Barbara Johnson, Part 1, Transcript Section 20

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Barbara Johnson, Part 1
Transcript Section 20

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KAREN: So did you -- you said your grandmother who raised you was a traditional healer or midwife. Did she teach you things?

BARBARA: Well, actually, she would talk to me about it, you know.
She -- she did a lot of deliveries that even the doctors wouldn't be able to do. You know. Turning the baby, you know, when it's in the wrong place and stuff like that. She used to be able to do that, you know. And she would just tell me how, you know, how she did that.

But I -- I would just watch her, you know, stuff that she would do. She used to bring home the pregnant moms and then she'd deliver the baby at our house and then take them home the next day.

And she was very good, you know, at what she did. And when she -- you know, she lived to be 100 years old, and she didn't have -- she didn't have no heart condition, you know, no high blood pressure, no diabetes.

The thing that really got her was arthritis. You know. So something I inherited from her.

KAREN: It runs.

BARBARA: Yeah.

KAREN: Did she use plants for traditional medicine?

BARBARA: Yeah, she did. She would have different things.

Like I know one time after I had my -- one of my babies at -- I was bleeding a lot and so she -- she went out into the woods and got some kind of pine and put it on the stove in water, and boiled it and boiled it and boiled it and boiled it, and then she made me drink it. And that helped.

I wished that I could have written down everything she did, but yeah, she had a lot of stuff that she would fix, you know, for medicine. And she used devil club juice a lot.

KAREN: Oh.

BARBARA: She used that a lot.

KAREN: What does that do?

BARBARA: Well, you could use it for, you know, a lot of people when they have cancer, they start using that. And sometimes that helps them, you know. And just different things they'd use it for. It was just a medicine they believed in using, and it does help.

KAREN: And how do you prepare that?

BARBARA: Oh, you have to -- I think in the springtime when the snow's still on the ground, you get the devil clubs, and you dry them and then take the -- take the thorns off of them, you know, and then you take -- take the peelings off, dry that. And that's what you boil.

KAREN: So that's the stem you're talking about or the weed?

BARBARA: The peel, the peeling, the outside, you know, like where the thorns are, you take that -- scrape that off and then you skin it.

KAREN: So it's like the stem.

BARBARA: Yeah.

KAREN: The stalk or whatever. Yeah. Okay.

BARBARA: Yeah. The outside skin of that, you boil that. Or you could -- you know, you could use like powder, you put that in the oven and you just dry it, so it's crispy, and then you grate or grind it, and you could use it as powder, too.

Because I used that one time when there -- this one lady had a bad infection on her leg, you know, and she was a diabetic, and also she was allergic to penicillin.

So I thought, well, I had just been back from Gustavus and there was a Native lady from Hoonah that taught us how to fix the devil club.

So I had a bag of powder that we had made and so I thought, well, maybe if I mix it with the Bacitracin, it might -- maybe that will help her better.

You know. So I gave it to her and you know, she used to use those kind of things, too, and oh, she was really happy that I gave it to her, and I told her to use that on her skin.

It took, like, three or four days and it was healed up. Yeah. And here she was a diabetic, you know, they don't heal real easy.

KAREN: Yeah.

BARBARA: So that's how I used that, you know. That was pretty good.
There's someone in Sitka that makes that for -- for ointment, too.

KAREN: Oh.

BARBARA: Devil club.

KAREN: That they sell now?

BARBARA: Uh-hum. Yeah. And soap and stuff. But that -- that's one of our medicines that we use a lot. That's what SEARHC has, that leaf, that fidelco (phonetic) leaf.

KAREN: That's their logo?

BARBARA: Yeah.

KAREN: I've never seen their logo.

BARBARA: Yeah. That's their logo.

KAREN: Oh, neat.

BARBARA: So. And that's our Native medicine.

KAREN: I'm glad -- I'm glad it has a good purpose because when you're walking through the woods --

BARBARA: I know.

KAREN: -- it's horrible.

BARBARA: Yeah. It's good for something, you know.

KAREN: Yeah. Everything has a purpose.

BARBARA: Yeah.

KAREN: That's good.

BARBARA: Uh-hum.