Plants Used By The Great Lakes Ojibwa

"This book includes a brief description of plants and their use, reproduced line drawings, and a map showing approximately where each plant is distributed within the ceded territories."--Amazon.com

Mary Siisip Geniusz has spent more than thirty years working with, living with, and using the Anishinaabe teachings, recipes, and botanical information she shares in Plants Have So Much to Give Us, All We Have to Do Is Ask. Geniusz gained much of the knowledge she writes about from her years as an oshkaabewis, a traditionally trained apprentice, and as friend to the late Keewaydinoquay, an Anishinaabe medicine woman from the Leelanau Peninsula in Michigan and a scholar, teacher, and practitioner in the field of native ethnobotany. Keewaydinoquay published little in her lifetime, yet Geniusz has carried on her legacy by making this body of knowledge accessible to a broader audience. Geniusz teaches the ways she was taught—through stories. Sharing the traditional stories she learned at Keewaydinoquay’s side as well as stories from other American Indian traditions and her own experiences, Geniusz brings the plants to life with narratives that explain their uses, meaning, and history. Stories such as “Naanabozho and the Squeaky-Voice Plant” place the plants in cultural context and illustrate the belief in plants as cognizant beings. Covering a wide range of plants, from conifers to cattails to medicinal uses of yarrow, mullein, and dandelion, she explains how we can work with those beings to create food, simple medicines, and practical botanical tools. Plants Have So Much to Give Us, All We Have to Do Is Ask makes this botanical information useful to native and nonnative healers and educators and places it in the context of the Anishinaabe culture that developed the knowledge and practice.

There has long been a need for an authoritative source on natural products and plants and how they are used. This new volume fills this need, bringing together relevant, practical information about the various types of natural products produced by plants, why they produce them, and their importance in today's world. Natural Products from Plants provides examples of how plant products are used to benefit humans through prevention and treatment of diseases, nutritional value, pest control, dyes, fibers, foods and beverages, flavorings and fragrances, and in creating many other novel compounds. Scientists from various disciplines-chemists, biologists, physicians, ethnobotanists, ecologists, nutritionists, and others-are interested in using natural products from plants, but must be aware of the potentially harmful effects of such compounds. Some plants are sources of poisons, addictive drugs, and hallucinogens. Anyone looking for a thorough understanding of the properties of natural plant products - both beneficial and harmful - will find the answers in Natural Products from Plants.

Traditional Anishinaabe (Ojibwe or Chippewa) knowledge, like the knowledge systems of indigenous peoples around the world, has long been collected and presented by researchers who were not a part of the culture they observed. The result is a colonized version of the knowledge, one that is distorted and trivialized by an ill-suited Eurocentric paradigm of scientific investigation and classification. In Our Knowledge Is Not Primitive, Wendy Makoons Geniusz contrasts the way in which Anishinaabe botanical knowledge is presented in the academic record with how it is preserved in Anishinaabe culture. In doing so she seeks to open a dialogue between the two communities to discuss methods for decolonizing existing texts and to develop innovative approaches for conducting more culturally meaningful research in the future. As an Anishinaabe who grew up in a household practicing traditional medicine and who went on to become a scholar of American Indian studies and the Ojibwe language, Geniusz possesses the authority of someone with a foot firmly planted in each world. Her unique ability to navigate both indigenous and scientific perspectives makes this book an invaluable contribution to the field of Native American studies and enriches our understanding of the Anishinaabe and other native communities.

Reproduction of the original: Ethnobotany of the Ojibwe Indians by Huron H. Smith

A guide to plants found in the Great Lakes region covers such topics as preparation techniques, medical uses, edible qualities, chemical breakdown, poisonous aspects, and commercial value.

Never pick a lady slipper. If any part is picked, the entire flower dies. And it grows there, in the northern woods, to mark the courage and strength of a small girl who lived long ago—a girl who saved all of her people from a terrible disease by listening carefully to the whispering snow, the rumbling ice, and the dancing northern lights.