The Indigenous Wisdom and Permaculture Convergence - Thoughts on Traditional Medicine and Healing

Hi everyone! I want to share some thoughts that a medicine man, Andrew, shared with many of us. I recently experienced a deeply connected week at Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. I was attending the Oglala Lakota Indigenous Wisdom and Permaculture Convergence (IWPC) hosted by the Oglala Lakota Cultural and Economic Revitalization Initiative (OLCERI) Ecoranch. We spent 5 days at OLCERI learning traditional ecological knowledge, gathering in ceremony, deconstructing our own ancestral relations, engaging in cross-cultural dialogue, and envisioning a future where we may live in harmony with each other and with the earth.

Everything has the potential to be medicine and everything has the potential to be poison

Medicine assists you and restores your wellbeing

We're taught that the sun will kill us through cancer and burned retinas, so we're taught to put toxins on our skin to prevent cancer which in turn give us cancer

• However, without the sun we would all die, and too little sun leads to depression

For something to be medicine for us, we must love that thing

For sun to be medicine for someone, they must love the sun
For a healer to be effective, they must love their patient

There is a healer in Mexico traveling from sick person to sick person to heal them and never accepts any money

Don't put your hands in the pocket of a sick person

Curandero means curer

To cure you must look for the root of the illness so that the healing doesn't become a revolving door

You have to apply the right medicine to the right problem

The majority of problems that people have stem from toxic thoughts, others stem from food or DNA

If you hold onto grief for a long time you will physically damage your heart
If you hold onto anger for a long time you will physically damage your liver
If you hold onto anxiety for a long time you will physically damage your stomach
Our emotions dictate what we eat - if we feel life is bitter to use then we want a lot of sugar in order to feel something sweet