We Never Take Before We Give (2002)
By Valerie Taliman
Valerie Taliman is Big Water Clan originally from Ft. Defiance, Arizona. She is an award-winning writer and whose work has appeared Ms. Magazine, the Smithsonian’s American Indian magazine, the Akwe:kon Press Native Americas indigenous journal and Winds of Change magazine. She has written for more than ten Native newspapers and is a contributing columnist to the Progressive Media Project. Ms. Taliman was associate producer of the award-winning national radio show Native America Calling for four years and is a seasoned public speaker specializing in environmental justice issues. She received a Reynolds fellowship from the University of Nevada Reynolds School of Journalism and served on the school board in her community. She is currently president of Three Sisters Media based in Albuquerque, NM.
“The way I was taught, we never take before we give,” said Mohawk traditional herbalist and healer Janice Longboat. “That’s the whole balance of life. Before we take a medicine plant, we make an offering of tobacco to show gratitude and we talk to it, pray with it and ask that it give up its life so we can be healthy. Prayer is part of the process. It puts the mind in a good place and opens the door for the medicine to work.” Longboat, a Clan Mother of the Turtle Clan of the Six Nations of the Grand River, became an herbalist to fulfill a promise she made to her mother, a lifelong herbalist and teacher.
“I’ve been listening to the elders all of my life and I watched and learned how to use medicine plants,” she said. “When Mom got sick, I promised her I would carry on with that way of life. I later took all the courses in holistic sciences at McMaster University in Hamilton (Ontario) because I wanted to understand anatomy and the physiology of the different diseases Indian people were developing that we never heard of growing up.”
Longboat earned degrees in herbology and holistic medicine and now combines scientific and traditional Indigenous knowledge to treat patients in her care. She has developed two holistic health models that are used in seven cancer treatment centers in Ontario hospitals where she works with cancer, diabetes, AIDS and chronic fatigue syndrome using formulas she develops from more than 200 medicine plants.
“We always kept our bodies in harmony and balance by taking preventive medicines with cycles of the seasons,” she explained. “Traditional medicine is preventive and works before something happens. It’s just the opposite of Western medicine in that way.”
Longboat said when she was growing up in Six Nations, herbal remedies and natural childbirth at home were the norm. “We never heard of cancer, diabetes and AIDS. Now we have all these new diseases in our community and I spend a lot of time researching different plants to know how to treat these new ailments. I’ve recommended herbal medicines for cancer, AIDS.
Now we have all these new diseases in our community and I spend a lot of time researching different plants to know how to treat these new ailments. I’ve recommended herbal medicines for cancer, AIDS, chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia. But I don’t take credit for this — we’ve been given all these medicines by the Creator and we know they work.”
One example is an old Ojibway formula for cancer that was given to Longboat by her mother more than 20 years ago. “Since that time I have been using it successfully. The main ingredient is burdock root, but it’s made from four different medicines. It takes about ten hours to prepare it and it’s taken orally as a tea. It’s one of the best blood purifiers we still have.”
Drought, rampant development, acid rain and other toxins invading the environment endanger many traditional medicines, Longboat said. “Acid rain puts holes in the leaves of plants so that the volatile oils escape, and that is where the medicine is.”
Traditional medicines were plentiful when she was a child, but today some plants are becoming very scarce. To ensure survival of medicine plants for future generations, Longboat began planting seeds from medicine plants about 25 years ago, both at her home and in the bush.
“It’s only been two generations since Mohawks began relying on Western medicine,” Longboat observed. “I really believe there will soon come a time when we have to go back to what we know as Native people. Our survival depends on our ability to pass on our knowledge of our traditional foods, medicines and ceremonies. The Creator gave us the gift of natural medicines to take care of ourselves, and even though we’ve lost a lot, we still have remnants of traditional knowledge to sustain our people and our lifeways.
Longboat, who recently spent a year tutoring 17 young people about growing, harvesting and preparing traditional medicines, said, “I have a vision that our children will know the medicine again. It only takes one generation to turn things around, and we have to start with this one. They need to know our traditional foods, medicines and the spiritual process that it takes to communicate. There will come a time when we have to relearn the language of the universe.” Her seed-planting grew into “Earth Healing Gardens” at her home on Six Nations Reserve where she conducts healing and fasting retreats surrounded by an abundance of herbal medicines used for her patients.
Two years ago, Longboat created the I da wa da di Project which helps Native women heal from trauma and abuse, much of it suffered in Canada’s residential schools. She also provides counseling, ceremonies, healing circles and herbal treatments in a holistic approach to healing a person spiritually as well as physically.
While working at the Anishinabe Health Clinic in Toronto for nearly five years, Longboat treated and counseled hundreds of Native women who came to the city. Most of them shared a background of physical and sexual abuse while forcibly attending residential schools for Natives run by the Canadian government.
“I began to realize the pain they were suffering from had to do with the residential school experience. I know — my sisters and I are products of it. I realized how much we missed out on in communication and parenting skills. We lost Contact with family, lost our language, lost relationships that were there before with extended families.
“It affects your identity. It makes you feel lost. Many women tried to fill the void with alcohol and drugs and even prostitution. They learned dysfunctional things about relationships from being abused and many raised their families in that environment. It became intergenerational.”
Longboat and a colleague decided to seek funding from the Aboriginal Healing Foundation which published a 1997 study on the impacts of residential school trauma on First Nations in Canada. The study released 391 recommendations for reversing the traumatic legacy of boarding school life. “I wanted to do something to help.” she said. “So we came up with tools that were based in Native culture to reverse the damage done. The real goal of the project is for women to find their voices again. “In boarding school, we weren’t allowed to speak our language. No one thought our voice was important. So women quit speaking and then when they had families, they didn’t communicate. That’s why we named it I da wa da di. In Mohawk, it means ‘let us find our voice.” Since its inception, the project has been swamped with clients and the Earth Healing Gardens and Retreat Centre has developed a series of training workshops for Native women who work with survivors of intergenerational abuse.
“It is important to bring our women back into the Circle of Life to regain their voice so that they can begin their healing journey,” said Longboat. “The women are the lifegivers and the caregivers in our nations.
“Once they have learned how to heal themselves with our traditional ways, they can start to help their children, their families and their communities become healthy and whole. Then, our Nations can begin to thrive and not just survive.”
Taliman, Valerie. "We Never Take Before We Give". Previously published in Indigenous Woman, IV: 2. Austin, Texas: Indigenous Women's Network, 2002. 18-19.