The Four Medicines of Life

Grade Level: Grades 4 and 5   Subject Areas: Potawatomi Language and Culture Science Language Arts Technology   Click on a word in the circle to hear it pronounced.

Objectives

• Students will identify the plants that are the Potawatomi Four Medicines of Life.

• Students will write and speak the Potawatomi words for the Four Medicines of Life.

• Students will investigate scientific taxonomies of the Four Medicines of Life using media of their choice.

• Students will investigate Potawatomi cultural relavance of each of the Four Medicines of Life and compare their findings with other indigenous tribes in the Great Lakes and North Eastern regions.

Technology Equipment and Skills Needed:

• Skills Needed: Library/research skills, interview skills, digital photography skills, taxonomy classification skills, web browsing and e-mail skills.

• Technology Equipment Needed: Digital camera and computer with Internet access.

Lesson Overview:

Students collaborate to identify where to locate and identify the Four Medicines of Life through a variety of means.

They will go to the school's intranet site and locate the language lesson for the Four Medicines of Life to study the Potawatomi spelling and pronunciations.

They will create a visual scientific taxonomy of the Four Medicines of Life through a medium of their choice (Word Processing, Posters, Paintings, etc.)

Through interviews with family/tribal members or from previous language/cultural lessons, students will determine the Potawatomi cultural relevance of the Four Medicinesof Life.

They will compare their findings with other indigenous tribal students in the Great Lakes and Northeastern Regions with online communication and present their findings in written format.

Cultural Content:

The Medicine Wheel teaches us about the Four Sacred Medicine Plants. These plants are cedar (North), tobacco (East), sweetgrass (South) and sage (West). These gifts help us in balance and harmony - physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually.

Kiski is used for prayer and burned for smudging. A daily drink of cedar tea keeps one in good health. A great deal of cedar is used for sweatlodges, sundances and other ceremonies.

Sema is offered each day to the Creator in thanksgiving and prayer. It is offered at the root of plants and trees for their medicines and use. A pinch of tobacco is put in each moccasin so dancers will do well and dance for the proper reasons. It is offered to the animals of the air, water and ground when they are killed for food or for use to thank the spirit of the animal for giving of itself.

Wishpemishkos is burned to smudge ourselves. We smudge our head to clear our minds of negative thoughts (our eyes, ears and mouth to see, hear and say only good things). We smudge the rest of our body and pray to keep it in good health. That our hands, arms and legs will work towards the benefit of our fellow Anishnaabe. A braid of wishpemishkos, blessed over a smudge of sage, is hung in the home for protection.

Wabshkekbyag is used for prayer at the end of each day. It is used to smudge (cleanse) the area prior to any event or meeting.

Background Information:

The principal repository of medical lore for Anishnabeg peoples is Midè, an untranslatable word, usually translated as Grand Medicine Society. One of the principal teachings of Midè is that every plant has a use -- but not necessarily as a medicine or food! All the uses have to be learned, which was part of the instructional lifeways of traditional upbringing -- now almost entirely lost. The Midè initiate (usually someone who was sick and needed to be cured that way) used to be taught a sort of general medical course, general health. Other medicines were held by individuals, and most knew only a few. Ojibwe medicines tended to be complex mixtures of many kinds of different parts of plants (almost always roots, though), gathered and treated at different times of year, mixed in specific proportions, and administered in scheduled doses of particular size and dilution. This was never public knowledge, and much of it was learned only by apprenticing to a particular doctor to learn his or her particular medicines.

Users of traditional plants for flavorings, teas, and tonics should be aware that all of them definitely have a certain general health value: nutritional, vitamins and minerals. People of the North did not have green vegetables, fresh fruits, etc. available during the long winters. Fruits and gardened vegetables such as corn, squash, pumpkins and beans, were dried, but these do not supply the full range of vitamins and minerals (although drying usually preserves what they do contain better than any other method). Anishnaabeg people mostly drank teas, rather than water, and these contained vitamin and mineral components not available to them during winters from other parts of stored or hunted food. So some of these can be thought of as vitamin/mineral supplements. Unfortunately, scientists usually haven't gotten around to analyzing such wild plants for nutrient content, unless they have become of economic interest to white people or businesses. (What we do know is that unless it were a general starvation winter, Native people didn't suffer from scurvy or any of the other deficiency diseases. They were getting quality nutrition when fresh plant foods were unavailable for many months.)

~ Paula Giese, 1995 ~ Native Foods

Assessment:

Class develops rubrics for:

1. Identification the Four Medicines of Life.
2. Writing and speaking of the Potawatomi Language for the Four Medicines of Life.

Teacher and students develop rubrics for:

1. Presentation of scientific taxonomies of the Four Medicines of Life.
2. Content and presentation of finding with other indigenous tribes.

Curriculum:

Curriculum Cross Reference Key

Standards and Benchmarks

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