A Chat with Native Herbalist Sage LaPena

Sage LaPena | Photo: KCET

Sage LaPena is a Nomtipom Wintu ethnobotanist and certified medical herbalist. She has worked for years to preserve and pass along Native uses of plant medicines - from both native and introduced plants - and other aspects of Traditional Ecological Knowledge connected to plants. We spoke with her in Folsom, California.

What is Traditional Ecological Knowledge?

Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) is a body of science that encompasses all sciences, and yet, is only recently found to be true science. If you are a people living in the same place, the same region, for a thousand years, youve watched the turn of the seasons, the migrations of animals, birds, insects, the changing of celestial bodies, fire regimes and how they move through plant life, all of those things together. How we hunt and fish, how we gather our plants, how we are able to subsist and look at the science of the stars. All of that encompasses TEK.

How long have Native People been tending the land?

When the Spanish were doing explorations in the 1500s, 1600s, they wrote in their journals that this was the garden of Eden. They found the garden of Eden because the people utilized the land. We created the abundance by use of the plants that were seen when explorers came to the new lands. Utilized by humans, humans being a part of the web, the chain, and having a responsibility for that tillage, for the burning off of the land. Some people consider the three Rs reading, writing, arithmetic, but they are responsibility, respect, and reciprocation. We receive so much from the earth, and yet we dont give in return.

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How did you learn about plant medicines?

Herbalism is so much more than just, Heres an herb. Go ahead and take it. The way I was trained to be an herbalist was starting actually sitting in the woods, going with Mabel McKay, who was my mentor. She had me sit for periods of time out there and just be observant, be conscious. I learned a completely different understanding of herbalism. As a whole in nature as opposed to just how herbs affect individual body systems.

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Mabel was well known as a basket weaver and also as a doctor. She was Pomo and Wintun. She would take me out to different places in Northern California where she, herself, gathered. Sometimes for basketry, sometimes for other medicines and just, kind of talked to me about what I was seeing. Also, letting me sit in the forest alone to observe and partake in what it was that I was witnessing. It really wasnt something that was given to me as, Now were going to learn about this thing. It happened in more of an organic way.

It wasnt until I was in my twenties and I worked at a nursery in Sonoma County and met Essy Parishs daughter and worked with her and other people who I spoke with, led me to the knowledge that I had been trained as an herbalist, to be a medicine doctor or a medicine maker for my people. I studied what is considered to be traditional Native American herbalism.

How did you become a certified medical herbalist?

As a practitioner of traditional Native American medicine, there is no certification body. But I went back to school to be become a certified medical herbalist [at the American Herbalist Guild]. Working with the knowledge that I already had, I was doing workshops and teaching from my knowledge base.

I went back and studied physiology and standardization of extracts. Then, from there I had to do clinical service. I worked at Sonoma County Indian Health Service in Santa Rosa, with a doctor in an herbal pharmacy. After I got so many hours, and also, working in the clinic at the California School of Herbal studies, then I became certified. I knew how to do prescription formulae.

How do you acquire the plant based medicines you use as an herbalist?

I need to know on a regular basis where Im getting medicines from, at what time of year Im harvesting, when are they doing their spraying, am I on someone elses land. Sometimes I can get permits from the state of California for a gatherers permit. Then you can also get Memoranda of Understanding with private land owners if youre gathering specific medicines. Thats a huge amount of things to think about to be able to participate in my own culture and participate as a traditional person that is partaking in the medicine of the land. Even just as an herbalist, my activism is every day when I try to go out there and harvest.

Sage LaPena gathers artemisia. | Photo: KCET

When you go to sacred places, whether theyre mapped as such or not, it still remains true that thats what they are. By approaching and being a part of those places, you do receive that from them. Ive gone to places where I was looking at the possibility of gathering medicine, but instead I left without gathering any plant material. Instead what is gathered at some places is just knowledge in the sense of being one. You go to re-gather energy. The human body is a huge electro-magnetic field. We have all those elements. Electricity, which is in your fiber is earth, water, air, and all that runs through our being. When were separated from the land, we need recharging. Thats why so many of our sacred places are places where water is moving. The movement of water is negative ions. Waterfalls, the shoreline, are all places for recharging, and we are drawn to these places even as the general public that doesnt necessarily know something is a sacred place.

Can you give us examples of how you use specific plants?

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