NatureCity Festival celebrates Saskatoon's Indigenous plants
- Flo Lavallie | May 24, 2015
The third annual Nature City Festival will be celebrated Monday May 25, 2015 at the Grosvenor Park Shopping Centre Courtyard from 1:00-3:30 pm.
Flo Lavallie, Doctor of Natural Medicine, Clinical Herbalist will talk about the indigenous plants found around Saskatoon and area used by the First People that settled in the Meewasin Valley, Wanuskewin along the Saskatchewan river.
The knowledge of plant based medicines, such as extracts, tinctures, capsules, teas including the protocol for gathering, drying and the respectful process that herbal medicine practitioners use in the healing of many diseases that the settlers used upon arriving to Saskatoon.
Many of these herbs were called "weeds". We as herbalists call them and respect these herbs as "edible weeds". As time passes these herbal preparations are now being recognized by the pharmaceutical industry as "drugs" they are now being formulated or compounded in traditional Western Medicine.
If there was a world disaster in the future, we need to teach our next generation some survival skills and an opportunity to heal themselves and others in the way Mother Nature intended. The nutritional value of these plants will also be discussed.
People will have the opportunity to see these herbs and the demonstration in which these plants have been processed and can be a part of their healing repertoire.
Some herbs to be demonstrated are dandelion leaves, flowers, roots, yarrow, nettle, plantain, mint, sage, and others.
Herbs may be used as food, teas, medicines, cosmetics, or as dried flower arrangements.
Saskatoon is an intercultural city, a city that we are very proud of, by sharing the possibilities of an eco system that can sustain the people in a healthy way.
Our environment also provides for our animal kingdom, as I also work with horses, dogs and cats, some time will be spent talking and sharing stories of how our plants can be used as medicines to treat animals. In nature the remedy often grows next to the cause.
Feel free to join me for a fun afternoon, bring your notebooks, your water bottle and your sun hats.
Related story: NatureCity Festival 2015
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