There is a kind of grifting that does not begin with a hand in a cash box.
It begins when someone carries our name into a room and lets other people believe they carried our work.
It happens in Native spaces, environmental networks, universities, nonprofit circles, economic-development meetings, grant applications, conference introductions, speaker biographies, professional profiles, books, research, poetry, and private conversations with institutions.
Someone says they are affiliated with Alliance of Native Seedkeepers. Someone implies they worked with us, represented us, advised us, partnered with us, helped build us, or gained authority through a relationship with us. Sometimes the claim is direct. Sometimes it is carefully vague. Our name is simply placed close enough to theirs that the audience reaches the conclusion for them.
We have heard about this after conferences. People have contacted us and said that someone at the event described themselves as affiliated with Alliance of Native Seedkeepers. We asked who the person was. In some cases, we had no idea who they were. We had approved no affiliation, no representation, no partnership, and no authority to use our name that way.
That is not networking.
That is not solidarity.
That is not collaboration.
That is grifting.
Grifting is not only taking money. It is taking value created by somebody else’s labor and carrying that value into rooms where the laborers were never invited, paid, protected, or even named.
The name was built before it became useful
Alliance of Native Seedkeepers did not begin as a polished website, a speaker credential, a grant category, or a line in somebody’s biography.
It began with seeds, relatives, gardens, memory, responsibility, land defense, food access, environmental justice, and the older work of keeping relationships alive when institutions had already decided those relationships were disposable.
The store was built because the mission needed a way to survive without waiting for permission. Registration fees, early supplies, packet materials, tools, travel, fuel, repairs, and the first website came from a small fundraiser and our own pockets. We were still working full-time jobs. We were still planting wherever someone allowed a few square feet. We were still grieving crops lost to heat and landlessness. We were still trying to build something strong enough to outlive one bad season.
People who now borrow the name are borrowing from years they did not live.
They are borrowing from money we did not have, sleep we did not get, meals we skipped, time away from the people we love, vehicles we wore down, loans we signed, equipment we rented, machinery we repaired, threats we absorbed, health we strained, and the constant anxiety that one failure could erase decades of work from our lives.
They lose almost nothing if Alliance fails.
We lose the years.
We lose the land payments, the building debt, the equipment debt, the inventory, the reputation, the relationships, the records, the genetic work, the time taken from our families, and parts of our health that cannot simply be returned.
They can remove a sentence from a biography and move on.
We cannot remove the years from our bodies.
They were not in the water
Before the seed company reached its present form, the work already included disaster response.
During the years of Hurricane Matthew and Hurricane Florence, relief did not mean posting a statement after the danger had passed. It meant entering flooded communities, delivering supplies, moving through water around homes, and helping people while dams failed and families watched everything they owned disappear.
It meant floodwater damage to our own vehicle. It meant years of wear on the truck that later approached 200,000 miles. It meant using what we had because crisis does not wait for a perfect budget, a media plan, a grant cycle, or institutional permission.
The people borrowing our name were not necessarily in those waters.
They were not standing in front of a flooded home deciding whether the next step was safe. They were not carrying the supplies. They were not helping people leave. They were not risking their own vehicle, body, time, or money.
Yet the story of that work can become useful later. It can be reduced to “community resilience,” “climate justice,” “mutual aid,” or “Indigenous-led response” in a proposal written by someone who did not absorb any of the danger.
That is extraction.
When a person uses proximity to our relief work to gain standing without naming the limits of their role, that is grifting.
They were not in the fields
They were not there when the corn needed weeding and there was no one else coming.
They were not there when back-to-back heatwaves cracked the soil, curled the leaves, stalled the beans, injured the squash, and pushed endangered seed lines toward disappearance.
They were not there when a crop showed disease and the decision had to be made about what could still be saved, what had to be removed, what could be selected for seed, and what might be lost.
They were not there when we drove between scattered plots on land we did not control because landlessness forced the work into every opening we could find.
They were not there when some seed lines came to us as what we understood to be the last known sample.
They were not there for the garden before it was fire-bombed. They were not there for the grief after it was gone. They were not there for the threats, the droughts, the crop failures, the isolation work, the harvest, the drying, the cleaning, or the moment a seed had to be placed back into storage with the hope that another season would still be possible.
The lessons they later repeat at conferences or in classrooms came from weight.
They did not carry the weight.
They were not in our home
They were not in the apartment when the seed operation lived on counters, floors, wire organizers, cardboard boxes, and whatever surface was not already carrying the rest of our life.
They were not there when packets were handwritten because there was no better system. They were not there when glue stayed on our fingers, the cheap printer jammed again, or dysgraphia and physical pain made every handwritten label harder.
They were not there in 2020 when one of us worked eighteen- and twenty-hour days in healthcare while patients became sick and died, then came home and tried to catch up on seed orders. They were not at the countertop while the other packed seed care packages for tribal communities between meetings and the workday.
They were not there when fear entered every package. We had to ask whether the materials themselves could carry illness, whether quarantine time was needed, whether helping people quickly could accidentally harm them, and how to keep a tiny operation moving while the country’s supply systems broke.
They were not there when our small home became a seed company.
A bedroom became the seed room. The seed room became the packing room, office, communications department, print shop, inventory wall, and fulfillment center. More than 300 bins went onto the walls. Banker boxes became dividers. Business materials spread into nearly every corner. The kitchen, living space, yard, bedroom, and private life were all asked to make room.
People could visit, listen, ask questions, photograph the space, absorb the story, and leave.
We still had to live there after they left.
We still had to pay the bills, clean the space, answer the orders, protect the seeds, and try to remain a family inside a workplace that had swallowed the home.
They were not there when crisis called
They were not there when donations had to move to communities across the United States and Canada.
They were not there when emergency requests came in faster than the systems could hold them. They did not organize the names, collect addresses, choose seed, fill packets, write labels, find mailers, pay postage, carry tubs to the post office, answer follow-up messages, and explain delays when carriers were strained.
They were not there when seed donations were part of disaster response, health work, cultural recovery, school gardens, community gardens, food access, and the attempt to help people regain some control after crisis.
Some people appeared long enough for a photograph.
Some appeared long enough to have their name included in a report.
Some later used the image of that work to suggest a depth of relationship they had never earned.
A photograph records presence for a fraction of a second.
It does not record who prepared for weeks, who paid, who stayed after dark, who fixed the mistakes, who absorbed the risk, or who returned the next morning when the cameras were gone.
They were not in the building
They were not there for the year we spent rebuilding an abandoned building in Colerain.
They were not standing beneath the damaged ceiling. They were not looking into old electrical infrastructure and calculating what it would cost to make the space safe and functional. They were not scraping, cutting, lifting, cleaning, painting, patching, hauling, waiting, calling, financing, and solving one problem only to uncover the next.
They were not there when the bathroom was still frightening. They were not there when the lights were still a promise. They were not there when the building was full of ladders, cords, dust, unfinished floors, missing divisions, and equipment that had nowhere else to go.
They did not spend an entire year doing that work for free while also trying to keep the company alive.
They did not put every available dollar into materials, utilities, repairs, equipment, inventory, payroll, software, postage, and debt service.
They did not make the choice between paying for one repair and delaying another. They did not sign for the machines. They did not drive long distances to inspect equipment, discover that promises had been incomplete, and then return home carrying the consequences.
They did not live with the anxiety that the building might crush the company financially before it had the chance to save it operationally.
They were not there when the tools failed
People like to describe infrastructure after it works.
They point to a printer, seed cleaner, warehouse system, packing machine, inventory bays, storefront, or website as proof that the organization has arrived.
They rarely speak about what it took to make those systems work.
They were not there for alignment problems, feed problems, sensor problems, moisture problems, barcode problems, software failures, inventory damage, erased records, broken promises, delayed equipment, emergency repairs, or the days when every system seemed to fail at once.
They were not there when we took personal loans, opened lines of credit, used personal vehicles, rented equipment, and put wear on everything we owned because the work had to move even when the infrastructure did not.
They were not there when we looked backward and thought, this may be it.
They were not there when our bodies were exhausted, our mental health was strained, the bank balance was tight, customers were waiting, the season was moving, and failure felt close enough to touch.
They see the bays after they are full.
They do not see the years required to fill them.
Then the story becomes useful
After the danger, the debt, the crop loss, the physical labor, the family strain, and the years of uncertainty, the story becomes useful to other people.
Someone wants a dissertation subject.
Someone wants material for a book.
Someone wants language for poetry.
Someone wants a stronger speaker biography.
Someone wants a grant narrative.
Someone wants to say they have relationships in Native agriculture, environmental justice, food sovereignty, rural development, community economics, or seed preservation.
They visit our home, our gardens, our events, or our workspace. They ask questions. They take notes. They listen to stories that took years to survive. They extract lessons whose weight they cannot understand because they never experienced the conditions that produced them.
Then they carry those lessons away.
Sometimes we are cited poorly.
Sometimes we are not cited at all.
Sometimes our work is turned into somebody else’s evidence of expertise.
Sometimes the person who extracted from us later speaks as though they taught the lesson.
Sometimes people who attempted to tear us down, discredit our work, undermine our leadership, or benefit from our instability later use our name when association becomes useful.
That is not scholarship when consent and attribution are absent.
That is not partnership when the benefit travels in one direction.
That is not community when our lives become raw material for somebody else’s advancement.
That is grifting.
A photograph is not labor
We need to say this plainly because photographs are often used to manufacture history.
A person may have attended one planting day, one seed-packing event, one meeting, one conference, or one public gathering. They may appear in a photograph. They may have helped for an hour, a day, or a short project.
They are entitled to describe exactly what they did.
They are not entitled to expand that moment into a claim that they built, led, represented, advised, or were broadly affiliated with Alliance of Native Seedkeepers.
Showing up long enough to be photographed is not the same as staying long enough to carry responsibility.
A social-media post is not a work record.
A grant report is not ownership of the labor shown inside it.
Presence is not permission.
A contract is not affiliation
Being contracted or paid by Alliance to complete a task does not create organizational affiliation beyond the exact task and time described in the agreement.
If we hire an electrician to wire a building, the electrician can truthfully say they performed electrical work for that building.
The electrician cannot then travel through Native, environmental, agricultural, or economic-development spaces claiming to be affiliated with Alliance of Native Seedkeepers, to represent our mission, to speak for our organization, or to use our name as proof of community standing.
The electrician represented the electrical company.
They completed a paid task.
The same principle applies to consultants, developers, designers, photographers, writers, researchers, facilitators, event workers, tradespeople, contractors, and anyone else paid or engaged for a defined service.
A contract is not adoption into the organization.
An invoice is not a partnership agreement.
Payment is not permission to use our name indefinitely.
A person who represented themselves while completing a task cannot later present themselves as though they represented us.
Using our name in grant applications
We have encountered situations where our name was used in grant-related materials or professional positioning without our approval.
We have also seen people invoke our work after criticizing it, attempting to undermine it, or distancing themselves from the responsibility required to support it.
In some cases, funding or professional opportunities appear to have been awarded after institutions were left with the impression that a person had a relationship with Alliance that we did not authorize.
We cannot know every representation made in every private application until those records are reviewed.
We do know what we approved.
We do know what we did not approve.
No one has permission to use our name, logo, relationships, photographs, history, programs, land, storefront, relief work, seed work, or community standing to strengthen a grant application unless that use was explicitly authorized for that specific application.
A past conversation is not authorization.
A photograph is not authorization.
A donation is not authorization.
A paid task is not authorization.
A proposal for a partnership that never became a partnership is not authorization.
When necessary, we will contact funders, universities, conference organizers, publishers, employers, agencies, and partner organizations to correct the record.
That is not retaliation.
It is protection of our labor, consent, reputation, and community relationships.
The harm does not end with us
False affiliation harms more than an organization’s reputation.
It diverts resources.
A person can gain funding, employment, speaking opportunities, access, trust, or institutional standing by implying a relationship with work they did not carry. Every door opened by that false impression is a door that may close on people who actually did the work.
It also distorts accountability.
When an institution believes someone represents Alliance, that institution may trust their statements, decisions, or conduct as though we authorized them. We then inherit risk from actions we did not direct and claims we did not make.
It erases real contributors.
There are people who genuinely showed up, worked, volunteered, donated, packed, repaired, planted, advised, carried, and stayed. We know who they are. We value exact credit because exact credit protects the people whose contributions were real.
Inflated claims by others dilute that truth.
What official affiliation requires
An official relationship with Alliance of Native Seedkeepers requires clear, current, and verifiable authorization.
- Current employment or a current contract, described only within its real scope
- A written partnership, memorandum, agreement, or formally approved project
- Explicit written permission to use our name for a defined purpose
- Authorization to represent the organization, when representation is actually part of the role
- Public confirmation through an Alliance-controlled channel when public affiliation is claimed
- Accurate dates, responsibilities, and limits
Even legitimate affiliation has boundaries.
A person who worked on one project cannot claim authority over the whole organization. A former contractor cannot present themselves as a current representative. A volunteer cannot turn participation into leadership. A potential project cannot be described as an established partnership. Permission for one proposal does not become permission for every future grant, biography, conference, book, article, or speaking engagement.
What does not create affiliation
- Buying seeds from us
- Receiving donated seeds or support
- Attending an event
- Appearing in a photograph
- Sharing one of our posts
- Having one conversation with a founder, employee, volunteer, grower, or community member
- Interviewing us for research
- Visiting our home, garden, farm, warehouse, or storefront
- Being paid for a limited task
- Volunteering briefly
- Knowing someone connected to us
- Discussing a possible collaboration that was never approved
- Using our work as a case study without organizational authorization
Contact is not consent.
Proximity is not permission.
Access is not ownership.
A request to funders, conferences, universities, journalists, and organizations
When someone claims to represent, advise, partner with, work for, or hold an official affiliation with Alliance of Native Seedkeepers, verify the claim directly with us.
Do not rely only on a biography, résumé, conference introduction, photograph, social-media post, grant narrative, university profile, verbal claim, or third-party website.
Ask for the exact role.
Ask for the dates.
Ask for the scope.
Ask whether the relationship is current.
Ask whether use of our name in that specific context was authorized.
Then contact us through our official contact page and verify.
A person with a legitimate relationship should not object to verification.
Correct the record
Anyone currently using our name, logo, reputation, photographs, stories, relationships, projects, or work to imply an unauthorized affiliation should correct the record.
Remove or revise the claim in:
- Grant applications and grant reports
- Professional biographies and résumés
- Conference programs and speaker introductions
- Academic profiles, dissertations, research projects, and case studies
- Books, articles, poetry, podcasts, and presentations
- Websites, social-media profiles, and promotional materials
- Letters of interest, proposals, partnership documents, and private institutional communications
If a claim has already been used to obtain funding, access, employment, publication, speaking opportunities, or professional standing, the relevant institution should be informed that Alliance did not authorize the affiliation.
Do not wait for us to hear about it from someone returning from another conference.
Our name belongs to the work
There are people who want the harvest without the season.
They want the credibility without the risk.
They want the lessons without the failure that taught them.
They want the language of sacrifice without the time taken from loved ones, the health consequences, the debt, the fear, the grief, the flooded homes, the damaged crops, the broken machines, the handwritten packets, the late-night drives, the building dust, the strained bank account, or the question that returned again and again:
Is this the moment we lose everything?
They were not there for the full weight.
They do not get to borrow the authority created by surviving it.
Admiration does not require false affiliation.
Solidarity does not require taking ownership.
Respect does not require placing our name in your biography.
If you value the work, tell the truth about your relationship to it.
If you did not carry it, do not claim that you did.
If we did not authorize the affiliation, do not imply one.
Grifting off our name is extraction.
Our name belongs to the work, and the work belongs to those who actually carried it.
