Dr Bach taught that what we need is in our backyard so I decided to take a walk around to see what plants, our medicine and allies, grow in my stomping ground. My sister and I joined the Indigenous Plant Walk with Metis Herbalist Lori Synder, thanks to Melanie Calbrigo from St Hildegarde's Sanctuary who arranged it. What I learned on this walk was much more than the practical applications of plants. It was a synchronistic weaving of threads and a deep contemplation.
What I love about Canada – well, one of many things – is the re-education that is going on. Growing up, indigenous content in our curriculum was miserably shamefully low. We paid homage superficially and we learned very little. Perhaps part of the problem was that the culture and this wisdom were lost in so many generations of First Nations themselves as well. This is changing.
In my high school, we all belonged to a house, like in Harry Potter. Instead of being named after the four founders – Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin – of this magical school, our houses were named after several nations. Still magical, I reckon. I was in Huron. The other houses were Algonquin, Iroquois, and Nootka. Interestingly, the Huron are the Wyandot people or Wendat, also part of the Iroquois.
Perhaps I was not paying attention – my recollection was that the extent of our education about the First Nations was always in the context of colonialism, nation-building, seeking passages for economic advantage, and conquest. The wealth of our indigenous peoples and their culture and cosmology are breathtaking and we hardly touched it in school.
While I was living overseas, much had transpired in the way of reconciliation, though there are still ways to go. The City of Vancouver officially acknowledged in 2014 that we are in the unceded traditional territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations.
The archipelago known as Queen Charlotte Islands when I was growing up was “renamed” Haida Gwaii in 2010 (part of the Haida Gwaii Reconciliation Act). The Haida people have lived here for over 10,000 years. It’s a beautiful part of the world and I hope to make it there with some friends next fall. Search for photos on Instagram and you’ll get a glimpse of the stunning land- and seascapes plus the Haida culture.
There is also Nunavut, our most northernmost territory that includes quite a large part of Northern Canada and most of the Arctic Archipelago, which officially separated from the Northwest Territories in 1999.
Renaming and acknowledging unceded territories doesn’t make up for the genocide, the systemic dehumanization, abuse, and the existence of residential schools, the last of which shut in 1996. Not so very long ago. Acknowledgement is a good first step. There is power to have our story recognized and our voices heard. So to have this straight, I don’t pretend to know that much at all about the current situation (still catching up) or the full politics in play. And it would be irresponsible and disrespectful to speak on behalf of any First Nation peoples, though it is unfathomable the damage our history and our system have done to generations, effectively ripping the fabric of their beingness.
So when I saw a poster for Indigenous Plant Walk with Metis herbalist Lori Snyder, hosted by St Hildegarde’s sanctuary, I knew it would fill in some of that missing curriculum.
A Digression – Trajectory
We shouldn’t need incidences of synchroncity to know that we are in the right place. It is amazing to visibly see the threads, I have to admit. In Lori Synder’s intro to the talk, she mentioned a few book recommendations, including Braiding Sweetgrass [link]. I had just come across this book, also recommended by someone just yesterday. During the walk, she mentioned foxglove, a plant used in an episode of Bull I just watched and in Hannah Gadsby’s Netflix comedy show I’m listening as I write this. (If you haven’t heard this amazing person speak, you must. Her story has value, “because diversity is strength” and “there is nothing stronger than a woman who has rebuilt herself. Story holds our cure. Laughter is just the honey that sweetens the bitter medicine. My story is your story. Your story is my story.”)
What I’ve found is that I tend to come across parallel or complementary threads that I weave together when I write, weave, read, or otherwise connect in. I learned how to macrame, for example, the same time I was listening to and reading about string and superstring theory.
As I wove each string into the tapestry, every time I folded over a rope I imagined I too was creating a wormhole folding space time onto itself, putting more focus – changing the vibratory rate – here and there as if to ground the story into reality more firmly in those places. The piece became a moving contemplation to allow the reading to fall into place, as best as it could since string theory is mind-bending science.
It’s no accident that I was listening to Hannah Gadsby as I write this. In so many ways, we are rebuilding as a nation. Like her, the land and the people were raped and brutalized, because they were different. The way we have treated “other” has been and continues to be atrocious, including what’s happening to the families at the US border. (Illegal immigrants or not, children being separated and put into the system are vulnerable to abuse and trafficking. People are also suggesting that these kids being brought into the country are already part of a pedophile ring.)
The way we have made the sentient a commodity, as Lori Synder brought up, is a failure of humanity. Questions of food security, organic food, the ecosystem of trees … all topics for us to ponder. It’s easy to get angry or fearful and I liked Lori Synder’s focus on the conversation, and of course Melanie Calbrigo [link] the community priest who arranged this walk, is doing a great job bringing different people together to learn in her inter-faith approach to spirituality.
Lori Synder shares how trees are connected to each other via mycelia, through which they share nutrients with those in need and in doing so, ensures the health of the ecosystem. Remember the movie Avatar? Yeah. The Global Coherence Initiative of the Institute of HeartMath is also doing a lot of research on the interconnectivity of trees. [more on this mycelia superhighway of info]
What would our world be like if we took care of the vulnerable? What if we took care of those who are momentarily unable to do it themselves? If we spread information and share resources? Instead of victimizing those who, for whatever reasons, just need to lay down a while, and maybe take a short nap? We all need to lie in quiet and stillness to rejuvenate. This does not make us weak. Making others powerless, Hannah Gadsby reminds us, makes us weak.
The Victim Archetype Caroline Myss teaches is one of our four primary archetypes, the ones we all have to face and deal with issues of survival. The Victim Archetype whispers all the ways that we cannot, all the ways others have all the power and we have none. It’s easy to play the victim and have others take care of us, albeit at a price.
Hannah Gadsby could have used all that happened to her to play this role, to boost a sense of righteousness. She doesn’t. Mostly because she is not a victim. Even if she were, she wants to remind us that it does not make anger constructive because “it is never constructive.” She is telling her story so that it won’t be destroyed and we need to help each other not be destroyed. Not in anger, not in unforgiveness, not to bully others because we are terrified. “Not to blame, not for reputation, not for money, not for power. But to feel less alone. To feel connected.” as Hannah Gadsby says.
She also talks about perspectives and I know most of us would agree that more perspectives means more information and cracks us open to the light of truth. If the blind men feeling a different part of the elephant talked, they may have pieced together what an elephant may look like, instead of insisting that an elephant is like a thick snake (trunk), some sort of a fan (ear), a tree trunk (leg), or a wall (side of the elephant). How often do we demand that our partial viewpoint is the whole truth?
We construct our personal myth from the random facts that life presents us, connecting dots to make a shape, devising plots from circumstance, changing characters, fashioning conflicts, adjusting structure, settings, and themes, as our lives unfold over time.
Mark Matousek
Lori Synder reminded us that we are all indigenous, we are all part of Mother Earth. And in my search for a primal theology, I have come to believe that nature is the gospel, the mysticism that underlies all religion. Nature is a portal to listen more intently, more openly, more lovingly to the microcosm within which is the macrocosm without. Our world is full of correspondences, full of medicine, full of gateways to reconciliation, healing, and fulfilling our potential.
We do not have to quash another – to destroy them – to be right. Far too often we want to be right, above all else. We want to be included and accepted. In an evolutionary sense, being excluded and exiled meant hardship and possibly death.
It’s also left-brain mechanism, to filter the world to be congruent with the beliefs we hold, rather than the right-brain which seeks connection, the whole, and the new. The old writings, the creation myths, the songs, and even scriptures are often couched in poetry, paradox, symbols, and “right-brain” non-linear non-causal language. The truth is large enough to encompass all of us.
We’ve felt the winds surf the waves
Alongside the canoe
This is where joy lives
This moment of earth breath
Lifting up with us
Letting us go with us
One blue circle of bliss following another
Joy Harjo, Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings
Back to the Plant Walk
Learning about indigenous and even invasive foreign plants in my “backyard” is both practical and a metaphor for allowing multiple perspectives, more ways to find what I need, from whatever traditions, cultures, or philosophies they may find roots in. Because these thought forms are manmade and before that, there was only nature. And I’m not appropriating, I’m appreciating respectfully.
In the event details, we were asked to come in comfortable shoes. Where we began our walk, at a corner not too many steps away from the meeting place, Lori Synder pointed out Yarrow, Sweet Clover, Red Clover, Plantain, and Purslane. All in that one small patch of seemingly wild, unkempt and some may say unattractive ground.
It’s a lesson not to overlook something because it doesn’t fit our own expectations or current understanding. Even in dry barren land there is life. Plants like us have our own preferences, own needs, and it’s this diversity that creates our stunning landscape and tapestry of life.
We didn’t get very far on our walk, just around another corner. There we found local indigenous blackberries and Oregon Grape as well as the transplanted Himalayan blackberries, along with Camomile, Wild Camomile, and Sweet Alyssum. In the distance were hemlock, fir, and pine trees. We were surrounded by an abundance of medicine, that we can make teas, tinctures, and salves with. For infection, indigestion, liver detox, skin ailments, insomnia.
We tasted and tried a tincture made with apple cider vinegar, infused honey, and a beeswax salve with chickweed and other plants. She also gave us each a beautiful handwritten and hand-illustrated handout of many more plants we did not discover on this walk. The amount of information she gave us was astonishing, sparking countless ideas for the next step. Learn one plant a year, she suggested if we were feeling overwhelmed!
I believe in the sun.
In the tangle of human failures of fear, greed, and
forgetfulness, the sun gives clarity.
When explorers first encountered my people, they called us
heathens, sun worshippers.
They didn’t understand that the sun is a relative, and
illuminates our path on this earth.
Joy Harjo, Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings
Lori Snyder, Metis Herbalist
