Uncorrected Manuscript – Do Not Quote For citations, please see: Joni Adamson, “Gardens in the Desert: Migration, Diaspora and Food Sovereignty in the Work of Native North American Women Writers.” Aspects of Transnational and Indigenous Cultures Series, Hsinya Huang and Clara Shu-Chun Chang, Ed., Cambridge Scholars P, 2014. 47- 70. CHAPTER THREE GARDENS IN THE DESERT: DIASPORA AND FOOD SOVEREIGNTY IN THE WORK OF NATIVE NORTH AMERICAN WOMEN WRITERS JONI ADAMSON Wisdom from the past, creating solutions for the future. -Tohono O’odham Community Action Mission Statement In Gardens in the Dunes, Laguna Pueblo novelist Leslie Marmon Silko tells the story of Sister Salt and Indigo, indigenous sisters living in the desert between Arizona and California, near the Colorado River at the turn of the nineteenth century. The sisters struggle to find foods to keep themselves healthy and strong and thus Silko draws attention to the importance of indigenous food traditions. Trained by their grandmother to hunt for wild seeds and fruits in the desert and to grow the corn, beans, squash and amaranth in their garden, the sisters carefully store their food in earthen jars and grow their seeds in rain-irrigated gardens. Silko names the sisters’ band the “Sand Lizards” and depicts them as part of a larger