NATIVE COOKING AND MEDICINE FINAL WORKSHOP

This week marks the final workshop in the spring Native Cooking and Medicine series, hosted by Barbara Drake at the Tongva Living History Garden. Students, some of whom have been coming all semester, and some of whom came for the first time, all took part in hand sewing leather tobacco pouches to give as gifts to visiting elders who come during the summer months from Canada to the Claremont Colleges. Barbara taught the students how to sew the pouch with sinew, decorate it with beads and stamps, and then fill it with a mixture of sacred herbs.

The four plants in the tobacco pouch are tobacco, white sage, sweetgrass, and redwood, all of which are plants that symbolize smoke to carry prayers into the sky. As they worked, Barbara taught the students the welcome song of the Chumash people. As I worked in the garden to put in the signs to mark all the different gardens, I listened to all their voices, some more timid than others, joining Barbara to sew a little magic into the lining of the prayer pouches.