The Three Sisters Garden is located in Science 1 Courtyard on Binghamton University's Main Campus 

Binghamton resides, in part, on the traditional homelands the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. To acknowledge the Haudenosaunee as stewards of this land for time immemorial, we annually plant, tend, and harvest the garden in collaboration with the Onondaga Nation Farm Team since 2022. It is our hope that by cultivating the soils and tending to these twice annual events, we strengthen the partnership with the Haudenosaunee Confederacy and other Indigenous Nations. The Three Sisters (corn, beans, and squash) seeds grown in the garden have been lent to us by sacred seed keeper, Angela Ferguson, Eel Clan, Onondaga Nation.

While we initially planted only the Three Sisters in the garden space and they remain the focal piece of the plants grown, we have expanded the garden to include Indigenous, organic, and sacred plants from around the world. Each plants tells a biological and social history of where it originated and how it came to be in the global economies and cuisines. 

Below are photos from the 2025 harvest  

The Garden as a Living Land Acknowledgement

As a Living Treaty struck between the Dutch (and all Settler Colonizers) and the Haudenosaunee Confederacy in ~1613, the Two Row Wampum belt, Gaswéñdah (Gä•sweñta’), signifies two independent paths bounded by Friendship, Respect, and Peace –Forever. 

The Three Sisters (Maize, Beans, & Squash) Garden is a partnership between the Onondaga Nation and Binghamton University (BU) in the spirit of the Two Row. It is an Indigenous informed process of community-driven engagement that serves as a decolonizing alternative to performative Land Acknowledgement Statements too often made in higher education.

Rematriation cycles of planting and harvesting the Three Sisters Garden on the Binghamton University campus have established a reciprocal form of mutual engagement and reciprocity that sustains and grows a partnership that is committed to upholding the Two Row Wampum Living Treaty and its principles.