Charlotte lives near the reservation in South Dakota where Judy’s grandfather, James W. Lynd, was born and raised. Charlotte is a medicine woman who treated her tribal members during the COVID lockdown with medicines she created from foraged plants, herbs and trees in her area. Unseasonable storms prevented her from having these available this year, so we planted about twenty of the herbs she needs, harvested, dried and mailed them by priority mail. Fortunately, all of these arrived safely. Only the 25 Elderberry softwood starts I prepared from my two plants arrived moldy and unusable.

We learned of her plan to plant elderberries as a cash crop to support her dream. It is to support native food sovereignty through native seed collection, storage and distribution; to foster community physical and mental health through community gardens and a community cultural center serving the children and adults; and to teach her fellow tribal members to heal themselves, using traditional means. 

Native Americans have a lower life expectancy–nearly six years less–and higher disease occurrence than other racial/ethnic groups in the U.S. Roughly 13 percent of Native American deaths occur among those under the age of 25, a rate three times more than that of the total U.S. population. Native American youth are more than twice as likely to commit suicide, and nearly 70 percent of all suicidal acts in Indian Country involve alcohol. Native Americans are 670 percent more likely to die from alcoholism, 650 percent more likely to die from tuberculosis, 318 percent more likely to die from diabetes, and 204 percent more likely to suffer accidental death when compared with other groups. These disparities exist because of disproportionate poverty, poor education, cultural differences, and the absence of adequate health service delivery in most Native communities. (racism.org.)

We provided her with starter money to purchase elderberry plants and equipment. The tribe has granted her seven acres of land for ten years and her next project is to dig a well so she doesn’t have to water by hand with buckets.