Canoe Journey Herbalists

Thank you to everyone who attended our 5th year of rose camp! Every year is so different and just the medicine we need. This year was beautiful weather, time on the beach, sweet and deep connecting, making rose hydrosal + honey and spruce tip sugar, blueberry spruce tip hand pies (ty dalecia!!!) and lots of baby snuggling and delicious meals.

Settler Colonialism is killing us!

Canoe Journey Herbalists grieves with all beings as we witness genocides taking place all over the world & we stand in collective solidarity in defense of all of creation

Thank you everyone from our Elder Jennifer Johnson to Baby Wally for coming out to Harvest Hawthorne last week. It’s so special to get to return to this grove season after season, and bring in the medicine of Hawthorne for our hearts and infuse our prayers that we send out to all those suffering, especially our Palestinian relatives amongst this horrific genocide. We use HAwthorne in our Skippers Tea for high blood pressure, our Heart Holder tincture for grief and transformation, our Wired but Tired Tea for adrenal fatigue, our Paddle Strong Immune Syrup, and our Return to Self Flower Essence, so it’s defiantly a giving giving medicine and we are great full

Thank you to the sweetest, powerful, vibrant mother daughter duo behind in olympia for the abundant start donations for our May 18th container garden community day! We’re so glad we finally got to meet and connect in the powerful work of connecting people to their plants, and obsess over our favorite beans! You’ll get to meet these fine folks next Saturday! Please let us know if you have any plant start donations, we are very much still looking!

Please Share widely!

and are doing our Annual Starts donation drive, where we collect 1000’s of extra starts from local farms and nurseries and distribute amongst community to our BIPOC communities and families! These go into community and individual gardens, as well into our container gardens we make at our community event at Wild Hearts Farm.
We look forward to this event every year, and love seeing the container gardens provide access to people for fresh food, sacred medicines, herbs and connection to plants right in their backyard/balcony/window sill!
This year our giveaway day in May 18th, and we are looking to collect starts in the coming weeks to distribute that day. We are looking for all sorts of veggies, herbs and flowers, with a special interest in culturally relevant plants and traditional foods, as well as native plants and shrubs.

You can contact Sophie over email ([email protected]) or by text (2062506856) to coordinate a pick up or drop off!

TAG A FAVORITE FARM/ NURSERY or Native Plant Spot!
Thanks for helping us get the word out!

This last Medicine Making Monday, we processed and packaged seeds saved from the garden last year, getting ready for giving them out alongside 100’s of plant starts and container gardens at our BIPOC Community Garden day on Saturday, May 18th.

Seed saving is a powerful practice of resistance and resilience and storytelling. We have been praying for a seed keeper to come into our lives to teach us more about seed saving, and slowly learning ourselves in community. This is the first year we have enough saved to share in community!
The seeds we packaged today were Hopi To***co, passed to us from a seed keeper in portland, amazing orca beans saved from a greenhouse floor years ago by , Some calendula seeds from our giant patch, and a Milpa Mix gifted to us by the Native Agriculture Fund. Thank you to for stewarding the to***co and saving the seeds with an awesome crew this year!

We hope to see you May 18th!
If you are interested in coming to Medicine Making Mondays at the Canoe Journey Apothecary, You can sign up for our Indigenous Herbalists Pathway Program to get emails and updates on our programming! Link in Linktree/Bio

Processing Devils Club Medicine last month, we gathered in the in the moist warmth of the greenhouse and listened to the rain beat down as we despined and stripped the bark off of this powerful relative, and cut and cored the stalks to make beads for protection. We talked about how every year, processing devils club is a ceremony unto itself. It felt so good to have our first harvest of the year!
We have more coming up in the next few months, Hawthorne, Rose, Nettle and Indian Tea! If you would like to sign up and receive news about when we harvest and more, you can sign up for our indigenous pathways program (link in link tree/ Bio)

Check out our apothecary rockstar Channa on a panel tomorrow along with other incredible BIPOC herbalists (like ✨✨✨✨) discussing ancestral medicine and a framework of community healing! We’re so proud of her!

Deep winter herbal tea blending, with dreams of next summers canoe journey! Thank you to everyone in indigenous herbal pathways who has been coming to our Medicine Making Mondays!

It’s been an absolout honor to be making herbal care kits for our Palestinian relatives grieving and organizing. It is with heavy hearts we continue to make this medicine. Please continue to boost information, support communities on the ground and demand immediate and permanent ceasefire, and the right to return, in your daily breath, heart and action. Thank you to all those who help assemble and distribute this offering and .wild.light.apothecary for your medicine donations.

Greetings Relatives!

We are excited to share our newsletter covering some of our wásqʷx̣ʷ syáyʼɬuɬ and memories of 2022 & 2023! From the bottom of our hearts, thank you all so much for being a part of our community healing , remembrance, & celebration of our togetherness. We could not make or share this medicine without you, and we hope that these pictures and reflections remind you that we’ve not only made medicines together, but we are also medicine!

We raise our hands to you, to kinship, to the many hands, to the many lands, to the many waters, to the many beings, and to the many plant relatives that continue to guide and protect us.
náxʷɬqʷulʼas
Canoe Journey Herbalists

Link in Bio

Back logs of fall and winter: Hawthorne berry Harvest- we were lucky to be blessed with a beautiful day to gather, harvest, pray by the river, and share our different fall and grieving rituals together. Hawthorne teaches us that everything comes from and returns to the heart, that paying attention, really praying attention to The movement of our hearts, the pounding,flutters, desires and pains, often involves grief and Vunerability. We are so grateful to share this beautiful harvest, and we use hawthorn berries in four of our main medicines! Some of this Hawthorne, and many other lovingly harvested plants, went into our grief care kits for Palestinians later that week. 🍉🍒🍉🍒🍉

Calling on our Relatives & Community to help spread the word! We are looking to hire an Indigenous or BIPOC student attending The Evergreen State College for the upcoming 2023- 2024 Academic year - must have been awarded workstudy and be a so called WA state resident.
The student would be working as a paid intern supporting us in our community medicine gardens, as well as setting up and coordinating events, or working on grant writing and outreach, whatever might be suited to their skills and interests. All of our organizations activities follow strict cdc protocols.

Deadline: ASAP

Email your interest along with a copy of your workstudy award or info about your workstudy award to [email protected]

Eligibility:  Student need to have a work-study award or qualify for financial aid to be eligible. Students need to be Washington State residents due to funding restrictions.  CCBLA must confirm with Student Employment at Evergreen that the student has been awarded Work Study for them to move forward in our process and be considered to be hired.

Students are encouraged to work no more than 6-8 hours per week throughout the quarter & cannot exceed 19 hours per week.  Each award is about $4050 at $17 an hour. Working 6-8 hours per week will help students extend their full award throughout all three quarters.

HEALING SPACE WILL BE CLOSED FOR THE REST OF PROTOCAL WEEK!
We made the decision to shut down care early this week to minimize the exposure and spread of Covid for our crew and those entering our healing space!
Thank you to EVERYONE who visited with us, helped us find places to set up, brought us food, volunteered, shared your time and your medicine with us, and participated in what was an incredible and healing year!
You can visit and get care and medicine with our crew every Monday from 10-1pm at Tahoma Indian Center Tacoma, and stay in touch and connect more through Indigenous Herbalist Pathway (link in bio)

Canoe journey 2023! Hands up to all the hard work of our crew, the pullers, the ground crews, the incredible organizers, cooks, mcs! Those who stay home and tend their territories while others travel, Everyone who makes this journey possible!

Canoe journey 2023- from youth to elders to the very pregnant, to the daily grind leads and camp/kitchen badasses, the fresh faced day of drop in volunteers… We love our crew! This is a fraction of the people who make it happen! Many of our core is so busy they can’t be photographed! Thank you, truly truly to allll who pour into this project and made the journey happen this year! We have finished our travel leg of the journey and will be set up at muckleshoot protocal till Friday! Come find us for program info and deep healing opportunities!

Canoe journey 2023: beautiful mornings, cold mornings, early mornings, late nights, deep care, big circles, long meetings, setting up and breaking down camp and healing space day after day, thank you canoe journey for the beautiful and the hard moments of these travels! We have finished our travel leg of the journey and will be set up at muckleshoot protocal till Friday! Come find us for program info and deep healing opportunities!

Canoe journey 2023 so far! Footbaths and feast and mobile apothecaries… we are so incredibly greatful to our volunteers of skilled herbalists, medics, acu-detox speacialists, kiddos, community members and healers! Thank you for all your hard work this year! We have finished our travel leg of the journey and will be set up at muckleshoot protocal till Friday! Come find us for program info and deep healing opportunities!

Canoe journey 2023: mainland route: thank you for hosting us Lummi, Sammish and Swinomish!
It was a pleasure for our small crew to serve you through rain and crowds and rainbows and long hard days of pulling!

Celebrating a beautiful 4th year at rose camp! This year we were a little late to the roses but that didn’t stop us from harvesting the bounty, enjoying time and song and story and dancing together, and eating good! It felt like a joy to focus on crafting and rest and relaxed scheduling, to have time to reflect together on the changing of seasons and deepening of community! Thank you to the roses for always being such powerful teachers! Thank you to and family for hosting and holding us in so much beauty!!

Estamos preparando para jugar y trabajar con communidad este sabado de las 11-4! Ven a visitar, comer y compartir en el 10615 40th ave e Tacoma!

Weeee are ready for ya! we are so excited to be having a play and creative day on Saturday June 11! Drop by any time 11-4 and visit the gardens, make herbal honeys and smudge bundles and help us make necklaces for give outs on canoe journey this year! Take home a container garden and lots of starts if you have growing space! We are making a yummy 1st foods picnic to share! Pictured are garlic scapes we’ll harvest, sage for bundling, beautiful containers to take home and flowering Valarian (one of the options for herbal honey!)

You might have already seen it on page… we are so excited to be sharing container gardens on June 10-11th and also having a play and creative day on Saturday June 11! Drop by any time 11-4 and visit the gardens, make herbal honeys and smudge bundles and help us make necklaces for give outs on canoe journey this year! Take home a container garden and lots of starts if you have growing space! We got some incredible start donations from and more this year!!

We had a cute day planting container gardens! Tea containers with lemon balm, skullcap and mint! Sacred plant containers with to***co, sweetgrass and prairie sage! Salsa containers with Tomatoes onion, cilantro and jalapeño!
You can get them at our garden play day June 10th! See flyer in next post! Thanks and Malika and dencio and wilder of course!

Cw: fake blood and fake bruises…
Thank you for an amazing first aid weekend! This weekend we focused on taking care of muscles and bones, and wound care! We had fun, learned a lot and made cute little kits to give out! It’s so special to see our community get so solid on these life skills!!! We have one more 1st aid weekend camp out happening in late June! If your interested please sign up for our IHP email list (link in profile)

Camas plant restoration story: 🌸🌸About 3 years ago, we got a call one summer evening from some sweet strangers down in Eugene who were trying to find homes for a small wild camas plot that was scheduled to be torn up and built on the next day. We happily accepted this relative, and .anthemum dropped off a distressed bundle in our driveway at 2 in the morning. We planted them warily in the heat of the summer in garden we were being allowed to use at the time, and the stalk and flower quickly died back.
The next year, when we no longer had access to that garden, Sophie and another volunteer snuck back in to dig up the 35 or so camas who made it, and brought them to their new home at the native sharing garden
Here, with the security and collaboration of an aligned vision of land and garden space, we were able to make them their own little south sound prairie eco system garden, along with yarrow and violets and lupines and even one little Gary oak savannah! We were encouraged by our teachers to make our gardens by eco systems, so that the plants could be United and grow with their families in health.
3 years later it is so exciting and heart warming to see these babies bloom strong and tall in their new home.
Thank you to everyone who makes efforts big and small to continue these legacies and restore all our relatives to Wholeness!

What a beautiful day yesterday turned out to be! We got to harvest hawthorn leaf and flower on the dechutes River, play in the water, feast on salmon sandwiches and watermelon, and have long luxurious heart conversations in the shade of the hawthorn groves. Thank you to all that came out and helped us harvest this medicine who will go into our teas for clinic and this years canoe journey!