TEAS, HERB FLAVORINGS

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CAUTIONS, DISCLAIMER, AND OPPORTUNITY

There is a lot of modern interest in "Native plant medicines" both from big drug

companies and from people who want simple treatments, inexpensive, and without

the harmful side-effects that are sometimes manifested in chemical or synthesized

medicines. These pages may occasionally mention traditional medicinal values of

certain plants, but in general plant medicines is not a topic I'm going to go into

here, for several reasons.

1. It can be dangerous. If you are a city person, or for that matter a reservation

resident ignorant of plants, and go out hunting and trying to use "medicines" you

can make yourself or others very sick, even die. Plants are not in and of

themselves "healthy" or even necessarily safe. There are very powerful plant

poisons, and some of the most powerful chemical poisons were originally

developed from those of plants. There is also a consideration of how the plant

parts must be processed or treated proprly, what parts to use, what proportions,

and what mixtures.

2. Another reason to avoid this subject is that a sacred or religious aspect is

involved in much Native plant medicine, of most kinds, and for most tribes. The

principal repository of medical lore for Anishnabeg peoples is Midè an

untranslatable word, usualy translated as Grand Medicine Society. One of the

principal teachings of Midè is that every plant has a use -- but not necessarily as a

medicine or food! All the uses have to be learned, which was part of the

instructional lifeways of traditional upbringing -- now almsot entirely lost. The Midè

initiate (usually someone who was sick and needed to be cured that way) used to

be taught a sort of general medical course, general health. Other medicines were

held by individuals, and most knew only a few. Ojibwe medicines tended to be

complex, mixtures of many kinds of different parts of plants (almost always roots,

though), gathered and treated at different times of year, mixed in specific

proportions, and administered in scheduled doses of particular size and dilution.

Native Foods -- Recipes--Herbal Teas

http://www.kstrom.net/isk/food/r_teas.html (1 of 4) [5/17/2004 11:47:55 AM]