By Elise Krohn, M.Ed, Traditional Foods Educator and Herbalist with Northwest Indian College
Here at the Northwest Indian Drug and Alcohol Treatment Center in Elma, Washington, we are celebrating the arrival of spring by eating native foods. Nettles, violets, dandelion leaves, and other wild lettuces are emerging as the days become longer and the sun warms the soil. Today in class patients are preparing a nettle, venison and pine nut meatloaf and a berry crisp. In the midst of chopping and mixing, one patient tells a story about camping out to harvest huckleberries with his family near Mount Adams. Another patient shares her favorite remedies for nettle stings. Laughter abounds as we prepare foods that are an integral part of Northwest Coastal Indian Culture.
The Treatment Center runs a 45-day inpatient treatment program that mostly serves Indian people from the Pacific Northwest. Culture is woven into the fabric of the program. The Native Foods Nutrition Project was integrated into the program in 2005 to increase patients’ access to and knowledge of high-quality foods, including fruits, vegetables, and native foods, such as berries, wild greens, seafood, and game.
Our weekly hands-on classes teach patients how to grow, harvest, process, and prepare these foods. Twice a month, we invite tribal elders, storytellers, and cultural specialists to speak as part of the program. We also offer a monthly class to patients and their visiting family members. This helps families see what patients are learning and teaches activities that families can do together at home. According to the director, June O’Brien, “When patients experience the foods and medicines that sustained their ancestors, they remember who they are as Indian People. They recover their own wealth. This is a vital part of the healing process.”
Patients learn about culturally relevant plants in our three on-site teaching gardens. The Traditional Foods Garden includes native and non-native vegetables that are used in cooking classes and to amend regular meals. The Medicine Wheel Garden was designed and built by patients as a way to integrate plant medicine into the treatment program. The Native Berry Garden teaches patients to identify, harvest, and prepare huckleberries, strawberries, blackberries, gooseberries, salmonberries, thimbleberries, and others. Many of the foods and herbs are preserved for later use. In spring and summer, patients harvest plants including huckleberry leaf, raspberry leaf, and nettle. These are dried, processed, and made into nutritious teas that the patients can prepare.
In classes, Western scientific studies are used to affirm cultural knowledge about the uses of native foods and medicines. For example, an archaeological study by the University of Washington’s Burke Museum and other partners found that before European contact, Salish people ate over 170 seasonal foods from a variety of ecosystems. At that time, people did not suffer from many of the chronic diseases that are rampant in Indian communities today. Salish elders often say, “Our food is our medicine. If you are sick, eat your traditional foods.” Using information like this can give students a sense of confidence and pride in their traditional ways of knowing. They remember that their ancestors had sophisticated ways of understanding and caring for their world.
One of the project’s greatest strengths is that it helps patients remember what they already know. Many patients’ faces light up when they recognize a plant that is important to their family or community. Something floods back into them as they recall harvesting medicine in the mountains with their aunties or fishing for smelt on the river. They can see the cultural knowledge that they carry and they recognize their own wealth. A sense of pride and enthusiasm comes over many as their culture is validated and affirmed.
The Native Foods Nutrition Project is offered through a partnership with the Northwest Indian College. This has enabled the project to become an educational model for other tribal communities that would like to offer traditional plants classes and create healing gardens. Train the trainer programs are offered at the treatment center including the Traditional Plants for Diabetes Prevention Curriculum and Creating Tribal Community Gardens. In the past year, 16 educators from 10 tribes have completed trainings and have started teaching in their communities.
The partnership between the treatment center and the college benefits patients who want to enter college or get jobs related to working with traditional foods and medicines. Upon graduation from the Treatment Center, patients receive a Traditional Foods and Medicines Certificate with 2.7 continuing education unit (CEU) credits. In the last year 142 patients have graduated from the Treatment Center program. Of those, about 15 have enrolled at NWIC. Several have also secured jobs in related areas, including plant restoration, community gardening, and cooking traditional foods. For example, one patient returned home and got a job working in his community garden. Through this job he helped to organize and put on a community harvest celebration where foods and medicines were gifted back to the greater community. He is now enrolled in college and assists in teaching traditional plants classes. When patients own cultural knowledge and share with their community it is a powerful tool for recovery.
The Native Foods Nutrition Project is supported through grants from the Washington Health Foundation and the United States Department of Agriculture’s NIFA Program. For more information about the program, contact Elise Krohn at ekrohn@nwic.edu.
