TRANSCRIPT

We're here. A lot of terms now. Modern terms for things that native people have done
for forever, like foraging and these are just, uh, the life waves of native people who've
been doing it for thousands of years. There's a relationship with the land and the water
and the plants settle there, and it's not going to a place taking something and leaving.
There's a reciprocal relationship, and we're caretakers of these areas as well. Part of my
work is to really legitimize and bring power to traditional plants, traditional medicine,
traditional cultural ways of being. My name is Melissa Lewis, assistant professor at
University of Missouri. Both of my parents were in academia. My dad is Cherokee, and
he taught in the field of social work and social policy, my father's experience working as
a social worker and someone who constructed policies. You know, I certainly learned
quite a bit from him. Some of his experiences in the Cherokee Nation and working in the
hospital system influenced him to start writing policy that led to Indian Child Welfare
Act. That certainly did have an influence. We need all physicians to learn about culture,
especially when they're working with native people. My goal is to work to make those
systems and the providers more sensitive and more aware of the needs of native
people. So one of the ways is to try to get at the medical students right away. So in the
first semester, their first year to educate them about who native people are indigenous
history 101 we found that that really just is important because that is what combats the
myths and the bias that lead to discrimination. Been working with folks at Cherokee
Nation, and we're hoping to get a better understanding of what patients, what it is that
they need as far as their services, and in particular do the patients feel, is if they are
getting the kind of care they want as Cherokee people. You know, a couple of years
back, I was invited by a friend to speak at the Culture and community Outreach
conference about. You know, what I'd like to think about was something that I just really
enjoy, which is being outside and learning about plants. And that ended up with an
invitation to three Cherokee community centers. Ah, couple times over and sharing
what I know about plants. And it was an interesting invitation because I'm not an
ethnobotanist, and I'm not a traditional medicine practitioner. And so I was kind of
surprised that anyone asked me to talk about these things. What I usually do is I put a
presentation together of the things that I like to do during the seasons, the places I like
to go for a walk, the plants that I like to watch and sometimes harvest and then kind of
let the folks that are in the community center tell me, you know what? What do you do
in the fall? So it's been kind of neat because they're more like plants, you know, 101.
They will kind of mix them all in equal amounts. Put some bees wax in which will, you
know, kind of make it all bind together. Well, heat them all up, mix them up, and then
put him in 10 so people can use them for when they have arthritis or inflamed joints.
What I do these community discussions about plants and Cherokee Nation I divided up
by season because some knowledge that we have forgotten about is that the Earth gives
us the plants and animals that we need when we need them. Um, the elderberry, for
example, the first time that I kind of encountered on elderberry bush it was much
before it was right with these beautiful green kind of plumage of varies. It was really
neat, and I didn't know what the plant was and from then on, elderberry has been one
of my favorite plants and try to learn as much as I can about it. And I have made
elderberry syrup that I started traveling, and it's kind of great for coughs and colds, and
it's really hard to travel with syrup in like a mason jar. So one time I was with my niece
and we're looking through kind of different recipes and said. Well, why don't we make
him into Gummies? So for a lot of people, they do feel comfortable going to see
someone who knows a little bit more about traditional medicine. And they also feel
comfortable going to see their physician at their, you know, local family medicine clinic.
These two systems don't have to operate in completely different places. They can
operate together