Skip navigation

Medicine Ways: Traditional Healers and Healing

Healing Plants

Native American, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian healers all have a long history of using indigenous, or native, plants for a wide variety of medicinal purposes. Medicinal plants and their applications are as diverse as the tribes who use them.

Beyond their medicinal benefits, indigenous plants were a staple of Native people’s diet before Western contact. Today, indigenous plants are central to efforts to improve dietary health for current generations. In Hawai‘i, the “Waianae Diet” and “Pre-Captain Cook Diet” aim to reduce empty calories, fat, and additives and promote a healthier, more balanced diet by restoring the role of indigenous foods. Alaska Natives and various Indian tribes have similar projects emphasizing traditional foods. In this very real sense, food is medicine.

Native Hawaiian Medicinal Plants

Hawaiian medicinal plants grow in many areas, including in the vicinity of heiaus or temples, sites that are considered sacred. In ancient times, Hawaiian traditional healers would practice La‘au Lapa‘au, medicinal healing, at some of the heiaus, using plants from around the heiau and in neighboring forests.

Most Hawaiian medicinal plants are foods that have additional curative properties. Healers view food as medicine, along with fresh, clean air and water. In all cases, healers offer a prayer to ask permission and give thanks for the medicines before harvesting and preparing them, and ask permission to facilitate medicinal healing on behalf of the Creator.

Hand-made, gray mortar and pestle.
Hand-made, gray mortar and pestle.
Three-dimensional stone tool shaped into a circle with a flat bottom.
Color image of a green aloe plant next to two large rocks.
Color image of a green ti plant.
Color image depicting the green leaves of a plantain plant.
Color image depicting the green leaves of a banana plant. A thick, leafless stem is at the center of the image.
Color image depicting the green leaves of a candlenut tree. Several candlenuts can be seen growing amongst the leaves.
Color image of several palm trees standing tall in front of a blue sky, next to a few small houses.
Color image of several green ginger plants growing in the wild. A few red-colored flowers can be seen growing amongst the green leaves of the plants.
Color image of a guava plant. The light green guava fruit is growing in the middle of a few dark green leaves.
Color image depicting several broad leaves of the Indian mulberry plant.
Color image of several rocks of sea salt with an orange-brown hue.
Color image of a green, leafy walhteria plant.

Southwest Indian Medicinal Plants

Color photograph of a man in a white shirt and baseball cap standing in front of a few large yucca plants.
Color image depicting the broad, spiky leaves of a mescal plant.
Color image showing many thin, green leaves growing on the branches of a mesquite plant.

Upper Plains Indians Medicinal Plants

Color image of a bee resting on the center of a purple coneflower.
Color image of an uprooted bitterroot plant on a white background.
Color image depicting several white and dark purple flowers of the osha plant.

Alaska Native Medicinal Plants

Color image of a few devil’s club leaves sprouting from the ground.
Color image of a few, bright-yellow dandelion flowers surrounded by green grass.
Color image depicting the branch of a willow tree, which is surrounded by several leafless plants.

Contributors

We highlight in this exhibition a sampling of medicinal plants used by Hawaiian, Alaskan, and Southwest and Upper Plains Indians medicinal experts. Our Native contributors have selected specific plants in each region to illustrate the breadth and depth of Native medicinal knowledge and application.

Contributors include:

  • Native Hawaiian: Kauila Clark, Traditional Healer, Waianae, Oahu
  • Alaska Native: Gary Ferguson, Naturopathic Doctor, Rita Blumenstein, Tribal Doctor, with assistance from Meda Schleifman and Karen Sandberg, Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium, Anchorage, and Peggy Hunt, Alaska Plant Materials Center.
  • Upper Plains Indians: Linda S. Different Cloud-Jones, Sitting Bull Tribal College, Ft. Yates, North Dakota, with input from Calvin Grinnell, Tribal Historian/Archivist, MHA Nation, New Town
  • Southwest Indians: Mary O’Connell, Ph.D., New Mexico State University, Southwest Medicinal Plant Project, Las Cruces, New Mexico, with assistance from Luz Hernandez, Mescalero Apache, and Richard D. Richins. Paul Ortega, Mescalero Apache Medicine Man, provided input on plant selection, and details on the Yucca.

We hope you will enjoy learning about the many medicinal uses for plants that are indigenous to these selected Native regions.


NEXT: Healing Communities: Extending a Healing Hand, Then and Now