Ethnoecology (ETHNOBOTANY/NATIVE PLANTS) with Leigh Joseph

studying ethnobotany at the University in Montreal. But her education goes much farther back as a member of the Squamish First Nation. Now she works with First Nations communities with this focus on traditional knowledge, renewal of plant foods and medicines. She's the author of the book Held by the Land, a Guide to Indigenous Plants for Wellness, and also founded the skincare company Scholowin' Botanicals. So this is what she does and she's amazing. So we're about to get into it.

But first you may have noticed we had no episode last week, which has only happened once in our seven year history. Because I got a double whammy of RSV respiratory nasty and a bonus neurovirus, So that was not pleasant. But what was were the patrons at patreon dot com slash ologies who support the show and they send in their questions. You can join for one hot dollar a month and love that everyone opened their holiday gifts of ologies merch and tagged us and posts y'all look fantastic.

And also thanks to everyone who just simply rates and reviews the show, which keeps us up in the charts so people can find it. And I read every single review. For example, this newly plucked one from Casey out here, who wrote this podcast is like waking up to a gentle thunderstorm on a day you don't have to go to work. Casey out there, what a vibe. Thank you, and thanks to anyone who left reviews. Okay onto ethno ecology. Ethno is from the Greek meaning nation and ecology of

course where things live. And in this episode, we're going to sit down and chat about how to identify plants, Latin names, traditional names, how knowledge is passed or silenced, the chilling history that inspired some of the guests work uses for barks and berries and SAPs and teas, pharmaceuticals derived from indigenous knowledge ceremonial plants, the dews and absolute do nots of harvesting, Indigenous perspectives toward plant relations, invasive weeds,

skin remedies, and so much more with ethnobotanist, author, entrepreneur, scholar and ethno ecologist that very soon to be doctor Lee Joseph.

of greenery. I'm wondering if you can tell people who don't know what exactly is an ethnobotanist, and how did you decide this was the course you wanted to go at From a scholastic and academic way too.

context or a non indigenous context. And so since this term ethnobotany was coined in the late eighteen hundreds, it really has transformed and changed a lot. That being said that the field of study really is still very much in the early stages of having more indigenous voices at the table, both in the literature and kind of in the discipline. More broadly, so.

the course of her career. And I remember leaving that talk and feeling like, oh my goodness, this is something that I could study. And I really wanted to pursue studying with Nazi Turners. So I set my I guess goals to upgrade all my science courses because I hadn't been a quote unquote science student in high school, and then to apply for a botany undergrad and then worked towards doing a master's with Nancy.

People's Land Rights in Canada and Beyond. But Yes, Lee applied to do a master's with doctor Turner as her advisor and folks, I hear this from a lot of ologists whose lives were changed by attending a chance free lecture. So go to the free talks. Maybe they even have snacks. I don't know. I made that up.

find an area of study where I could incorporate that. Plus, coming from a mixed background of Indigenous and European ancestry, I had always had this conversation within myself about you know, where do I belong, how do I connect more deeply to my Indigenous heritage and roots. Even though I'd spent a lot of time growing up visiting family and in community, I hadn't lived in Squamish, which is the home territory

on my dad's side for our family. And so yeah, this area of study really felt like a pathway towards those things. But certainly there's been some you know, lots of learning and kind of surprises along the way as well.

deeper purpose for my research. Like when I had kids, I was really aware that my parents' generation, my grandparents' generation on my father's side, did not have a chance to really engage in land based knowledge and experiences because a lot of their time and energy was really dedicated to surviving, you know, as residential school survivors and just

many of the aspects there. And so when I had kids, I really wanted to rebuild the intergenerational transmission of knowledge and giving my kids that sense of belonging on the land. And they did that alongside me as I really kind of deepened my own hands on and experiential learning with plants. And so those were all great. And then some of the harder surprises, I guess were as I was going through my undergrad and botany, I absolutely loved it. When

I got to my upper level botany courses. I loved the taxonomy courses. I loved learning the Latin names, you know. I was just so excited to be learning about plants.

And towards the end of that degree, I received a recording actually from Nancy Turner, who was my master's supervisor, who I had set out to study with, and the recording was from some work she'd done in the seventies in Squamish with elders, and it was an audio recording of these elders saying the plant names in the Scopemish snatchem or my Squamish language yep see swat stall slay. Chipman told me.

access to different sounds in the language. And I recognized that that was because, you know, my parents, my grandparents, they were not language speakers. And the reason for that again stems back to the impacts of colonization and the residential school system within my family.

Canada's residential school system began in the late eighteen hundreds with one hundred and fifty thousand estimated First Nations children removed from their homes and family to attend Christian run schools that would supposedly civilize them and change their clothing and keep them from learning their native languages and way of life, and up to a third of these children may have died. Mass graves are still being found in. The last residential school in Canada closed in nineteen ninety seven,

not eighteen ninety seven, nineteen ninety seven. They were operating up until the late nineteen nineties. So for more on this, including survivor's testimonies, you can see the twenty fifteen paper Honoring the Truth, Reconciling for the Future, Summary of the Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. And in twenty twenty two, Canada's House of Commons finally and unanimously recognized the residential school system as genocide and

the victims and survivors legacies. They're recognized on September thirtieth every year, and that's known as Orange Shirt Day. That was coined from the story of one survivor, Phyllis Jack Webstad's account of having this bright new shirt that was orange that her grandmother gave to her before she left, and it was stripped from her wardrobe and it was replaced with a uniform and all ties to her real life felt severed. And again Lee's family was also impacted by the residential school system.

writing that I was learning. You know, hearing the names spoken really started me off on a different trajectory, I would say, with both my master's research and especially my doctoral research which I'm just completing now.

And in fact, the language that was utilized to speak about Indigenous people indigenous knowledge was really difficult, you know, it was really hard to read and remove my own personal response, you know, emotional response to the racist language and the stereotypical language embedded in these documents, but also to see like, oh, my gosh, here's an absolute gem of information about root garden cultivation, which was the focus of my masters. And this is changing and has changed

since then. But I really felt at that point that as an academic, I wanted to be able to contribute to the literature in a way that upcoming indigenous scholars and students would see and feel themselves reflected.

a while. Where do you even how do you wrap your brain abound it if you're not if you're not a plant person, this fun is green.

is the range of this plant? And then to add on to that, when it comes to that cultural interaction with a plant, which may involve harvesting part of that, what does sustainable harvesting or cultivation look like?

that plant in your garden as opposed to going out into wild spaces to say forage plant. So native plants, you know, as I understand them, are plants that occur naturally in a region in which they have evolved, you know,

over a long time frame. Often within ethnobotany, these plants have co evolved with people, and so there are in depth management and cultivation systems of knowledge and practice that go along with those tools like fire, like weeding, like pruning, you know, different methods to really ensure that particular culturally important plant, food, or medicine or material species are really

thriving in those managed environments. For me, I started with a very particular focus on the plants that are considered native plants and culturally important plants within the Squamish territory, and as I've worked in other indigenous communities, that's really a starting point is going to the community and starting that conversation or engaging in that conversation of what are

the plants of interest? Who in the community is already an expert so that as a researcher, you're not going in and assuming that you're going to be bringing the expertise, but instead you can bring a set of skills and background to support work that's already happening in connection to culturally important plants. Out of the multitude of plants growing in a region, not all plants are considered culturally important.

All plants would be considered important in terms of that relational aspect and us being connected to everything in our natural environments, that foundational understanding of how we're all connected.

for that was really within my community. And in early conversations, I was asking who were the plant people in the community who were already carrying this knowledge, what are their priorities in terms of me being both a squamishtation member but also a researcher coming into community, what value can I bring to this interest and desire to connect more deeply to our plant relatives. And this was one plant

that kept coming up, clossom or northern rice route. And the interesting thing to me was that the people bringing up this plant had never actually seen it, because it's been really highly impacted through just the history of a Squamish estuary. But this plant had this place and people memory, you know, remembering grandparents talking about it, being really enamored by the fact that it's an edible bulb plant. That has been cultivated because carbohydrates in a traditional diet really

were much harder to come by. You know, these root vegetables really played a really important role in traditional diet.

Native people. Yet the colonial government insisted that Indigenous people did no farming, a claim that was used to justify seizure of their lands by settlers for cattle pasture and European agriculture. So Lee's book notes that the Northern rice route takes five to seven years to germinate from a seed,

which is why conservation now is so important. Also, we'll link in the show notes another great episode we have on indigenous cooking called Indigenous Colonology with Indigit Kitchen's Mariah Gladstone. And we also just released a shorter edited Smology's version which is kid safe. But yes, Lee worked with her community who engaged in her field research and shared valuable history and current contact with her as well.

their seasons. I remember we were in Colloquiat Territory on the west coast of Vancouver Island, close to the area that's now known as Tafino, and we were on a bog boardwalk and I was literally crawling along this bog boardwalk and the kids tore like I just want to get back. So yeah, I would consider my walks kind

of blurring the lines between fieldwork and family outings. But no, I mean I absolutely love being connected to the environment, you know, looking at the details, really looking for Yeah, those details that help you over time to build relationships through identification of plants at different times in the year.

I would say from a research perspective, my master's was more alogy and restoration focused, and so the methods were more clearly scientific methods and doing transsex studies and percent cover and trying to quantify things like pH and soil moisture for trying to get an idea of what more ideal habitat for planting clossom or northern rice root inter restoration setting what that looked like.

harvest something for your own health or wellness is a really powerful act. But when it's not done within any kind of context of our responsibility and our reciprocity, that is something that is really problematic and is somewhat and maybe unfairly in my own kind of mind, more attributed to some of the forums and conversations around while crafting and foraging. So that might be why I tend to

talk about harvesting more. Whether it's in a family member's backyard garden, or in a forest or camping spot somewhere, Going to that place and feeling like we're sustaining ourselves or healing ourselves from the land is a really powerful act.

or are they bringing them in from other regions? So I think just educating yourself and really going like native plant nurseries can be such a wealth of information. And then if there's a plant like I say, for example, a plant like stinging needle, which is so popular as a plant food and a plant medicine and also a material, and.

way to harvest this wonderful plant. And she says that the stems are gathered for fiber in September and also notes that native butterflies depend on the nettle to lay their eggs on the leaves. Birds enjoy the seeds of nettle each fall, and so it's important to remember to leave some of the plant for non human life. But does warn do not harvest nettles for food or tea once they've flowered, as they develop these gritty particles called cisto liths that can irritate your urinary tract. If you're

curious about your urinary tract. By the way, we have a urology episode that you will love. We also have a kidney anyway. Her book details so many plants and their uses, like, for example, licorice fern, which grows on mossy trees and it's chewed by the Squamish people during ceremony to keep their voices strong. There's also sas case aka salmonberry shoots which have this fresh herbal flavor and

they can be enjoyed raw in the spring. Others western hemlock which can provide this boost of vitamin C plus electrolytes. There are a ton of descriptions in her book of local plants, including, but not limited to you ready for this. I'm just going to list a couple black poplar, western red ceedar, beaked hazel nut, bog cranberry, saskatoon berry, soapberry, thimbleberry, wild rose, fireweed, nodding onions, wappato, wild ginger, bearded lichen,

common horsetails, devils, club broad leaved plantains. She talks about a bunch of them. So that's a lot of plants specific to one region. But let's say you have some wonderful ethnopotanical resources in your area. What do you do? Do you take yourself to a parking lot at the mall and start scream toward the guy I want to be friends with plants? You can. It's not illegal, but there are alternatives to that, and.

way to also enact that reciprocity. I would say for anybody who has that feeling and that questioning of should

I be doing this? Like should I be here harvesting this plant, then it probably means you should pause and do a bit more, you know, self education or reflection, because often that question maybe coming from the intuitive understanding that maybe this plant is really culturally important, and when we think about that from a critical lens, like the indigenous people living and residing in that region have had centuries of barriers put in place to accessing some of

these plants and the knowledge connected to it, and these plants have also often been really highly impacted through land development and privatization and just many different layers of impacts.

And then another piece of that too is, you know, along the lines of building connections with local indigenous communities or if you yourself are Indigenous and you're wanting to engage in this really just finding the people in community to talk with and to sort of work up to that place of asking permission or asking for guidance or mentorship.

And I say this with the caveat of you know, you definitely don't want to go into a local Indigenous community and say, okay, I'm ready to learn who's going to mentor me? Because you know that's people are busy. People are you know, doing a lot of their own work. But if it is in the setting where that is something that's available to you, then that can be a really great way as well to just simply ask permission and ask for those guidelines.

this knowledge of this plant and the plant itself. And so what happens in situations like that is, I mean, one, just sheer over harvesting and removing that plant from these communities who've utilized it culturally for thousands of years, and then two just not really not understanding what the impact of that harvest is going to have on the plant, you know, on the ecosystem, again on the people who are utilizing it from a cultural context, and even worse,

sort of layering in a shallow verse version of cultural importance and kind of generalizing it and not connecting it back to any particular community or even culture, but really appropriating the practices are sort of kind of I guess, butchering and then appropriating certain parts of the practices that fit into broader society can be more easily commercialized.

a different species. It's native only to southern California and Baja Mexico, And according to the article Plant of the Month White Sage by the Smithsonian Fellow and a cap Cannon, it's been used as a food, as a spice, as a shampoo, deodorant, a cold remedy, a cough medicine, and a pain reliever for headaches, rheumatism, and body aches, Ana writes, and its leaves were also burned over hot coals to produce the smoke to fumigate houses after these waves of

European diseases like smallpox and measles and even tuberculosis. And why sage is not just functional or medicinal. It's also a ceremonial plant, and it's used for good luck and in coming of age ceremonies. It's given as a gift, using it to clean the air of bad luck or spirits. It's called smudging. But it's grown in popularity so much among non indigenous folks that the market for it is very hot. It's not easily farmed, so white sage is typically taken from the wild and even poached in these

massive volumes. So that little bundle of sage you might see in the crystal shop or a natural food store, it may have a more complex journey there than you realize.

So I would say that that's a plant that that certainly falls in that appropriation category and should not be wild harvested by anybody outside of communities. I would argue that have a cultural connection to that plant.

what are you doing here? We're so excited you showed up, But you don't need a whole hillside.

terms of invasive plants. It never set well with me during some of the restoration courses I took just how like evil invasive plants were, you know, made out to be. It was like almost like we're going to war. And I get that, like a lot of these invasive plants are extremely difficult to remove. They're extremely difficult to remove effectively, and so there is certainly a sense of urgency, and yeah,

it's a challenging scenario. But something a perspective that I heard that really resonated with me was, you know, if we think about doing decolonizing work, saying within a research setting, and we kind of translate to what does it mean

to decolonize the landscape from a plant based perspective? You know, by removing invasive species, we are creating space for these endemic plants, for these native plants to come back onto the landscape, to create to carry on those relationships with the soil, with pollinators and with people who have been in a relationship with these plants, and for new people

to learn about them and build these connections. And so I think there could be invasive species removal with care and with love, even though you are literally, you know, pulling out these plants from this area. Kind of thinking about it in the way of creating the space for

these other plants to come back and thrive. Is I just I like that way of thinking about it, and then also of learning of some of the creative ways that people, you know, after an invasive species pull might be utilizing some of the plants as well for cooking or for materials, because that is something people have talked about, especially with plants like kimalai and BlackBerry or Japanese not weed that have that edible component to them, then there

certainly are some that do really have very detrimental impacts and risks and the actual removal of them, like giant hogweed.

And Jessica writes, invasive species harm and entire ecosystem times out competing all native plants in the same landscape. However, we are taught as indigenous peoples that regardless of whether this plant belongs there or not, we must ask its spirit for permission. As I shared before, Jessica writes, we acknowledge them as displaced relatives rather than invasive species, since at the end of the day, they are also someone's

plant relatives. So yes, Ethno, ecology isn't just about plants, but about places and people's relationships with plants, which vary from culture to culture and place to place and first to person. Oh, speaking of people, can I ask you some questions from patrons who know that you're coming on? Sure, we'll see how many we can answer. Okay, but of course, let's first take a quick break and highlight a charity

of leaves selection. This week, we're splitting the donation between two the Seeding Sovereignty Project, which seeds paths of land, body, community, cultural, and political sovereignty by bringing gender expansive people, women let empowerment, focused and intentional collaboration to the forefront of a movement to protect people and preserve our planet. And we're also

donating to the Indigenous Climate Action which is ICA. It's an Indigenous led organization guided by a diverse group of Indigenous knowledge keepers, water protectors, and land defenders from communities and regions across the country. And we've linked both organizations in the show note to learn more. And those donations were made possible by sponsors of the show. Okay, these questions came from patrons via Patreon dot com Soshologies, which you can join for a buck a month. So let's

get to the root of your curiosity. Let's leave you more informed with questions such as this one asked by Samantha Tovi who just moved to a new house, and Sarah Sunshine, who belongs to a local Native plant society. Cool, all right, A bunch of people puppy dog Becky to saccgrass scientists, first time question asker Beth Palous and a bunch of other people. In Beth's words, want to know about native ours and crosses between cultivars and native of

plants and says that they seem to be controversial. And do you have any experience using native ars or do you have any thoughts on them? How do we feel about cultivars?

Are you know, it's really important to think about the origins of the seed or the plant that you're planting, So has it been locally sourced or like, in the case of I don't know, something like yarrow, for example, may have been hybridized with different ornamental yarrow plants, in which case you start to potentially have a change, I would say, in the ways that the plant might be used, Like it may have different kind of qualities to it.

So I would say, like from a perspective of harvesting that people will definitely notice differences and will likely go back to particular areas or stands of plants to harvest from time and time. Again, really like the cultivation practices

from a sort of standpoint of indigenous management. Really it's looking at things that will enhance kind of the growth and productivity of a particular part of the plant, whether it's the roots or the fruit, and it's not about adjusting any aspect of those in terms of things like foliage color or necessarily disease resistance, but there is some selection for like larger roots, or leaving particular roots one year to grow a bit larger, and then saving seeds

from particular plants in order to keep the population of that plant growing.

That way they can keep kind of propagating them. But it was so interesting to see that once the hillside and once an area is given the space to kind of foster native plants, that they start crapping up out of nowhere, which is so so cool. That's something that we didn't expect and it was really exciting. In the plant nerds that I know. We're like, where did that come from? We're like, I know, just what it was

a volunteer. We loved it again. This was the wonderful wild Yards project and its founder, David Newsom, has brought by some of LA's leading botany experts and tribal ethnobotanists, zersees, entomologists and native seed grower just to marvel at this biome that's sprung up. He's like, come check it out. We've been so honored to be like, oh, who's in

our backyard? This is exciting. It's truly a joy. Every season we're getting to learn so much, and so far we haven't used any of them medicinally, but many of you listeners on Patreon asked about that, such as Britney peak Is, Bille Newman, Rick Ty, Alicia Smith, Morgan, Jean Phillips, Jen Clinton, Neurotic Gardner, Greg Wallach, Daniel Kelly, Rosalie DeFore, Lee Anderson Club, Caleb Catron and Lee, Joseph Fann, jose your Mom. A lot of folks had questions about medicinal uses.

Of course, Shaela fay Watson, first time question ask erses love this topic and always wondered how Native folks identified the healing properties of plants. Science seems to lag behind affirming knowledge of medicinal values of plants that Native people have known him for thousands of years. So can you speak it all to how certain plants are identified or how that knowledge gets passed down.

expertise and their gift. Because often learning really came from a variety of ways, in terms of experiential learning, in terms of learning from once elders, like knowledge they had gathered about this plant. But there's also an aspect of learning from the plant itself in terms of, you know, on a spiritual level or on a level where some teachings might come in dreams, some teachings might come from how animals utilize that plant and the seasonality of that.

And in Squamish, I've been told that it really was certain families that held this knowledge and expertise of plants and plant medicine, and so if someone in the community needed something, they would go to this family and ask for that and then it would be prepared for them and given or gifted to them by this family. So, you know, I worked really closely with an elder in my community, and really he would be considered a medicine person.

He worked a lot with bark medicines, and it was really important for him to share with me, you know, the teaching that this knowledge at this point in time needs to be shared as widely as possible in our community, especially with youth, because it's been so highly impacted.

timing is key. You can only access the inner bark of a plant when the sap is running in the springtime, and she writes this is the time when the plant mobilizes stored energy and nutrients from its roots up into the above ground parts of the plant to support all that new growth in the spring, and it's at that time that the new inner bark growth can be separated, not just for medicines, but also as vital weaving material.

It was also reading it's important not to girdle a tree, meaning to strip the bark in a ring around it, which would cut off that nutrient and sap highway up to the top. And some folks recommend just pruning select branches and using the bark off those, but the intention of taking the least you need is important in terms of how it's used. The bark from by burnin Opulus

has been used to relieve cramping. Some SAPs have anti microbial properties, and of course the bark of the willow salx alba contains a form of sallasitic acid that's been administered as a pain reliever and an anti inflammatory for thousands of years and eventually led to the synthesis of what we call aspirin. But this is not without controversy.

People fight about who invented it, oh so much back and forth, And according to this twenty twenty one piece in the Pharmacy Times, there was a chemist who worked for Bear and he synthesized acetylesalisinic acid. He also invented a little thing called heroin, all within the same two weeks. Maybe he was on one or both of them. Who knows, busy dude, But in this pharmacological historical community, there's a lot of debate about another chemist who may have synthesized it.

They're like, which European man made a derivative of this valuable ethnobotanical resource first, which is so on brand potato potato?

You know, this elder really shared with me that it's so important to share that knowledge broadly and to just ensure that people develop that understanding that we can nourish ourselves from our traditional landscapes or traditional homelands, and that that's a really powerful act of cultural, you know, and political resurgence, and one that really centralizes like a cultural view of health and wellness, which is really important for people,

especially just with the disparities within the Western health system and some of the discomforts that people have engaging within Western health systems. And it's not that you know traditional medicines or knowledge replace that, but taking a preventative approach to one's health by learning what plants can really uphold health or help reduce the impacts of particular lifestyle diseases, for example, will really help people feel empowered in their own pathway to health and wellness.

are like, Hi, yeah, hello. You know, clib had a a question kind of along those lines how to protect and be just to Native communities in relationship to big pharma exploration, and they said, there's a long list of over the counter medicine that comes from developed nations going into forests and stealing knowledge and species. Any thoughts on how to protect those particular plants in those lands.

The reassurance that has kind of been given to me when I've asked some mentors about this question how to answer it for people is really the process of big farmer coming in and identifying and then taking through a plant ingredient to say create a new drug with it is is such an incredibly expensive and resource heavy process that that in itself is somewhat of a barrier. But that's not giving people a lot of reassurance right on

a community level. So I think that it's so important as researchers within fields of ethnobotany or botany that intersects with Indigenous culture to really look at our responsibility in terms of how we're conducting research, how we're recording it, where that information lies, how can we protect that information at a community level, and then really what can and can't be shared more broadly. And those are all conversations that need to happen from the very get go.

acne or swelling? And Hannah McCain want to know during your time creating a skincare line, how you manage the debate over clean and natural ingredients and how do you feel about the US regulations over personal care products versus other countries. So a lot of questions about what you love to use and how you develop that.

very creative way. It really started in me taking my kids out on the land, learning about plants, starting eventually to harvest some plants, and then starting to create some formulations, which started as things like selves so infusing carrier oils with dried botanicals or tea blends, so drying and processing

tea materials and then creating blends. And for me, that was a really exciting way and continues to be a really exciting way to think about formulating products that often have a botanical hero ingredient in them that can be

paired with active ingredients that can be formulated. For gentle skincare very sensitive skin, and so really when I think about some ingredients that can really help with calming the skin, rose is such a wonderful ingredient, and that could be rose water, rose petals, powdered rose hips, rose hip seed oil, and there's many different species of rose that you are

commercially available kind of in those formats. But I would say that from a cultural perspective too, like wild rose as many different species as there are across different, say indigenous territories, has a real connection to that, you know, the commune benefits of it both internally and topically and

then nutritionally as well. Rose Hips, the fruit of rose plants is such an antioxidant in vitamin sea rich fruit that does have that importance for this approach to beauty, for sort of inside out beauty as well as the preventative kind of health aspects of plants that I mentioned. You know, it's been taught to me by some of my community mentors that whenever you can ingest a plant and utilize it topically, you're just enhancing the benefits of

that plant. So rose hip would be a plant that sort of falls in in that category, as well as being one that's really great to address inflammation and also calm breakouts. So that's one plant that comes to mind. I like roses.

is yelling rose oil. So you heard it here. Second, Now, what if your face is not a problem but an itchy separating rash is Alicia Smith gently demanded poison IVY exposure tips and tricks and effective remedies please. Someone else asked if you have any tips about poison ivy? Hmmm, anything to web on that?

lily or a tiny dong. And you may have heard our biology episode on moss with doctor Wall Kimmerer, and in her book Breeding sweet Grass, which I know a ton of you had read, she writes garlic mustard poisons the soil so that native species will die. Tamarisk uses up all the water. Foreign invaders like loose dryfe, kudzoo and cheat grass have the colonizing habit of taking over others' homes and growing without regard to limits. But plantain

is not like that. Its strategy was to be useful, to fit into small places, to coexist with others around the dooryard to heal wounds. Plantain is so prevalent, so well integrated. She writes that we think of it as native.

Why is it so helpful? While plantain or Plantago major the broad leaf plantain contains quote biologically active compounds such as polysaccharides, lipids, cafaeic acid derivatives, flavonoids, iridoid glycosides, and terpenoids useful for wound healing, anti inflammatory agents, analgesics, antioxidants,

weak antibiotics, immunomodulating and anti ulcogenic activity. And if you need more info on this, just get yourself over to the paper titled the traditional uses, chemical constituents and biological activities of Plantago major. A review from the Journal of Ethnopharmacology, Rosalie de laforesaid, too often people dismiss plants unless there's a scientific study or twenty of them showing positive results.

Can you share the limitations of science in regard to medicinal plants in terms of not having enough focus maybe for some of these really expensive studies. Any thoughts on that, Yeah, that's a great point.

the reduction and management of type two diabetes. And so within that research project, there were five different indigenous communities that were given the leeway to really look at how the community wanted to address this topic, and in Squamish, we ended up setting up a one year land based seasonal program. We were going out learning about plants, bringing them back, creating something with them, either topical or internal

creation or recipe. And one thing that in the process to kind of landing on that approach, we did look at doing more medicalized, you know, kind of interventions, and that wasn't something that is in my background, but I was collaborating with a committee of people including public health nurses and physicians, and while we were going down that path, the question that really came up time and time again was for people who are on prescription medicines, How do

you incorporate native plant medicines when there isn't the literature understanding about contraindications. And that's a really important question, and one for sure that doesn't have you know, it's not

supported in the literature for a variety of reasons. But in that particular case, I remember working with some medicine knowledge holders in a Northern Creek community who were working alongside the nurses and physicians in their community, and they were adopting the process of going low and slow, so taking extremely low concentration and slow increments of these traditional medicines in combination with sort of the western medicine approaches.

this way pre European contact. And the piece goes on to name bitter gourd tea used to increase insulin secretion, American larch and labrador tea to enhance insulin sensitivity. Extracts of balsam fur reducing the release of glucose from the liver, and the purple pitcher plant that can stimulate glucose uptake and must cells and can prevent against that peripheral nerve

damage neuropathy. And we have a whole episode by the way on pitcher plants and venus fly traps and other carnivorous swamp babies just in case you want it, we're link in the show notes. But yes, plants have many chemical compounds that can help us out, and we owe a lot of that knowledge to indigenous wisdom.

Emily Stuffer. So many people obviously wanted to know a last lister question here in Sarah Carter's words, in this time of bunk Ai created guides, what resources preferably written by women and or indigenous peoples would you recommend for learning more about and identifying native plants? Her Book of Course, which is linked in the show notes. Any other guides that you feel like are a great place to start.

So this is not written by women, but again, like I say, I'm working with them and another author, Jamie Fennerman, right now on an updated Coastal plant guide, and I'm working on all the ethnopotamical components of this guide, So I would say that that has been the original one. So Plans of the Pacific Northwest through Long Pine has been a real go to for me just from a

plant identification perspective. And it also, you know, although it is outdated now, it has ethnopotamical components in that original publication, but keep your eyes out for the new one being released next year too.

on your to find list? Any challenges that you come up repeatedly, from something that's just irritating to giant structural things you'd like a soapbox for.

And so Devil's Club is a really culturally and spiritually important plant across its range, and I had seen this plant growing in previous trips to Hideaguay.

in a cone of bright red berries. And in her book, Lee explains that the plant offers anti inflammatory properties, but warns that it's potent and it's highly respected among the community and it should not be toyed with unless you know what you're doing. For many reasons, and so I.

you know, I would expect it to be growing. And as I went up the trail and kind of puzzled, you know, at this more a feeling came over me of realization, and I stopped and I thought about it, and I just felt that the message I was getting was that I wasn't invited to harvest this plant here, and so I sort of thought, okay, I thought back on my teachings around that, on the fact that I had asked permission, and so I turned around and I went to start hiking back down, and almost immediately I

started seeing Chaii plants scattered throughout the forest. And you know, in the book, I kind of talked about how like my logical brain kind of kicked in and I was like, oh, yeah, like the trail can look different on the way down. You know, perhaps I was just so focused on certain areas that I missed the scarce plants growing in the

forest here. But I reflect that I knew that wasn't the case, and I felt that that was not the case, and that in fact, what seemed to have happened is that, knowing that my intention was to harvest, the plant had

hidden itself from me. You can't see me. And when I got back and I told my co instructor about this, she said, yeah, it's a really good thing you didn't harvest, because the invasive deer population or introduced deer population has been browsing Devil's Club and really reducing the numbers of this important plant on Hidaguai, and people were feeling really

really sad about seeing this plant decline. And so it was just such a like learning moment and just such an illustration of yeah, just an example kind of beyond my explanation where I was told no when I asked permission to harvest a plant.

vegetables that were still really thriving in this managed site. So I was doing field work with another with a graduate student, and we were going down to the estuary each day, and then at the end of that work, we got a chance to take youth and elders from the community with us on one of our field days

and to do a harvest of the roots. And then we brought them back to the longhouse and did a pitcook where we cooked the roots underground and we sat in the long house together after we opened up the pitcook and I just remember listening to people in the long House just talking about which root was their favorite. You know, Oh, I really like the flavor of the rice root, but oh the silver beads so bitter, and it's better if you dip it in the butter or

you know. And it is just this illustration to me of what I hope and want to contribute to is creating opportunities, contributing to opportunities where people are learning from the land, rebuilding their relationships, and really integrating that knowledge and experience back into their own lives and finding joy and strength and grounding an identity, you know, in that

process for themselves. And that was one example where I just felt so happy because one I was trying these root vegetables that I I learned so much about from an academic standpoint, and then I was literally listening to the responses as the community was inviting them back in a fee setting. So that was really special.

Maitland for editing those. Aaron Talbert admin's the Oologies podcast Facebook group. Longtime ologite and professional transcriber Aveline Malick makes our transcripts after the amazing Emily White of their worderies years of service. Congrats Emily on your plate overflowing. We love you so much. Noel Dilworth does our scheduling and posts your ologies art on Fridays and your merch Monday

pictures on Instagram each week. Are Managing director. Susan Hale handles everything under the Ologies roof, from making sure we all get paid to making social posts too, and I totally forgot to mention them in that Aliology episode that I goodbye with a ton of help from Noel and Susan in that department, although all three of us are a bit TikTok confused, but Kelly R. Dwyer is our website.

Susan Hale also did a ton of research for this episode and fact checking, and Mercedes contributed as well, and lead editor A Balm to our souls is Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio herself in the snowy Expanse of Canada, getch thick socks on. It's chili all right. Nick Thorburn made the theme music and if you stick around till the end of the episode, I tell you a secret, and y'all may know I was really hellisic last week. I didn't get out of bed for four or five days.

I had fevers every day, sweating things coming out of my body like an exorcism. But earlier this spring, something else weird was happening. I would bruise after barely touching something. I was going to the gym, I'd come back looking like my legs were tie dyed. My dentist asked if I was on heart attack medication because my gums bled at like the tiniest poke. So of course I did a little googling, and I determined that I had terminal cancer of the blood variety like my father had. So

I went to urgent care just in case. I was like, can you run a little bit of a blood panel? They did came back completely normal. A month or so later, I realized that when I was getting headaches, I'd treat myself to a few chewable baby aspirin because they're much more delicious than swallowing a pill. You don't need water. It's like, I love these and they taste like childhood. I just kept them on my purse and sometimes I'd be like, hmm, let's eat one or two, so tangy,

and they're good for your heart or something. Reader I was thinning my blood because children's aspirin was so nostalgically delicious and impulse control is difficult. I just slipped one too many here there. They're not candy. Medicine is not candy. And please talk to your doctor before doing anything that we talk about in this episode. Doctor your doctors anyway. That's all folks by pacodermatology, homeology or doo zoology, Lithology

and technology, meteorology, pathology, apology, seriology, selenology. Thank you and thanks to anyone else who left reviews. That was my dog. Okay, So onto ethno ecology. Ethno is from the Greek meaning nation and ecology of I'm really this is so unprofessional.