is entering its fifth season, providing local youth and young adults with paid internships to learn about acequia farming and acequia agroecosystems. Additionally, The Acequia Institute partners with SNAP-ed to provide decolonized Indigenous nutrition education in Colorado.
Last year, The Acequia Institute hosted six cooking classes featuring chefs from the Indigenous Collective, focused around the nutritional and environmental benefits of local, traditional ingredients, including some of the seeds preserved in the Almunyah Seed Library.
The Acequia Institute was born out of Peña’s pioneering work at Colorado College in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when he created the Rio Grande Bioregions Project as a research unit of Colorado College to engage in projects with acequia farming communities in the Upper Rio Grande bioregion.
Derived from the Arabic language, the word acequia means “one who carries or bears the water.” Acequia farming refers to a traditional agricultural system based around communal irrigation ditches or canals that are used to distribute water for agricultural purposes. The practice is rooted in democratic systems of governance, allowing farmers to share valuable water resources and prioritize the principles of equity and cooperation, especially in arid environments where water resources are scarce.
“Acequias existed among the Pueblos already and the acequia tradition came to Spain via the 800-year ‘Islamic Renaissance‘ especially in Andalucia (starting around 711 AD). The Spanish and Mexican people brought acequias to Colorado, but the technology and institution of the acequia water commons arrived in Spain from north Africa and then here via Mexico and the Northern Pueblos. The Colorado acequias were established on a Mexican period land grant between 1843-44,” Peña explained.
In 2005, Alfonso Carlos Peña, the late philanthropist and leading figure in the Spanish language broadcasting industry, provided the seed endowment for The Acequia Institute, allowing it to acquire a 181-acre farm on traditional Caputa Ute homeland territory in San Luis, CO. The Almunyah de la Dos Acequias Farm is part of the historic strip granted to Dario Diego Gallegos as a part of the 1844 Sangre de Cristo land grant, and is irrigated by two acequias, the San Luis Peoples Ditch and the Robert Allen Ditch.
The farm is home to agroecological research focused on flood irrigation methods, conservation of local heirloom crops, and experiments in soil biodynamics derived from local Indigenous knowledge.
In 2021, The Colorado Health Foundation provided The Acequia Institute with a $1.5 million grant to help purchase the R&R Market, in San Luis, which was established before Colorado became a state in 1857, and which was in danger of closing. The San Luis People’s Market, the new name for the grocery store, is being re-imagined as a community-owned cooperative offering local, unprocessed foods, and helping to keep the area from becoming a food desert. “I want everything in the store to be Valley-sourced, rather than coming in from Mexico and the rest of the world,” said Peña.
In addition to the customer-facing business of the People’s Market, The Acequia Institute is also in the process of creating a revolving loan association to provide no-interest loans to local food producers.
“I have this fantasy that somewhere here in the San Luis Valley, the next Larabar is waiting to happen,” Peña said enthusiastically. “This would allow us to create agricultural wealth that stays in the community,” he added.
When The Acequia Institute took control of the historic R&R building, they were faced with multiple, unavoidable construction and safety issues that needed to be addressed, which forced them to close. “We’re going to be working on this for a good ten years to make this building totally wholesome.
The first step was getting rid of the asbestos, lead paint, and mold, and putting on a new roof.” The Acequia Institute received a $200,000 grant from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment under their Brownfields Revolving Loan Fund to fund the asbestos and lead paint abatement.
Bulk food dispensaries and improved refrigerators are also being purchased, and the People’s Market plans to re-open in time for their annual feast day during the last weekend of July.
To learn more about The Acequia Institute, visit www.acequiainstitute.org.