Food for Medicine

For millennia, Native Americans have lived in close association with their surrounding environments. This personal connection allowed the people to understand the processes that both enhanced and harmed their sources of nourishment. To ensure a continuous supply of food, various methods of landscape management were prescribed. Due to changes in policy and property control, traditional methods have been largely replaced by contemporary strategies that reflect goals unrelated to food production.

Have food-producing plants declined or become less productive without traditional forest management? This research focuses on fifteen food-producing plants found within the Yurok territory in northwest California. Since the ancestral land of the Yurok Nation encompasses territory found within a variety of present-day jurisdictions, this research focuses only on traditional Yurok land that overlaps present-day Redwood National and State Parks. Background research includes: biological aspects, current gathering laws/regulations, traditional management/gathering practices, and any available oral histories about or associated with the plant species. To answer our proposed question, public trail surveys will locate where these plants exist today in an effort to evaluate what conditions/communities best suit their ability to produce food.

It is the goal of this research project to produce a compilation of information in an effort to set the foundation for future research projects regarding these and other food-producing plants. This information could be used to: educate the public, to get the community interested in growing/caring for traditional foods, and to possibly recommend forest management techniques for Redwood National and State Parks.