Resilient Southeast Alberta co-collaborator Genevieve Matthieu plants tobacco - one of the four sacred medicines - at the Community Garden's Food Forest on Friday. Sage and bearberry were also added to the Food Forest to help kick off Indigenous Peoples Week, which starts Monday.--NEWS PHOTO RYAN MCCRACKEN
rmccracken@medicinehatnews.com@MHNMcCracken
The Community Food Connection Association, Resilient Southeastern Alberta, Alberta Health Services and the Miywasin Friendship Centre have teamed up to bring some diversity – and bio-diversity – to the Medicine Hat Community Garden’s Food Forest.
With Indigenous Peoples Week set to kick off Monday, CFCA’s Jennifer Mah says they have begun planting tobacco and sage – two of the four sacred First Nations medicines – in the Food Forest with plans to add cedar next year.
“The Food Forest is a space in which we are trying to bring together different communities,” said Mah. “It’s different plant communities – just like in a forest where there are different layers from the canopy all the way down to the lower plants and mushrooms – but we felt that this place was not just about plant communities. It’s also about bringing people together and different communities of people.”
Miywasin Friendship Centre counsellor Marlene Cadotte says the four sacred medicines of sage, cedar, tobacco and sweetgrass are used as spiritual remedies, as well as for smudge ceremonies. Bearberry, which can also be used in smudge ceremonies, was also planted.
“All four of the sacred plants are usually used in ceremony. The cedar, the sweetgrass, the sage and the tobacco, they can all be used together or they can be used separately,” said Cadotte. “A lot of people use the sweetgrass just for cleansing or if something is going on in their life that they need some help with they may use that to help them get through that rough time. Same with the sage, the sage is used for calming and it has a really nice odour.
“Tobacco is more of an offering. It’s to say thank-you to Mother Earth. Before you go and pick sage, you always want to give back. You can’t just go and take, there’s always a return.”
Sweetgrass is the only one of the four plants that cannot grow in the Food Forest, as it requires specific wetland conditions.
Cadotte says she hopes families from Miywasin come out to see the plants, as well as harvest them and other plants available in the garden once ready.
“This is all a community, and having all these and the different plants, I think it just shows the diversity,” she said. “I’m hoping that families will be able to come and see what’s happening here and get a lot of their food through Community Food Connections, that they can access that because I know right now they’re having a rough time.”
Resilient Southeast Alberta co-collaborator Genevieve Matthieu says the Food Forest mimics a forest ecosystem while providing those who use it with a sense of community – one now expanded with the inclusion of tobacco and sage.
“It’s a way of bringing people together in a community so that you feel like you’re part of a collaborative project rather than an alternative model of community garden where everyone’s got their individual plot,” she said. “We hope that people, if they want to harvest, will harvest responsibly and leave some for other people.”
The Community Garden’s Food Forest is situated behind the Community Health Services building on Dunmore Road. AHS health promotion facilitator Rita Aman says the recent additions both enrich the garden while helping to kick off Indigenous Peoples Week in Medicine Hat.
“AHS supports food security through Community Food Connections and we’re happy to celebrate Indigenous Peoples Week by this inclusion in our gardens,” said Aman. “This Food Forest area has been growing for several years now, so all the new additions to it make it better and better.”
