Native California plants used for medicine, food enjoying resurgence among Inland tribes By Kshadowdancer

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Native California plants used for medicine, food enjoying resurgence among Inland tribes


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09:08 AM PDT on Wednesday, May 19, 2010
By DAVID OLSON
The Press-Enterprise
When Katherine Siva Saubel was a child, she and many other Cahuilla Indian children didn't even know what a pill was. When she got sick, her mother treated her with plants that grew nearby.
Once, she was near death because she could barely breathe. She recovered after she was put in a pit in the ground with creosote leaves and warm rocks.
Now 90 years old and living on the Morongo Band of Mission Indians reservation near Banning, Saubel still swears by the traditional plants that she said have helped give her a long life.
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"They work better than pills," Saubel said.
For centuries before the arrival of European settlers, the Inland area's first inhabitants relied on plants and trees for medicine, food, tools and ceremonial objects. Use of traditional plants declined over the decades.
But plants indigenous to Inland Southern California have enjoyed a resurgence on area reservations in recent years.
"There's a greater awareness that, 'Our medicine is important to us and that we ought to preserve it, perpetuate it, protect it and pass it down to our children,' " said Cliff Trafzer, a professor of American Indian affairs at UC Riverside who is part Wyandot Indian.
The renewed interest began in the 1970s and '80s, in the wake of the Indian pride movement and a greater awareness of Indian identity, Trafzer said.
By that time, more classes at universities and colleges taught about Indian traditions, and Indian students returned to their reservations to ask elders about plant-based remedies, said Daniel McCarthy, tribal relations program manager for the San Bernardino National Forest and co-author of the 2009 book "Medicinal Plants Used by Native American Tribes in Southern California."
Saubel began recording plant information as a teenager in the 1930s, when she followed her mother, a medicine woman, as she collected plants. She wrote down how buckwheat tea can cure headaches and stomach disorders and how the edible tuna cactus can counter constipation. Saubel used her notes to co-write the groundbreaking 1972 book "Temalpakh: Cahuilla Indian Knowledge and Usage of Plants."
Many plants were lost to development, Saubel said. Even plants that were not paved over for roads or plowed under to make room for houses were destroyed, often by animals brought by the Europeans.
"Right across from that bridge," Saubel said as she pointed out the front window of her Morongo home, "right there where my property ends, there were plants that could be used for tummyaches, toothaches. The horses, the cattle, ate it all up."
Saubel no longer remembers what the plant is called. She hasn't seen it for 40 years.
Invasive species brought by Europeans destroyed many native California plants and trees. Indian Health Service clinics on or near reservations prescribed Western pharmaceuticals, not native plants.
The corralling of Indians into reservations that often were a fraction of the size of their native lands reduced plant use, because there were fewer accessible areas to find them, Trafzer said. Even if plants can be located, it's much easier in fast-paced U.S. society to buy pills at a drugstore than to search for and pick leaves, he said.
Spiritual connection
Use of the plants is closely tied to Indian spirituality and respect for all living things.
Trafzer recalled that when he told Saubel several years ago about severe throat pain and laryngitis that wasn't going away -- despite repeated doctor visits and prescriptions -- she told him where to find creosote.
"She said, 'Explain to the bush you're having trouble with your throat and ask it to help you,' " Trafzer recalled. " 'Tell it why you're taking its leaves.' "
Trafzer made a creosote tea that night. Two days later, his throat was healed.
William Madrigal Jr., a member of the Cahuilla Band of Indians near Anza and coordinator of a recent conference on Indian healing traditions, said books on medicinal plants strengthen Indians' connection with their cultures and educate non-Indians.
But Madrigal, 27, said the books cannot fully convey the importance of the plants to Indian culture in the way that traditional songs and stories do.


Cheryl A. Guerrero / Special to The Press-Enterprise
Lorene Sisquoc, the curator at Sherman Indian Museum in Riverside, teaches a class on the use of indigenous plants and other cultural traditions. She uses an interpretive garden at the school to help teach about the plants.
"There are some elements you can't copy in a book and shouldn't be in a book," he said.'
Like Saubel, he believes that just consuming the plants is not enough for them to have their full effect.
"You have to have the ability to be in the mind-set to accept these remedies," Madrigal said.
Many Uses
Many plants have multiple traditional uses. The elderberry tree's blossoms treat fevers and colds, the berries are edible, the branches can be made into flutes, and the leaves are used to dye basket-making material, said Lorene Sisquoc, curator of the Sherman Indian Museum in Riverside.
Sisquoc teaches a class at Sherman Indian High School on use of indigenous plants and other cultural traditions. Similar classes exist at other Inland Indian schools.
Federally run boarding schools like Sherman helped lead to a loss of plant knowledge, Sisquoc said. Until the 1970s, the schools tried to assimilate Indian kids into the broader society and looked down on Indian traditions.
Plants had been identified through Indian languages, which were banned for decades in Indian schools. Children in the schools, some of whom were taken forcibly from their families, were far from homelands where the plants grew.
Sisquoc uses an interpretive garden at the school to help teach about the plants. Lake Perris Regional Indian Museum also has a native-plants garden. The Twenty-nine Palms Band of Mission Indians is planning to start one, to encourage use of the plants for medicine and for food, to combat obesity and diabetes caused in part by nontraditional diets.
The Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians established a nursery in 2002. Most of the plants later end up in front of homes or in the countryside of the reservation near Temecula, said William Pink, an ethnobiology consultant to the tribe.
Some of the plants are disappearing. Most of the dogbane in southwest Riverside County was destroyed because it is poisonous to cattle and other European-introduced animals, Pink said.
Dogbane is used to make rope, string, fishing nets and ceremonial clothing and objects, Pink said. Planting dogbane helps preserve cultural traditions.
"Without plants, we don't have culture," Pink said.
Preserving history
Inland tribes are promoting traditional use of plants through festivals and other events. Malki Museum on the Morongo reservation last month held an agave roast.
Members of the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians each year travel deep into the San Bernardino Mountains to harvest the nuts of piñon pine trees for a cultural awareness and preservation camp. The tribe also holds an annual yucca harvest celebration.
San Manuel Chairman James Ramos said tribes like his with lucrative casinos now have money to spend on cultural-preservation programs they couldn't afford in the past.
For the past three years, the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma has promoted use of native plants by sending seeds to Cherokee communities nationwide. More than 50 members of the Cherokee Community of the Inland Empire have planted corn, bean, squash and popcorn seeds, said Theresa Payne, chairwoman of the community's council.
The seeds are descendants of plants the Cherokee carried with them on the Trail of Tears, when the U.S. government forced most of the tribe to move from their ancestral homeland in the Southeast to the Indian Territory, now Oklahoma. The plants have helped strengthen the bonds of Inland Cherokee, she said.
"People love sharing their photos of their plants," Payne said. "They see it as sharing their history, their past."
Reach David Olson at 951-368-9462 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting              951-368-9462      end_of_the_skype_highlighting or [e-mail]
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