On the eve of Thanksgiving 2020, we reflect on last week’s passing of our beloved Elder, Barbara Drake (Tongva), in gratitude for her legacy and the many gifts of her teachings. She strongly supported Dorothy Ramon Learning Center from our start in 2003, onward, and often said she was one of the Center’s “family members.”
Ernest Siva (Cahuilla-Serrano), president of Dorothy Ramon Learning Center:
Sharing with Joy
Barbara Drake wearing her yucca pin and sharing some of her plants and their uses at Dorothy Ramon Learning Center’s first Native Voices Poetry Festival, 2015 (Carlos Puma Photo).
Sharing native plants and foods at the 2017 Native Voices Poetry Festival with other members of the Chia Cafe Collective, which promotes Native American traditional ethnobotany and contemporary uses of native plants. (Carlos Puma Photo)
Sharing plants and their uses at the Center’s annual Dragonfly Galas. She was awarded the Learning Center’s Dragonfly Award in 2012 for her soaring achievements in saving and sharing Native American cultures. (Carlos Puma Photo)
Gifts from Plants
When Barbara Drake was the opening speaker at the Center’s first annual Native Voices Poetry Festival in 2015, she discussed her deep and respectful connection with the natural world — and then invited the entire audience, a crowd of more than 100 people, to sample some candy she had made from native plants. That spirit of sharing and joy has carried forth and set the tone for all Native Voices Poetry Festivals that have followed. A few of her words recorded that day with her permission to share:
Barbara Drake (2015): Thanking Plants
“My love of plants comes from my mother. As children she always took us gathering and never wasted anything.
… We refer to them as people because they are alive. And when we pick them we are killing them, so, we have to give a lot of thanks to them. And so, we do talk to our plants. And we also tell them what we want to use them for. And we say, ‘We have a friend that is ill, and can we get some of your medicine?’
And the plant will let you have it, if you don’t pull on the plant. Have you ever tried to pick a stem of a plant, and it won’t break off? And so, you twist it and twist it and twist it? Well, you’re hurting the plant when you do that. Because when the plant wants to go home with you, it’ll break right off. And you’ll have it in your hand. So, we only ask for little small pieces, could we please have some from this one, and some from this one, and some from this one. Because that plant needs to have seeds that fall on the ground, so that new plants can grow, right?
Smelling yucca blossoms to see whether the yucca is ready to harvest (Carlos Puma Photo).
“And you got to leave something on there for the Coyote. (He likes wild cherries, by the way. He’s the cherry planter. When he eats those wild cherries, the fruit stays in, and the seeds come out. Where do they come out? The other side! And as he walks along he’s planting cherries, all along the path, and all along the road. So, in your stories you can think of him being a cherry planter, because he is. )
“We are still gathering things today, in the modern world, and I think everyone should know that. We go with deepest respect, for everything. And when we’re finished, like when you see my plants on the table, some of them have been with me a long time, and they’re fairly dried up. But they never go in the trash because guess what? There’s no such thing as trash. Those beautiful little plants, they will come with you today, you’re going to be eating them, and when I go home, I will put them in my yard, and they will become new things.
At one of the Learning Center events, Barbara Drake gave us a sprig of mugwort, along with one of her display’s index cards, on which she always wrote by hand the plant’s uses. That sprig grew into a large stand of mugwort at the Center in downtown Banning, which delighted her immensely. (Pat Murkland Photo)
“They will help other things grow. And so that’s the respect that we have for them. You know, if we don’t care for them and we don’t go out and gather them anymore, we have found out as modern-day gatherers that the plants will go away. And they will leave.
And they will leave the Earth because they think we don’t love them anymore. Because we’re not touching them. We’re not smelling them. We’re not eating them. We are not saying ‘thank you’ to them. And so, that’s what we need to do, so those plants will stay there with us. Because do you know, they even give you oxygen to breathe? That comes from them. That’s another gift. They’re not only giving you food, and medicine, and clothing, and shelter, and string, and soap, and all kinds of things, they’re also giving us our life, by giving us oxygen, so we can breathe.”
Thank you!
Explore Barbara Drake’s many cultural contributions further via Deborah Small’s blog, including this video.
Thank you to all who tell the stories, sing the songs, and save and share Native American cultures. And thank you to you all for your support of News from Dorothy Ramon Learning Center. We welcome your ideas and contributions: EMAIL.
Pat Murkland, Editor. Nov. 25, 2020.
Dorothy Ramon Learning Center is a 501(c)3 nonprofit that saves and shares Southern California Native American cultures, languages, history, and traditional arts. Join us at dorothyramon.org and Dorothy Ramon Learning Center on Facebook.