Is the practice of agriculture an immediate detriment to the land if it forces a crop to grow in a non-native habitat? Is sustainable agriculture really the goal if it merely sustains mediocrity?
In this episode of Nourish, host Terry Hokenson continues the conversation about regenerative agriculture with two inspiring caretakers of the Earth, who share their knowledge on indigenous ways of growing food that focuses on healing the land and all life that depends on Her.
Francis Bettelyoun (Oglala Lakȟóta-Očhéthi Šakówiŋ) is Coordinator of the Native American Medicine Gardens at the University of Minnesota and co-creator of Buffalo Star People Healing Circles, which provides transformational education and healing for adult survivors of childhood traumas and abuses. Jessika Greendeer is a Farm Manager with Dream of Wild Health: a 10-acre farm in Hugo, MN where urban Native American communities reconnect with traditional Native plants and their culinary, medicinal and spiritual uses. Together, Jessica and Francis acknowledge each other’s work throughout their individual healing journeys and inspire listeners to get in touch with their own land-based cultures to discover their own ancestral seeds.
Full episode transcript available here.
Is the practice of agriculture an immediate detriment to the land if it forces a crop to grow in a non-native habitat? Is sustainable agriculture really the goal if it merely sustains mediocrity?
In this episode of Nourish, host Terry Hokenson continues the conversation about regenerative agriculture with two inspiring caretakers of the Earth, who share their knowledge on indigenous ways of growing food that focuses on healing the land and all life that depends on Her.
Francis Bettelyoun (Oglala Lakȟóta-Očhéthi Šakówiŋ) is Coordinator of the Native American Medicine Gardens at the University of Minnesota and co-creator of Buffalo Star People Healing Circles, which provides transformational education and healing for adult survivors of childhood traumas and abuses. Jessika Greendeer is a Farm Manager with Dream of Wild Health: a 10-acre farm in Hugo, MN where urban Native American communities reconnect with traditional Native plants and their culinary, medicinal and spiritual uses. Together, Jessica and Francis acknowledge each other’s work throughout their individual healing journeys and inspire listeners to get in touch with their own land-based cultures to discover their own ancestral seeds.
Full episode transcript available here.
“I’d call it ‘stewardship’.”
Tue, 11/30 8:00AM • 59:58
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
people, indigenous, land, food, indigenous people, healing, plants, life, seed, community, regenerative agriculture, regenerative, growing, crops, garden, youth, system, create, relationship
SPEAKERS
Francis Bettelyoun, Terry Hokenson, Jessika Greendeer
Terry Hokenson 00:02
Morning friends, thank you for tuning in. My name is Terry Hokenson. I'm a climate movement activist with Minnesota 350 and Minnesota Interfaith Power and Light. Today's show is on indigenous views of regenerative agriculture. This is a second show in our series on soil health-focused agriculture, sometimes called regenerative. Today, our guests will discuss the parallel history of indigenous people and climate change, the impacts of systematic abuse and trauma on climate and agriculture, and the necessity for healing Mother Earth and humanity together. The show will be recorded and available for playback on the KFAI.org website for two weeks. Our guests are Jessika Greendeer of the Ho-Chunk nation. She is a seed keeper and farm manager at Dream of Wild Health. Dream of Wild Health owns a 10 acre farm in Hugo, Minnesota, about an hour north of the Twin Cities. They provide educational programs that reconnect the urban Native American community, especially youth, with traditional native plants and their culinary. medicinal, and spiritual use. Our second guest is Francis Bettelyoun. He is an educator of indigenous history, biological and ecological knowledge and coordinator of the Native American Medicine Garden at the University of Minnesota. He's also a co-creator of the Buffalo Star People Healing Circles which provide transformational education and healing for adult survivors of childhood traumas and abuses. And I thank you both for being with us today. I neglected to read my land acknowledgement statement here. I wanted to say this, especially because we do have guests who are Native Americans with us today. The acknowledgement that we would like to make is that the land that we occupy in Minneapolis, St. Paul, Minnesota, is the original home of Dakota, and Anishinaabeg people. We wish to declare our honor and respect for those who are forcibly removed from their home and who are still connected to it. Centuries of genocide and forced assimilation have created extreme disparities and persistent trauma in Native communities. Yet indigenous people inspired and are leading our movement. They challenge us all to take responsibility to uphold the treaties and promises that protect the land, and its original caregivers. Extractive industries, enslavement of human beings and the ceaseless accumulation of wealth and control in the hands of a few, have brought us to the very edge of extinction. We see that our survival depends on forming connections and healthy relationships between our communities. We thank the original people of this land and their descendants for the use of this land. And we ask them to accept our efforts and to help us learn indigenous ways of caring for this wounded earth and for each other. Again, thank you for being with us. And I'd like to invite each of our guests in turn to continue to fill in a little bit of the picture of who you are and what you do. And could we start with Jessika?
Jessika Greendeer 03:55
Sure. Well, good morning. I'm happy to be here with all of you today. A lot of my work at Dream of Wild Health, you know, we're definitely growing food and growing medicines, but we're also helping to heal the earth so she can nurture those plants in a way that's better than we could ever do. We recently purchased another 20 acres of land. So publicly now we have an additional 20 acres that will essentially be doing some alley cropping, and trying to create some more perennial spaces in between some of the annual growing spaces, so we're really excited about that. I'm excited to be able to transition some conventional land into an organic regenerative system, so I'm focused on that. And I've been a seed-keeper for the last few years of my life, just working on, not only finding our seeds, some of them have been locked in institutions, museums and otherwise. So being able to bring those home and get them back to their home communities has been amazing work. But of course, we can't do any of that work without good soil to start with.
Terry Hokenson 05:25
Thank you, Jessika.
Francis Bettelyoun 05:30
Yeah. Aŋpétu wašté (matakohe yapi?). I am Cânté Sütá-Francis Bettelyoun Oglala Lakota. I appreciate wóphila for inviting me to be here with Jessika, and I appreciate your being here, Jessika, because the work you're doing up there is important. And hopefully, we can start working together because I oversee the gardens at the U. and when Diane was there, we tried several times to connect it.It's not distractions that come up, it's just the importance of the work you're doing takes up a lot of time. So I also want to say that I am a survivor of childhood abuses. I've been on my healing journey the past four decades or so, and that is the other part of my life that I've committed to myself, and to my people to help heal what we can of the wounds that have been created in our lives. And that. along with what I'm doing with the soil regeneration, or regenerating the soil, bringing back the indigenous plants, and things like that are all together healing ourselves and Mother Earth at the same time. So that's a little bit more of what I do.
Terry Hokenson 07:01
Thank you, Francis. I'm wanting to ask you both a question. And that is, are you comfortable with the term regenerative agriculture?
Francis Bettelyoun 07:15
No definitely not. One of the things is if you look up the definition of agriculture itself, it's a process of basically taking the land and utilizing it your way, tilling it, creating these crops, consumer crops, monetary crops, livestock, on and on. And we never did that. As indigenous people, we just say, stating really quickly, we had everything that we needed without having to develop these breeding processes to create these organic seeds; and also taking care of the land that we did, we didn't have to till her up, we didn't have to use the toxins and things like that, to create this commodity, so to speak. So the term agriculture just doesn't fit in; it will never fit in because of the way we take care of the land. But when you talk about feeding yourself, that's totally different as well. It's not the same system. Regenerative? Maybe, depending on what we're doing.
Jessika Greendeer 08:35
Yeah, I definitely agree with Francis. I do prefer regenerative over sustainable: sustainable, you're essentially just sustaining. But also, thinking of that term, you know, are you just going to sustain mediocrity? Or are you going to sustain a higher level and higher expectations of what you're trying to accomplish? I think, even with agriculture, people understand regenerative or they understand regenerative agriculture. But as a native person, I usually look at it as more of a stewardship or relationship. So it's not only having that relationship with the soil that you're tending, but then also having the relationship with the plants and the crops that you're growing. You know, it's not an anonymous relationship, I guess is what I generally think of when I see monocultured fields. And, yeah, so I think that's, what helps me in some of the work, so I call it that [regenerative] for other people's sake, but you know, I think of it more as a stewardship.
Terry Hokenson 09:50
Thank you. Well, some of the primary points that I learned last October when we did our first broadcast on what is regenerative agriculture is that there was no plowing or tilling, that fits, and no use of chemicals, either for controlling pests or, you know, unwelcome life; or as fertilizers, and then there was to be a lot of really big variety of plant life. Do you see a bridge to the existing regenerative agriculture movement between what you are defining as the indigenous way of growing food? And, I suppose there are other reasons you grow plants than for food. But I'm just wondering about the general approach to growing, and how how would you relate that to the regenerative movement?
Francis Bettelyoun 11:04
I'll go ahead. Again, it comes back to cultural differences. But it's also just the way we look at this world and this planet. I like what you said, Jessika, about sustainability: it's not doing better than what exists already. And that's the problem, as I see it, and I think most of our community sees it, is that we've been taken over by this society that has commoditized, everything — everything on this land,, everything under it, and everything above it. We didn't do that. And if you look at the system that we had in place, we fed all of our people, we didn't charge them anything. Everybody had access to free food; it was healthy, it was nutritious, we didn't touch it. So the access was there. In this system, we have people going hungry, starving to death. This is one of the problems that we were facing, not just in our communities, but everywhere. So yes, this system that's in place does produce food. But, saying that, the food it produces is highly processed, food and it affects us. So, I myself don't agree with following the system in the way it's set up.
Jessika Greendeer 12:37
I couldn't agree with you more Francis. Thinking of how we used to farm, just like you had mentioned as well, Francis, we had our own management systems in place. We may not have had fences, and we may not have had a mailbox sitting out somewhere designating that it was where we lived, but we did have, from our ancestors, this advanced migratory system where there were different locations that we lived at, for different reasons, or different times of the year. And trying to bring a lot of that back, I feel like some of the new regenerative agricultural standards are mimicking exactly things that our ancestors did, you know, having a closed system on each piece of land that you're stewarding and caring for and tending. And I think it's not about inventing it first, or we did that long ago, it's about knowing as a species that we all need to evolve, to go back to what our ancestors were doing, because that was what was working. And that's how everybody was fed, and cared for. And the more care that we put into the earth of where we're trying to grow our crops, the more nutrient dense those foods become. And you know yes, there are so many people starving, but there are also so many more people starving from not having those nutrient dense foods. We need to be able to get back to that: having our own little system where we're able to mimic and do exactly the things that our ancestors once did.
Francis Bettelyoun 14:30
And if I could add to that, the one thing that we see, especially with the world around us, is that we have this connection with everything, all of our relatives. And when we say "mitákuye oyás'iŋ" doesn't mean just us as human relatives, it's all of that. We see, we breathe in, we taste all these things, and we've developed that relationship over eons and we've been here hundreds of thousands years, and that relationship, we shared things. And we developed this food system, our "indigenous" food system, according to where we were, and how we developed those relationships, because the food we eat, then, like you said, is highly nutritious. But there was also that spiritual context: the ceremonies that we have, the songs, the dances that we have, are all part of that system.
Terry Hokenson 15:32
So it sounds like this whole idea of regenerative agriculture is almost missing the boat.That it's maybe plugging in some good ideas into a bad system, and that if we're really serious about absorbing some, some or all, of the values that have been the indigenous way, we're really talking about changing our whole society. And I suppose you are also facing changes with the way that native people have been forced to live. You know, I think Francis you have been written about in articles regarding the diets that people have these days, and saying that the most numerous per capita consumers of Frito Lay products are Native people. So how do you see how your efforts are playing into the lives of the indigenous people that are trying to recover from historic traumas,
Francis Bettelyoun 16:50
Well, when you bring up that statistic, we're not proud of that. We're not proud that we consume those products. But the unfortunate thing is, it's cheap. And people can have access to those much easier. The problems that have developed through colonization are many; one of the ones that stick out and one of the ones that I'm part of is bringing back the healing in our communities. It's not that it's not there. It's addressing what we are doing to ourselves right now as well, not taking on the roles of the colonizer by abusing and doing these things. It's not that it's in our nature, this isn't who we are. We're not alcoholics, we're not drug addicts, and things like this. We have been through, not just historical trauma, but the traumas that were developed through boarding school, Christianizing our young — all these other things that have happened are part of this. So we need to heal at the same time, as we're healing Mother Earth, because we have people that are depressed, suicidal, have mental illnesses, as I do. But if they're not getting help or support in those areas, they're not gonna pick up a seed or a plant and take care of it, and grow something that's nutritious for them, but also building that relationship. We do need to address some of these things at the same time, we're doing these things because I've said this throughout my talks, if I didn't have the capacity, or not the capacity, the support systems, and the the ability to reach out and get healing, I wouldn't be here today talking to you. I know that. That's why healing is important part of this, because we're talking about healing Mother Earth, but we need to heal ourselves too. And these systems make it difficult.
Terry Hokenson 18:53
Well, speaking for myself, and I'm hearing the message for my own community as well here, there's a lot of feeling of woundedness in other respects than just our diets. And so let's let's go on and see if we can learn more.
Jessika Greendeer 19:12
You know, thinking about that, you know, that's a common thread that we talk about, within the native communities. We talk about the intergenerational trauma, and I'm not trying to discount any of that. But, you know, for me, I had to start focusing on the intergenerational healing as part of that, you know, the ceremonies that went along with our foods, the songs that came; there was that village aspect to everything. So not only, maybe one member of your family was the grower and the other one was processing all the food or preserving it. So it took the entire family unit or the clan unit, village unit to be able to feed everybody and you know, that's part of where we've been at as a state of dependency. And it's not something that we, we did to ourselves, it's something that was pushed on to us. But looking at the healing aspect of it, the youth who participate in our programs at the farm, you know, they're now learning at a young age how they would fit into the food system, and how they can help heal and create that indigenous food system for themselves. And that's what's so helpful for me. Because I know there can be some dark times when you're off by yourself weeding in the garden, and feeling like man, I really wish there were other people who would pick this up, or who would want to come and learn or, or even just take some of this produce home. And it's, yeah, I've come to a very helpful place.
Terry Hokenson 21:19
I'm Terry Hokenson speaking with Francis Bettelyoun and Jessika, Greendeer, about indigenous ways of growing food and, basically, living in community. And, Jessika, we really broke off when you were talking about the way that you are teaching the youth on the farm, the Dream of Wild Health. And I was reminded, as you spoke, about when I went to the website for Dream of Wild Health, and I saw a kind of an outline of the values that you teach the young people. And it really moved me and I would appreciate it if you wouldn't mind talking a little bit about that, and what role that plays in this farm situation.
Jessika Greendeer 23:09
Yeah, of course, Terry. So at Dream of Wild Health, the beautiful part about our learning environment here is that not only do we have the youth at the farm, and then we have, you know, somewhere in the middle generation of employees and staff, but then we also have elders. And so our elders are able to connect everything that we're doing at the farm to the cultural values. I've, of course, landed my dream job here because we do evolve the, or revolve all of our teachings around our value system. You know, it's about respecting the earth, it's about respecting one another, it's about the respect that you have for everything that's provided in front of you. And it's about being grateful — having the gratitude and being able to give thanks for everything that is provided for, us; where the kids are able to thank the wind, and the rain, and think of how all of it plays together, you know, better than any human could ever put together. But the entire environment around us working in such beautiful concert to make life go on, in far, far more detailed ways than we could ever imagine.
Terry Hokenson 24:41
Thank you. Francis, does that invoke anything from you?
Francis Bettelyoun 24:46
Yeah. It's what we do. The same, you know, as indigenous people when we practice your culture. That's all part of it and especially the story-telling, getting the students involved, the young ones involved having the elders, they're telling their stories telling about their history of life, and giving the young ones, this ability to carry those stories forward, especially about gardening and food and all those things that are a major part of our lives just because we need food to survive. So one of the great things, and coming back to part of what I brought up about healing, is that when you start healing Mother Earth, or part of her healing, it brings that to you as well, and those around that you're teaching, and then you start understanding that connection. Even more and more about the stories I learned from my great grandmother, and what she told me about the food and things like that, so I'll put it this way, it's the greatest thing that I can do in my life, is sit amongst my indigenous plant relatives, and just listen.
Terry Hokenson 26:06
Thank you. These stories are very moving, and I can't help but think that a lot of people in general society wish that they could, you know, move their community in that direction and experience that kind of relationship with each other. You know, we've kind of been reduced in many cases, to throwing things in the microwave. People, many people, don't even realize it: that food doesn't come from the grocery store, you know, and it's a big move. But, you know, I think a lot of people are getting ready to start taking steps. I know in the case of farmers, there are a lot of suicides and depression and whatnot, there's something wrong. People are beginning to recognize that the the whole problem is much larger than just how you plow the field, or what plants you grow, and that sort of thing. It's not just details, but it's kind of a wholesale matter. I feel like we're moving toward an indigenous definition of the indigenous way of dealing with getting food and getting materials. I mean, you know, cotton is also something that's grown, and I know that hemp is now a big crop for fiber. Can you fill us in any further regarding your ideas about how this regenerative movement could be adopted? Or how people in general society can make moves toward this, this view of life and community? And food-getting and what have you?
Francis Bettelyoun 28:09
I don't I don't want to define indigenous, I'm just kidding. No, I can begin. The indigenous system that we're talking about is part of our culture. And to label it would be too difficult, because, — and this is something I want to bring up as well — because when you talk about non indigenous cultures in particular, those that are indigenous to our land, having a difficult time knowing what to do, we're having that same thing, except that we have the knowledge yet of our land-based cultures; and we're carrying those forward. With the rest of the people here in the US, mainly, that I know, they've been disconnected for so long from their land-based cultures, and those feelings and understandings, teaching ceremonies, on and on, that makes it more difficult. But if you look at just as human existence, we are connected to this planet. When you bring up plants and things and especially hemp, for example: our bodies actually have CBD receptors in them. And when we talk about how we've evolved with these plants, those are things that happen in our own evolution that connected us to our surroundings. So when you want to identify a system or anything like that, in our communities, you can't do it without taking in the whole. How does this affect, you know, this community? Or how does this affect the insect population? How does it affect the air, those sorts of things. And it's what we talk about and what I talk about with food. It's medicine. When you talk about medicine, it's everything. It's sitting under a tree on 108 degree day with the shade involved, the breeze flowing through you, and things like that. They're all medicine.
Terry Hokenson 30:14
Okay, well, the picture that I'm getting getting here is that this is a an all encompassing matter, it's not something you can just define, or put in an outline. And it's also probably something that will be a lifelong endeavor. I guess. my feeling as a descendant of the EuroAmerican, European immigrants is that what can I do to help facilitate your efforts? Because I think it's going to take a long time for people to absorb the lessons that you have to teach. So we would want to encourage you and support you, and then also try to figure out ways of incorporating the insights into our own lives.
Jessika Greendeer 31:13
Yeah, Terry, I guess, it's not meant to be an impossibility for anybody to,sort of put some of these practices into action in their own way. And, you know, even though Francis and I do very similar work, we both have our own our own ways, our own prayers, songs and practices that we do around the ceremonies that we create, around the work that we're doing with the earth. And I think it's all about planting the seed today, you know, giving people a different perspective, that maybe they can start slowly adapting into their own life. What I think is incredibly important is that it's not necessarily telling everybody to start growing indigenous foods, or indigenous medicines, and having relationships with those things. It's about also identifying where you come from, what are the different ancestral seeds of your people, because there is nothing,more delicious, but also filling for your soul than to be able to consume something that your ancestors did. It's like this eternal awakening, and I can't, I can't put it into words, but this all reminds me of a particular seed that my ancestors have carried until 1917. And then from there, that seed had left my people. And that seed just came back to us last year. And being able to grow with that with that crop, and being able to share that with my people was such an amazing thing. So, we prepared the squash and people were like: "well,, what did you put in it?" and we just fire roasted it; there was nothing we added no salt, pepper, nothing. But it was the most amazing crop that we have ever tasted. And that feeling, I want that for other people. You know, that's how our food should taste is something that just completely lifts your spirits and puts you in a good place and, and helps clear your mind to decide what it is that you're going to do next. And that's what I hope will help people reconnect with their own ancestral roots and find find out what their ancestors ate and see if it's something they can grow themselves and have a relationship with.
Terry Hokenson 33:51
Thank you.
Francis Bettelyoun 33:52
I'm so happy for you and your community, Jessika, with getting that seed back.
Jessika Greendeer 33:58
Thank you, Francis.
Terry Hokenson 34:01
I'm Terry Hokenson, talking to Francis Bettelyoun and Jessika, Greendeer, about the indigenous approach to food and community. And I'd like to ask Francis and Jessika, if they would like to take the conversation further or change direction,— whatever seems right to you.
Francis Bettelyoun 35:51
I think whatever we talked about is what we're passionate about. And for me, that's bringing back the environments: growing the food that we ate. Going off what Jessica said earlier, which was wonderful, about how delicious it is to eat our own foods. And we've missed that. So one of the things that I've pushed a little harder in doing myself is to look at what those indigenous environments will look like now. Or how am I part of helping bring back those environments that grew the indigenous onions, and ginger, and, you know, the timpsala, and all these other things that are part of our diet, or was part of our diet. That's one of the things that at the garden, on the St. Paul campus, we have a third of an acre right now. And we're proposed to the University to get five acres of land, that we could actually develop which would be a larger environment than we have now. That would include over 2000 to 3000 different indigenous plants. Right now we have about three to 400 that we're growing, and harvesting and teaching people how to use as taking in by food, or by drink, or whatever it is, as medicine. And what we'd like to do is extend beyond what we're doing now which is the immersion camps that we have that teach about going out just around your local area, in looking at the plants that are growing right now. And there are grasses that you can collect seeds off of that could feed you as well. Those are the sorts of things that most people either aren't aware of or just haven't thought about. So, I think for me, it's the encouragement that I've gotten through working with people, not just those who are passionate about it, or doing it already, in bringing back our families to what Jessika said about the food: ingesting those indigenous foods, looking at the environment and just stepping into somewhere where you can sit down, and you have a hawk within 10 feet of you just watching you, because the environment you created is safe. Then there's food there for them. I think for me, it's encouraging people to know that it doesn't take much to take care of a plant just as long as you're taking care of yourself as well. And I think we need to start giving each other the benefit of the doubt, and being compassionate, and actually coming with grace, instead of looking at people and judging. We've all been through things that have been hard. Let's make the path a little easier with each other.
Terry Hokenson 39:11
Thank you, Francis. You know, one one thing that also occurs to me is the power of stories. You can't ask that an entire culture or historical experience be reduced to an outline or a scientific explanation, or anything like that, but stories carry a lot of information and a spirit with them. I hope that we can help spread your stories around. Do you invite people, at all, to the medicine garden from the general community?
Francis Bettelyoun 39:53
Yes, we have a garden listserv we created that gives people Information about upcoming events, volunteer opportunities, all those things. We have classrooms that come out. I go in and guest lecture at universities, colleges, elementary schools, high schools, communities. And so, the garden wouldn't be there without those involved outside of me because we've all created this environment, I keep coming back to this, but it is an environment that is safe, that people can come out to, anybody can come out to the gardens anytime they want, and harvest the food that's there. When it's ready, you know, sit, whatever you need to do. How we see it as I don't own this land, I take care of it. And when I take care of it, it's for the benefit of all, and not just humans.
Terry Hokenson 40:56
Thank you. And Jessika, do you have anything to add?
Jessika Greendeer 41:00
Yes, that's beautiful. Francis, I'm definitely going to have to come and check out the gardens. I'd love to spend some time there. Yes, our work here at Dream of Wild Health can't be done on the back of one person, I have an amazing team. Amazing seasonal team, amazing, full staff team. And then we have tons of volunteers. So we have volunteer Fridays, which we've had to put on hold for the moment. But hopefully, when the air clears, we'll be able to have those volunteers come back. And the youth, our youth participants are some of the hardest workers I've ever seen. You know, I think of myself at that age, and I wish I'd had more of a love and passion for being in the garden, instead of thinking of it as a punishment on a hot July day. But our youth are, yes, such a beautiful, such a beautiful thing to see when our youth have a little bit of free time. And they ask if they can go into the garden to do some weeding. And, you know, I have so much hope and faith in our next generation — that there has been an awakening for them. And this is how they're going to live their life. And I'm so grateful for that. so grateful for the visions of our current director Neely Snyder, and Diane Wilson and Sally O'Shea; for them to be thinking about our future, not just finding a place for kids to hang out for a day, but equipping them with all the tools that they're going to need to be successful. And being part of being successful is not only having an idea of what you're going to do for a career or a job, but also about the food that you're going to ingest and the food that you're going to eventually provide for your own family. So we would again, Francis, the invitation is also open to you to come and hang out with us, whenever you have time. I know the growing season is upon us so things get busy, but I'd love to connect with you after this.
Terry Hokenson 43:17
Well this leaves me with a sense of longing. I've had enough interaction, I guess, with farms and farming in my youth which was before the era of chemicals. And you know, there was always a lot of relationship stuff going on. You know, I ride out to the field with my uncle. Or I'd go berry picking with my mother and my brothers. So I think that this picture appeals to a lot of people. It's very appealing. And I keep thinking, "where can people go?"
Francis Bettelyoun 43:26
Definitely.
Terry Hokenson 44:07
I'm Terry Hokenson speaking to Francis Bettelyoun and Jessika Greendeer about indigenous ways of growing food and being in community. We've been talking about how people at large in the general community can absorb some of the lessons that the indigenous ways have to teach us and where we can go for more information. Can we focus on that for the last few minutes of the show?
Francis Bettelyoun 46:09
Yeah. Since I'm an elder, I'll start I guess.
Jessika Greendeer 46:14
Thanks, Francis.
Francis Bettelyoun 46:17
This is again, just coming back real quick to what we just last said: one of the things that I have to remember going forward is what my relatives went through to get me here and the resilience they have, because as indigenous people we have quite a bit of resiliency. And part of what we're doing together, and even though we're doing things separately, we're doing it together, Jessika, myself, and others are doing all the things needed as a part of coming back to community. And so when our young ones look at us, and yeah, maybe they see somebody drinking or things like that, but we're healing from that, because we've been practicing our cultures. And we've never put that aside. And so it's going to take time, if you know about healing, and what it takes to go through the traumas that you've been through, these things take some time to heal. And as indigenous people, the historical trauma of looking at this land, and not seeing the environments that we have; not having the animal and winged ones and all the others around, — it hurts. It's sad. And we have to go through those processes, because we're feeling them. But we don't need to get stuck there. And that's part of what we talk about in the healing circles or in community: that we have to stop being the victims now. We are a proud, proud culture. As Lakota people, we are proud of who we are. And we need to step forward in those situations, and all be part of that leadership that the young ones are going to learn from. And that's something that my great grandmother gave me. And the voice I have now is hers. And I share that with others and go forward with it. We're all proud of all of us and what each other is doing. It doesn't matter where you're at in your life, what you're going through, you are Lakota. You are my relative, and all the relatives on Turtle Island. That's how I feel. And it's not again, just humans, but we as humans need to come together and do this better. And that's my role. And that's, I guess, not necessarily my role, but that's my responsibility. And that's what I've taken on.
48:49
Terry: Thank you, Francis. Jessika, would you like to add?
Jessika Greendeer 48:54
I mean, how can you add to that? Francis brought up so many great points. I think for anybody who's teetering on the edge of not knowing what to do, how to help, I encourage all of you to not only do your research and find your ancestral seeds, but you know, now is the best time: it's "I need to plant a garden." And maybe it's a small container that's sitting outside on your windowsill, but it's something. Any little seed that you can plant this year, is going to just help you not only have something to grow, and to learn from, but also just starting that relationship again. With just the very small act of doing that. And that seed knows better than we do what it's supposed to do. You know, a seed has one purpose in life and that's to sacrifice itself in the hope that something better will come. All we have to do is help them find their little piece of earth to go into. And yeah, for any of the work at Dream of Wild Health, we are offering some online workshops this season, just to help people get started with things. And that's open to everybody. And I encourage anybody who's interested to follow us on DreamOfWildHealth.org for more information.
Terry Hokenson 50:24
Wonderful. Well, thank you Jessika Greendeer and Francis Bettelyoun, very much for sharing your stories with us today. I'd like to offer to the audience at least an email where if they want to follow up, he Native American Medicine Garden has a Facebook page. So does Dream of Wild Health. For further information you can email GoodEarth350@gmail.com. Once again, thank you for tuning in. I'd be really pleased to hear from you. Thank you.
Francis Bettelyoun 50:24
(Okala?)
Jessika Greendeer 50:24
Thank you.