Graduate Rhonda O'Brien (MPS ’20), in a partnership with Deb Echo-Hawk and the Pawnee Nation, has been working on the Pawnee Seed Preservation Project, preserving corn and other plants that the Pawnee had once grown in Nebraska before their removal to a reservation in Oklahoma in the 1870s. Since 2003, Rhonda has worked with Echo-Hawk, a team of 17 gardeners, and one farmer to propagate the sacred corn and traditional vegetables. Her work exemplifies care for creation as expressed in Laudato si'; and she credits the first Native American saint, Kateri Tekakwitha—the patroness of ecology and the environment, people in exile, and Native Americans—with guiding her ministry at the Preservation Project and the Conservation Center. 

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