Visitors to Altona’s community garden will notice an interesting new addition in the southeast corner, where Steps Toward Reconciliation has established a medicine garden.
Steps Toward Reconciliation is a grassroots organization based in Altona that seeks to build connections between Indigenous peoples and settlers in the Pembina Valley.
Spokesperson Shaun Friesen says the medicine garden is based on the Indigenous worldview known as the “medicine wheel.”
“It’s one of the ways that a lot of Indigenous people organize their world. The cosmos is divided into four cardinal directions, plus up and down. Each direction represents a significant aspect of life.”
The medicine garden was inspired by Elders Jeannie White Bird and Audrey Logan, guest speakers at a workshop hosted locally in April.
“The did a fantastic job teaching us about all the various aspects about Indigenous gardening,” Friesen said. “We wanted to honour that teaching.”
The garden itself is divided into four sections, each honouring these four directions.
One of those sections is a medicine wheel, constructed of stones with four houses or gates which correspond to each of the four main compass directions – east, south, west and north.
These gates are also represented by different plants.
“For example, the yellow flowers facing east represent the rising sun, the direction from which all new life comes. And then the south is coloured red, which represents the south gate or the south port, where all present moments happen. And then as we move to the west, there is black, representing the gate through which we enter the after life. And then we move into the north, which is white.”
Each segment of the garden also has a sacred plant, or a sacred medicine. The first is tobacco.
“In the creation story, tobacco is the first gift that was given by the Creator,” Friesen explained. “It’s a very sacred plant and it is used in ceremonies. The plant to the south is sweet grass. We burn sweet grass to remember to be kind. To the west you’ll find sage, which is to purify. And to the north, you have cedar. The sacred smudges are a mixture of all those plants. It’s a combination of cleansing and purging, and kindness and an incoming spirit from the north.”
Each gateway also has an animal associated with it.
“The north, for example, has a white spirit bear, to the west is a buffalo.”
Another section is called “The Three Sisters.”
“In the Great Lakes area and in the northeast part of the U.S. coast, they would plant them in mounds. First the corn, and two or three weeks later, they would plant beans, and then when the beans broke through, they would plant squash. The corn grows straight and tall. The beans would climb up the corn, and then the squash branches out and its large leaves would form a ground cover and a living mulch. It would minimize weeds and keep the ground around each mound cooler and moister.”
North of the mounds is a section they call “The Seven Sisters” garden.
“Many cultures have stories about the Seven Sisters, which were consistently corn, beans and squash, and other things like different kinds of tobacco, tomatoes, ground cherries, and sunflowers.”
Friesen says these sunflowers are white seeded, unlike the ones grown locally. “While the hulls of the sunflower are still milky, they would cut the head off, peel the leaves off, and either boil it or roast it, and eat the entire head.”
The squash underwent two harvests and was harvested while still green. They would be dried and ground into flour.
Friesen points out another noteworthy plant at the medicine garden known as Ojibwe potatoes. “They’re also called fall sunflowers or Jerusalem artichoke. They grew wild across the prairies. They kind of look like sunflowers, and form tubers under the ground. The Indigenous people would eat the tubers like we would eat potatoes.”
Another section of the garden represents plants from the Americas.
“It’s drawing attention to how there are a lot of foods that we eat that we wouldn’t necessarily have. Probably the most significant one is potatoes. Potatoes came back with Scottish and Irish immigrants to New England.”
Tomatoes, as well, originated in the wild in the Andes. When they were brought over to Europe, they were considered poisonous curiosities.
“The reason they were poisonous is because wealthier Europeans ate their food off of pewter plates using pewter utensils. Pewter contains huge amounts of lead. The acid from the tomatoes was allowing the poison to come off, so people were getting poisoned and blaming the tomatoes.”
At the heart of the garden is the group’s Orange Bench – a tool to tell stories from an Indigenous perspective, mostly from the Roseau River Anishinaabe First Nation.
“We’ll be attaching information to the bench, explaining all the various aspects and teachings about the medicine garden. People will be able to sit there and learn more about the different animals and plants and colours, and the sacred way the Indigenous people used to organize and orient their world.”
The medicine garden was made possible by the inaugural grant from the Richard Neufeld Legacy Fund, administered by the Altona Community Foundation.
