Building a medicine garden
Local grassroots group Steps Toward Reconciliation hosted a well-attended one-day workshop at the Millennium Exhibition Centre on May 4 titled, “Our Relationship to the Land: Indigenous Wisdom and Planting Practices.”
Committee member Mick Friesen said the workshop was motivated by their desire to develop a medicine garden plot in Altona’s Community Garden.
”When the idea to start a medicine garden came along, we wanted to find a way to draw interest to it, and started looking for people who had some knowledge and experience to share with us and the community.”
The event was an opportunity to listen and learn from three guest speakers about land, planting practices, and Indigenous wisdom surrounding nature and healing.
Guest speakers Jeannie White Bird, Audrey Logan, and Dolores Gosselin led the discussion on their various topics, giving attendees the chance to contemplate and process the information in breakout sessions over the course of the day.
The day began with White Bird, who shared her personal history, as well as her knowledge and experience in creating medicine gardens.
She is an enrolled member of Rolling River First Nation. At nine years old, she became part of the federal/provincial policy of forced removals of Indigenous children from their families and communities, and was denied her culture and heritage and lost her language in a period known as the Sixties Scoop.
Today she maintains her commitment to the community by reminding herself to take responsibility for the role and part she plays in her community.
White Bird spearheaded a collaboration in creating “Anishinaabe Mashkiki Gitigaan – The People’s Garden.”
“There are protocols in our teachings. It’s restoring the reciprocal nature between us and Mother Nature,” she shared. “It teaches us if you follow a Golden Rule and give something before you take something, you will not be over-cultivating. You will not be over-harvesting. If you want to harvest this medicine, it’s going to be ingrained in you that you’re not just going to go in and pull, pull, pull. You’re always giving something back.”
Reflecting on the day, White Bird said, “I want people to take some of these messages and maybe think about how one really resonates within their own spirit. And when it resonates within their spirit, do an action that really fills the space of what this gathering is about—restoring the relationship between themselves and the land. Also restoring their own relationship with their spirit. That’s a great way to start—from within themselves. That’s that beautiful ebb and flow of life. They can come back to it, and revisit those times, learn more and do more.”
Logan is a Cree/Metis woman from Alberta. As a traditional Knowledge Keeper, she has been sharing Indigenous ways of growing food, saving seed, and preserving the harvest for over 50 years.
As a teacher, she is dedicated to presenting and teaching sustainable solutions for food security, such as gardening and dehydrating, while caring for the community and the Earth.
“So many people think they can’t change things. That we have to just accept it. Well, things got changed in the first place, and we can change it back. In West Broadway, it was originally the Manitoba Food Charter. It is now Food Matters. It has a listing of all types of groups who are doing food initiatives. We also have Direct Farm Manitoba, which has a listing of all local farmers. The Hundred Mile Diet also originated in West Broadway. So, when we think we can’t do something, I ask, “Did you even try?”
She went on to say, “There’s no harm in trying. Just plant those seeds of thought. The nice thing about dehydrated food is that it doesn’t need a licensed kitchen. So that’s another thing for farmers to think of. We can incorporate some of these ideas in our own community garden. There are native plums here, black and red currants, raspberries and grapes. So much food. Just go online and see how they dehydrate them. It’s easy to learn.”
Gosselin is a Métis grandmother from Rivière-Rouge. As a master storyteller, she accepted the calling to tell her community’s stories to preserve their teachings and wisdom. She is also a healer who practices the art of the Healing Drum. Through her drums, she shared her journey of finding out that she was Métis at the age of 40 and her return to her roots.
The workshop concluded with a sharing circle as attendees and guests reflected on their experiences and interactions.
Friesen said the committee is deeply grateful to the speakers, for their broad knowledge on gardening practices, and the personal experiences that they shared.
“The presentations were fantastic, and we’re coming away with so much knowledge. The Altona Community Garden organization has already gifted a plot to the Steps Toward Reconciliation group, and some time this month, we’ll be working through some of those details of growing medicine plants in that spot.”
