Leona Brown
VFR: Leona, please tell us about yourself and how a workshop on medicinal plants changed path of your life.
Leona Brown: My name is Leona Brown, and I am a Gitxsan and Nisga’a mother of three children and of the Fireweed House and the Killer Whale Clan. I am an Indigenous Independent Cultural Facilitator, and I gained three years of training in Land and Lives around the Indigenous Culture with the Resurfacing History Program coordinated by Jolene Andrew.
This work has become my Healing Journey and the grassroots teachings and knowledge that I share with my children. This knowledge is important to know who we are and where we come from and how we live with the lands and waterways around us.
As a Gitxsan Refugee living on the unceded territories of Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations, I have been taking on land-based work here in the city and thrive as an ambassador to the work Resurfacing History has taught me around Indigenous food and resources that we harvest in the city.
I advocate at every opportunity, with the Vancouver School Board, the City of Vancouver, and the Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation, for opportunities for Indigenous Peoples to relearn our culture on the lands and waterways that we live on and actively talk of Reconciliation.
When I initially began training in Indigenous medicinal plant work, I had no idea it would bring me to where I am today, an active advocate and voice for Indigenous Peoples.
VFR: In our conversation, you mentioned, “I didn’t know how to be Indigenous.” Can you please share about this realization and what came after?
LB: Around 2009, I began my Healing Journey in trying to discover my path as an Indigenous Person. At that time, I felt assimilated into society, but I also very much wanted to find a way to do something within my culture. The main Indigenous culture that existed was being an Indigenous artist, dancer, drummer, or singer, but I do not know my Gitxsan language fluently and have no experience in any of these things.
My path actually began with my daughter, Dylain, around 2010, with Vancouver Aboriginal Child and Family Services Society (VACFSS) being involved with our family. At that time, I was involved in the process of caring and advocating for custody of my niece who was born that year. During this process, VACFSS shared about the Culturally Relevant Urban Wellness (CRUW) Program, and one of the program streams was the UBC Farm Program for youth. I loved the idea of them teaching youth about Indigenous culture and plant medicines. I thought, if I cannot find the opportunities, it would be great for my daughter to learn. My daughter loved this program. She did not share much with me of what she learned until years later.
Around 2013, Truth and Reconciliation happened in Vancouver. This event very much opened up who I am as an Indigenous person and where I came from. My mother was a Residential School Survivor from the Edmonton Residential School. She never told me anything of her experiences there other than that is where she attended. I strongly feel that Truth and Reconciliation was the beginning of my Healing Journey as well. At the time, I listened to survivor stories and prayed at the Sacred Fire to my parents who had both gone to the spirit world by then. I gave them my forgiveness. I also attended many parent and family Indigenous dinner programs in the community and began advocating for Indigenous facilitators for our community.
At this time, a program called Resurfacing History began at Mount Pleasant Neighborhood House with Cultural Facilitator, Jolene Andrew, who created this grassroots program. Resurfacing History was a training program to learn from various mentors, such as Dr. T’uy’t’tanat (Cease Wyss), Leonard Williams, Crystal Sparrow, Mary Durocher, and many others, throughout a three-year learning period. I admit that at the beginning I went into this program reluctantly. I was feeling, “How does learning plant medicine make you feel like an Indigenous person?”
Around 2014, after my youngest son was born in 2013, I developed gallstones and suffered such great pain. So much pain that my doctor suggested surgery to have my gallbladder removed. At that time, I was still recovering from my pregnancy and still actively involved with VACFSS, and I felt I had no one to help care for me and my baby after surgery. I decided to delay the surgery until I figured something out.
During that time, I met Lori Snyder at Mount Pleasant Neighbourhood House. She was brought in to facilitate a session on herbal tea medicine. Again, not being very interested and not connecting what it had to do with Indigenous Peoples, I did not pay much attention. However, she brought in a fresh flower, a tiny little thing. She never talked about it during her presentation. When she was done, I pointed to it and said, “You never spoke on this. What is it for?” She said, “It’s called Chickweed.” I curiously said, “What is it good for?” She replied, “It’s great for gallstones.” That instantly blew me away!
Today, I still have that shocked feeling telling this story. She got my attention, and I asked her so many questions: “How do you use it? As a tea? How do you process it?” She informed me that you can pick it outside and eat it fresh, or you can dry it and have it as a tea. I was excited. She gave me that piece she picked, and I ate it right there. On the way home, I picked another piece. For the next two weeks or so, when I walked anywhere, I picked a piece of the Chickweed and ate it.
When I went back to my doctor for follow-up appointment, I was no longer in pain at all, and the scans showed my gallstones had disappeared. During a Google search, I learned that Chickweed helps dissolve gallstones to pass through your system properly. From that moment, I advocated for Lori Synder to be in any parent or family program I was in. I was also glad to see Lori in the Resurfacing History Program, which she attended for a short while. I learned so much from her.
Most importantly, I had a passion to learn more.
As I was learning through Resurfacing History, I still felt the path of my Healing Journey was not complete…Around 2017, my daughter was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, so I completely dove into the Resurfacing History Program as well as self-study to find out which plant medicines would help my daughter. It gave me confidence knowing that one plant helped me and my medical issues. With massive involvement in the Program and lots of questions for my mentors, I found that Chaga Mushroom helps with my daughter’s rheumatoid arthritis as well as Devil’s Club. Both are Indigenous medicines.
Here I learned the word Reciprocity. Reciprocity means the good that you put out into the world and community, the Creator gifts back to you in his ways.
While knowing that Devil’s Club was not easily accessible and did not exist in the city of Vancouver, I felt I would have to save money to make a trip home to Prince Rupert, where I know it grows in abundance. I struggled in stress trying to figure out how to get the funds to bring myself and my three kids with me to Prince Rupert.
One day with the Resurfacing History Program, Jolene brought in Leonard Williams to bring us to the mountains to show us how to harvest Cedar from trees. I was very much excited about this, as I had never done it before. While up there I figured I would keep an eye out for what kind of plant medicines were around, if any. We walked through a trail to where we planned to pull Cedar from actual Cedar Trees.
I was the last one following along the trail and was carefully looking around. I saw a few yards from me a patch of Devil’s Club. My heart burst in happiness! I yelled ahead to Jolene, “THERE IS DEVIL’S CLUB HERE!” Jolene said, “What?” And I said, “Look!” She came back to where I was and was amazed. She said to me, “That is Reciprocity, Creator gifted this to you for all the work you are doing with your family and community.” I was so happy – I did not want to pull Cedar, I just wanted to harvest this medicine immediately for my daughter. It was the only medicine that I knew about, and I knew how to process it.
I then reluctantly went to learn how to pull Cedar, and Jolene assured me that when we were done, we would harvest from that patch. So, we did. I shared my daughter’s medical history with the group and why I was so happy to see this Devil’s Club. I did not have to travel home to get some now. To this day, it’s still in the mountain, and I harvest it when I can now and share with Elders in the city. I also create In the Field Workshops to show others what Devil’s Club looks like and how to harvest, process, and use it as medicine, jewelry, and spiritual protection.
I truly believe the rest just came naturally. At community events, Resurfacing History would have a table to showcase medicines picked, and I would talk of what I learned and experienced. My journey slowly developed through event tables. Eventually, I was able to do Salve Workshops and Plant Talks.
Today, I share my lived experience with many people and organizations, and I have developed my experiences in such a way to show they are important to understanding the experiences of many Indigenous Peoples. Eventually, my lived experience showed me a way to influence Decolonization. Now, I do talking sessions around the process of Decolonizing and the importance of learning plant medicines and knowing who we are as Indigenous Peoples and how Reconciliation can happen with Settlers and Newcomers to this unceded country.
VFR: Leona, you’re actively involved with so many different organizations and groups in Vancouver, including being a member of the Vancouver Food Policy Council. A great deal of your advocacy centres around the work of decolonizing systems. Can you please share more about this?
LB: There are now many places that I do my advocacy work. During my Healing Journey, in mid-2020 and early in 2021, is when my work began on various committees and groups. (See my Bio that shows my network). I did not realize this is where I would be.
All I talk of is about my lived experience – I relate my experiences to show systems, like Child Welfare and Schools, that we, as Indigenous Peoples, are different.
We have a very traumatizing history, including understanding that we are descendants of Residential School Survivors. During my journey and talking with various Elders and taking to heart that we, as Indigenous Peoples, were only colonized and forced into assimilation and underwent Systematic Genocide in the late 1800s. This is recent in our long cultural history. Residential Schools took away our Indigeneity, our way of life, our society. Indigenous children were put through intense trauma, and some Indigenous children were murdered, which ended their lineage, their existence.
My Healing Journey encouraged me to KNOW this history. The most important point being the Truth and Reconciliation event. This was very much when I understood who my parents were, why our lives happened the way they did. I understood that they as children were beaten, starved, medically tested on, raped, assaulted, and as we are discovering today, many of them were murdered and buried in unmarked graves – hidden crime scenes. Once I started understanding this, it helped me to understand that my parents were not given any life skills, therefore my life as a child was traumatic. They were only taught this trauma, which they carried on to their children.
This began a passion in me, to share my life experiences. I want to break these cycles with my own children, in the hope that my children will be mentally, physically, spiritually, and emotionally balanced – also knowing these four things are the Indigenous Four Directions of Being.
I want to express this to all Indigenous Peoples in my community, and with my training in Resurfacing History, this advocacy work just seemed to happen. People would hear my stories and invite me to speak to committee members. Suddenly, from 2021 to current day 2022, I am on all these groups listed in my Bio. Through this process, I discovered, this is my path, my journey, who I am, what I am supposed to be – a “Colonize Slayer,” as titled by my friend and mentor, Jolene Andrew, just today (May 18, 2022). I find it fitting to what I am doing – influencing policy through my own lived experiences, which is not that much different to many Indigenous Peoples.
VFR: “Food is medicine” is an important concept for many Indigenous Peoples. How has the relationship between food as medicine surfaced in your own life, and how does it shape the way you view food and the land around us?
LB: Through my training and Journey, I also began to understand not only what plant medicines we have and how to use them, I also realized our Indigenous Peoples are starving and very unhealthy due to the Systematic Genocide that began with the residential schools. This disconnected our Peoples from our lands, waterways, and food systems. We are no longer living on and from the lands.
As my passion began to develop, I really wanted to know more about our foods. Again, going back to lived experience, after I had my son in 2013, I gained a huge amount of weight. I found it hard to get back to normal. Since I was in Resurfacing History, I started researching on my own online. Many of our traditional foods must have had some health benefits, since in any history photos of pre-colonization, I never saw any overweight Indigenous Peoples, never.
My personal investigation started, and I looked at the benefits of our Indigenous Foods. It took some time, first learning that weight gain often happens through a lack of function in the thyroid. Because my thyroid barely functioned, it caused my metabolism to be very low. I burned less fat, therefore the weight gain. I researched what helps your thyroid function properly in regard to food. I learned that iodine helps thyroid function and discovered that seaweed contains a high amount of iodine and iron, both which help reduce fat storage and keep energy levels up.
I began buying seaweed from Indigenous harvesters to incorporate into our diet as much as I could. With this lesson, I began sharing this lived experience with other Indigenous People and Programmers, anyone who wanted to listen. I also dug deeper into the health benefits of the cultural foods that were the norm in our lives before colonization. On the West Coast, we lived from the plants on the lands, the seafood from the waters, and the animals from the lands. Everything we consumed benefited our bodies and kept us healthy.
Today, everything is fast food, tons of preservatives, including salt, oils, and sugars. Everything is easy access and in any amount we want. We no longer need to walk to hunt or forage. The lack of our natural foods starved our bodies and combine that with trauma and PTSD from Residential Schools, now our Peoples are very unhealthy. This has become another part of my lived experience: to share the importance of our Indigenous Foods and why it is vital that we gain that access back in our lives.
VFR: I understand you’re concerned about the spraying of trees in BC, and the long-term impact of this on the ecosystem and the food system. Please tell us more about your concerns.
LB: My Healing Journey through Truth and Reconciliation helped me connect my existence in a circular manner. The Medicine Wheel has always been mentioned to me. Even as a shape in garden spaces, I never liked the idea of Medicine Wheel…until just this past month.
I recently learned of another word: Circular. Specifically, Circular Food System. Honestly, and sadly, through the recent death of Chelsea Poorman, I realized this is all connected in a circular manner, just like how a Medicine Wheel is presented.
Systematic Genocide follows a circular motion. Colonization started with taking our food, preventing us from hunting, fishing, harvesting, etc. It placed us in restricted zones called Reservations, which we were not allowed to leave without permission. The system stole our children and placed them in Residential Schools, which had a mandate to “kill the child, save the man.” This prevented children from learning how to feed themselves. Children were beaten for even speaking their own language, and then their children were raised in the same manner.
The children of Survivors also grew up to have mental health issues that would move them to deal emotionally through alcohol and drugs. With my generation, we find that so many who are addicted to drugs and alcohol have been taken advantage of and are murdered and missing.
As many of us are still lost in Colonization and Assimilation, we deal with Food Trauma, because we have no access to our traditional foods. We deal with death and abuse through food consumption, and there is also trauma because our Residential School Survivor Parents never fed us and left us home alone for days to starve because they would use what money they had to drink their traumas away.
Truth and Reconciliation occurs, and many are now slowly coming back on the path we call the Red Road. The Red Road guides us to live and breathe as Indigenous and be very truthful to our existence. Today, many are coming back to this understanding of what it means to feel like an Indigenous Person – we’re sharing our lived experiences and eager to learn more about our culture. We’re Decolonizing our Assimilation by getting back to our cultural practices, which for me, includes plant medicines and foods as well as advocating for access to our traditional seafoods, especially.
It's about understanding that our foods do not come from markets or restaurants or fast-food places. Our foods are in the forests, in the mountains, in the rivers, in the oceans, and on the lands.
I heard of forest spraying with herbicides, and when heard of it happening in our area, I immediately felt devasted. Not only for me and all Indigenous Peoples, but for the animals, too. Our existence in society is growing and invading their wildlife space. Knowing that spraying in the forests will affect all types of foods we harvest there, such as mushrooms, berries, and plant medicines, and even knowing that the waterways will be affected is devastating.
Water travels underground, it moves constantly. This spray will eventually get into waterways – poison does not dissolve and disappear. It absorbs into everything. It will be carried by this water. Animals will drink from fresh waterways that will eventually be contaminated, the animal will carry this poison in their bodies, and if they don’t die because of that, they could be hunted and eaten by Indigenous Peoples without knowing the poison is there. Then this person carries that poison in their body.
As well, drinking water access comes from the mountain and the waterways underground. With rain, this will eventually travel to drinking water systems and people will begin to show medical issues from the poison. With forest spraying locally, it will, at some point, get into our water reservoirs, which feed the water lines to our kitchens that we drink and cook with. This immediately makes me think of Erin Brockovich! All lives, not only Indigenous Lives, are far more important than clear cutting trees for financial gain. These trees are a part of an ecosystem, and they protect communities living at the bottom of the mountain.
All of this brings us back to people being systematically oppressed. This is a circular system, and our existence is connected by food. Without any of these sections of the Circular Medicine Wheel, we are a broken people.
My lived experiences may appear or sound broken, but my belief in who I am as Indigenous Person has me thriving loudly and unbroken.
VFR: We often hear the word “Reconciliation” used, but what does this mean for you on a personal level?
LB: At first, this word “Reconciliation” meant nothing to me. It felt like a hashtag word, an over glamourized idea to make Indigenous Peoples feel like Colonizers were wanting to make things right. When, in fact, Colonizers have no idea how to even do this. Why? Because they too have been assimilated completely to not understand who an Indigenous Person is and how they connect to the land and this world.
Today, there are group workshops where Indigenous Leaders, like me, are asked to come present on a way to better communicate with Indigenous Peoples, to talk about how Reconciliation can happen.
Many Elders say, “It’s NOT our job to show you how to Reconcile!” It’s like having Residential School Survivors apologize to the Genocidal System of Churches and State and asking the child for an apology and at the same time asking the child to continue to live with the abuser/murder. Yes, murderers.
Reconciliation cannot happen without TRUTH, as brutal as that may sound to many fragile Colonizers. But through Indigenous growth and Resurfacing our own spiritual history, some of us believe, ok fine, we will guide you to learn…BUT you must Reconcile with honesty, truth, humility…not a hashtag or doing it to keep your job and secretly still oppress and support the Genocidal System.
VFR: How can people support the important work that you do?
LB: People must continue to ask questions, no matter how silly it sounds. If we do not know, it will spark us to ask other Indigenous Peoples for answers, so we can continue our learning and teaching.
Decolonize by knowing who you are. Learn where your family comes from if you do not know. Look it up, educate yourself. Genealogy exists and some history books provide detailed records of individuals travelling to these lands to Colonize and occupy them. That way, when introductions happen after a proper Land Acknowledgement, you can state who you are and where your family comes from, and Non-Indigenous Peoples can identify as a Settler. Indigenous Peoples from other territories can identify themselves as guests on these lands. I identify as a Refugee on these territories because I am not welcomed on my own lands and was forced to be on these territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh.
Since Resurfacing History, I have gained much experience in plant medicines and speaking my lived experience and relating it to systems like the Vancouver School Board, the City of Vancouver, and the Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation.
Support my work by introducing yourself with your genealogical identity. Support me by teaching yourself the meanings of the Seven Sacred Teachings principles we live by and guide us to be the best people we can be.
Be a good ally by listening – we are not crying about our Colonized trauma or crying about the Systematic Genocide that continues today. We are sharing our lived experiences from a Peoples who are not worthless and using our lived experiences to gain allies to help change the various Genocidal Systems that were created to ignore, dismiss, and fail the Indigenous Peoples.
We are all Stardust – let’s shine together so bright on the Truth to make our future better.
Simoogyet, Lax’ha Ha’miiya (Creator, thank you - in the Gitxsan Language)
Leona Brown
A national Indian Residential School Crisis Line has been set up to provide support for former students and those affected. People can access emotional and crisis referral services by calling the 24-hour national crisis line: 1-800-721-0066.
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