Hi everyone, I am Linda Black Elk and I am the food sovereignty coordinator at
United Tribes Technical College over in Bismarck, North Dakota.
But today I am in the middle of Minneapolis at Riverside Park
on the traditional homelands of the Ojibwe and the Dakota
because I want to show you some of the amazing foods and medicines
that are growing all around us even in this urban environment.
I think people take for granted that, you know,
natural areas, of course, have lots of things to forage
and lots of things that people can use.
But I don't think that people think of these
urban spaces as being really useful and having lots of amazing gifts
that are a part of Mother Earth.
So join me as we go check some of these plants out.
(music playing)
I just found this amazing patch of dandelion greens.
Right now, it's actually mid-October,
but these dandelion greens are just looking beautiful and tender and green.
Hmm. Fantastic!
Some people think that dandelion greens are a little bitter to eat,
but bitter is where all the medicine is right,
we can't take that for granted.
Dandelion greens are actually known to
stabilize blood sugar to improve pancreas function.
You can put them in salads, you can make pesto out of them.
You can chop them up and put them in your lasagna.
And when you're doing that, you're actually eating your medicine, right?
This is nature's pharmacy right here all around us.
Dandelion root has also been used to
stabilize blood sugar and improve pancreatic function.
Dandelion root tea has also been shown
to reduce tumor sizes for people who have cancer.
Drinking dandelion root tea every day
is really good, and it's also been shown
to help people get through chemotherapy a little bit better.
So it's an amazing food and an amazing
medicine that's always right here available for us.
Throw some dandelions into your salad next time.
I just found the most gorgeous Burr Oak (quercus macrocarpa), check this guy out.
Everyone knows that you can eat acorns, right?
But did you know that Oak Park is
actually an amazing medicine for Poison Ivy?
Take some of the large chunks of the bark.
Boil it down for about ten to 15 minutes,
and you can use that liquid on any Poison Ivy rash,
and you can use any species of oak for this.
And it's wonderful for getting rid of a poison ivy rash.
Look at this gorgeous burdock I found right behind this park bench.
This is amazing medicine. It's a bitter root,
but I use Burdock Root to treat
everything from eczema and psoriasis
to actually cleansing the blood
when people have blood infections.
I also use burdock root as a tea to treat any sort of viral illnesses
because the root is powerfully antiviral.
If you're looking to make a really simple burdock salve
just harvest these gorgeous, huge leaves
and soak them in some olive oil for a couple of weeks.
And you can actually use that olive oil
as a sort of lotion for any kind of itchy rash like eczema and psoriasis.
Fantastic burdock medicine!
Right here in the middle of this city park,
there are amazing medicines growing right under this one pine tree.
Not to mention the fact that pine trees actually are fantastic medicine.
You can use Pine Pitch for a variety of ailments.
You can actually put some into tea and use that as lung support
to help clear up the lungs and pine pitch
will actually relieve lung and sinus congestion.
You can use pine pitch on any kind of
wound, open cuts and scrapes and things like that.
It'll close up the wound and stop it from bleeding,
but it'll also help to prevent infection,
so it's an amazing medicine to have around.
But we have some amazing medicines going right under it as well.
So these are stinging Nettles (urtica dioica), and if you look closely,
you can actually see a lot of stinging hairs
all along the underside of the leaves and all along the stem.
Those stinging hairs are very well known
to have medicine that's powerfully anti-inflammatory.
They're great for arthritis,
so sometimes you'll see people with arthritic joints
in their hand whipping themselves with the nettles
to get rid of that inflammation. But you can also use nettles
as a medicine internally to treat things like seasonal allergies and arthritis.
Now, why would you want to consume something that stings you?
Well, with any cooking or drying, all of the stinging effect goes away,
so you don't have to worry about that
so you can make fantastic nettle tea.
You can also use the younger leaves at the top of the plant
in any kind of recipe. We make nettle pesto.
We throw young nettle leaves into all of our soups and stews.
And so you can eat anti-inflammatory pesto. Isn't that fantastic?
But you know what else?
Right under the same tree where these nettles are growing
in the middle of the city park, we have some gorgeous catnip growing.
It's a member of the Mint family,
and it's an amazing medicine for lung support.
We actually have used this a lot during the COVID 19 pandemic.
We make a tea out of nettles and out of catnip
to treat all kinds of lung inflammation and lung congestion.
If you're someone like me who has asthma,
you can use catnip to help clear up the lungs
and strengthen the lungs since you're better
able to fight infections off.
Not only that, under this same tree, we see some gorgeous violet leaves.
Violets are wonderful for skin issues.
Earlier, I talked about burdock.
A lot of times I'll actually mix burdock and violet leaves together
to make a fantastic skin salve.
Violet leaves are very soothing for any kind of skin rash,
but they're also deliciously edible so you
can throw them into all of your salads.
Right now, I'm standing under a linden tree,
also known as Bass Wood, also known as Tilia Americana.
It doesn't matter what you call it. It gives us such an amazing energy.
I actually feel good just standing underneath it.
But what a lot of people don't know is that Linden,
whether you're using the flowers or the leaves,
make an amazing tea to help treat anxiety and depression.
You can make a tea out of the leaves
any time of year when they're available
and drink a few cups of that a day, and it's just a very uplifting tea
I love to use the flowers that have that
gorgeous linden fragrance to them,
that beautiful floral scent, and it always makes me feel better,
and it always just gives me a really nice lift.
So don't forget Linden's are all around you in
almost every city park in the United States.
You can find them right down the street.
Check out this amazing rosebush, even in here in the middle of October,
there's still some beautiful red rose hips.
Rose hips are actually really high in vitamin C,
so they're used to boost our immune
systems so that we can fight off infection.
Whether you're going through surgery or
you're afraid of developing pneumonia,
rose hips can be a fantastic way to boost your immune system
and fight off any type of bacterial and even viral infection.
Make them into tea, put them in some muffins.
Just make sure to remove the seeds because
the seeds are actually covered in some tiny,
little sharp hairs that you definitely don't want
to consume. So filter your tea really well.
Start drinking some rose hip tea.
This is Mother wort. Mother wort is a member of the mint family.
It's an amazing medicine for nursing and postpartum mothers.
It's called mother wort for a reason. It alleviates depression.
It helps with milk production.
But it's also great for anyone who's experiencing some anxiety and depression.
A lot of times I'll actually mix this with the Linden
that we were talking about earlier as a wonderful, uplifting tea to
help people get through tough times.
So don't forget to look for mother wort.
It's really common along edges of wooded areas, shady areas.
It loves to grow there and it's always there for you.
Today, we walked around Riverside Park
in the middle of Minneapolis, and we found
so many amazing foods and medicines.
I didn't even go over half of what we actually found.
A lot of people are concerned when I tell them to try urban foraging,
try foraging in your local city park.
They get concerned about pollutants and toxins in the plants.
My ideas on foraging are maybe a little different than others
because I basically do a comparison any time I'm foraging.
I ask myself, "Is this going to be any dirtier or
any more polluted than the stuff that's in the grocery store?"
And the answer is almost always. "No, of course not."
Even here in the middle of Minneapolis, we're able to find foods and medicines
that are actually probably a lot cleaner than what you'd find
in any of our local grocery stores.
Most foods, vegetables, fruits that are in grocery stores have been sprayed
with numerous herbicides, pesticides, fungicides
in all manner of chemicals and compounds.
In order to make them more attractive to buyers
or in order to increase production and kill the insects
that feed on them, and a lot of times those can actually have adverse impacts on
our health. So I would much rather take the chance that a
dog peed on a plant that I'm about to eat, or that, you know,
a neighbor from two blocks away might have been spraying
their lawn for dandelions once this summer than
to take my chances on things in the grocery store
that are sprayed with all manner of herbicides, pesticides and fungicides.
So I hope that all of you guys will take that chance with me.
Get outside, find out what's being provided for you for free
right here in Nature's pharmacy.
Find out about all of these amazing foods and medicines that
surround us all the time. Thanks for joining me, guys.
Thank you all for watching, and
thank you to Linda for taking the time to share this knowledge with you.
She is just an absolute wealth of knowledge.
I learned about her first about three or four years ago
and have been following her since then
and is a huge source of inspiration and education for me.
So it really is an honor for you all to get to learn from her.
You can follow her on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube.
And then also she teaches at United Tribes Technical College,
and you can actually take those classes online,
which is a really special opportunity out there.
"I feel like Linda could spend the next three days in this park alone,
teaching you what she knows." "Probably."
"Thank you all and thanks so much Linda." "Thanks so much Rob."