This week a class of students from across the country are in Bethel to learn how to use traditional herbs from the local tundra. KYUY’s Johanna Eurich reports that the students will return home with ethno-botanical knowledge, plus a tiny jar of salve.
“What's in here is willow and wormwood. All my family calls it stinkweed,” Tia Holley tells a group of students at the UAF Kuskokwim Campus.
Holley strains the oil that she’s warmed and let steep in willow bark and wormwood, telling students about how her King Island family would use it when they got sick. Her mother still tells the story of drinking wormwood tea.
“And she thought it tasted terrible,” Holley said. “If I'm coming down with something I'll drink it, because it get rids of the bugs inside you.”
Wormwood is the reason Holley is teaching students how to make salve. Five years ago she was in Nome with her mother picking berries. Mom was recovering from a hip replacement, but that did not stop them from picking all day. That night her mother hurt so badly that she couldn't sleep. The next day Holley found a salve with wormwood in it and rubbed it on her mother.
“And it worked. And when we left a few days later, my aunt gave us a bunch of stinkweed and told me to go home and make salve for my mom,” Holley said.
There was one small problem: Holley didn’t know how to make salve.
“I gave my aunt a call, asking her how to make it,” Holley said. “And she said, ‘I don’t know. You figure it out.’ I hit the internet and figured it out.”
Years later Holley owns Traditional Herbals and teaches others how to pick and brew traditional medicines.
“Usually I tell the plants, ‘Thank you. This will help a lot of people with pain or with skin issues,’ and then leave a piece of hair. I know there’re different traditions on what to leave as a gift for the plant. Some people leave a little bit of tobacco. Some people wonder how that’s helpful to the plant, but I think it’s the process of making sure you’re in the right mindset,” she said.
On this day, Holley pours the results of her work into tiny jars for each student.
She tells the students that an elder said to rub each herb by hand and with love. To Holley, by hand isn’t always the most loving way.
“Believe me if I had to crush each herb by hand for ointment, I don’t think I would have enough love. When I do large recipes, I use my Ninja blender,” she said.
Her students say she uses Ninja love.