 Hi everyone, I'm Linda Black Elk, I'm the Food Sovereignty Coordinator at United Tribes Technical College over in Bismarck, North Dakota. But today I'm in the middle of Minneapolis at Riverside Park on the traditional homelands of the Ojibwe and the Dakota because I want to show you some of the amazing foods and medicines that are growing all around us even in this really sort of urban environment. I think people take for granted that, you know, natural areas of course have lots of things to forage and lots of things that people can use but I don't think that people think of these urban spaces as being really useful and having lots of amazing gifts that are a part of Mother Earth. So join me as we go check some of these plants out. I just found this amazing patch of dandelion greens. Right now it's actually mid-October but these dandelion greens are just looking beautiful and tender and green. Fantastic. Some people think that dandelion greens are a little bitter to eat but bitter is where all the medicine is, right? We can't take that for granted. Dandelion greens are actually known to stabilize blood sugar, to improve pancreas function. You can put them in salads, you can make pesto out of them, you can chop them up and put them in your lasagna. And when you're doing that you're actually eating your medicine, right? This is Nature's Pharmacy right here all around us. Dandelion root has also been used to stabilize blood sugar and improve pancreatic function. Dandelion root tea has also been shown to reduce tumor sizes for people who have cancer. Drinking dandelion root tea every day is really good and it's also been shown to help people get through chemotherapy a little bit better. So it's an amazing food and an amazing medicine that's always right here available for us. Come dandelions into your salad next time. I just found the most gorgeous Burr Oak, Crickus macrocarpa. Check this guy out. Everyone knows that you can eat acorns, right? But did you know that oak bark is actually an amazing medicine for poison ivy? Take some of the large chunks of the bark, boil it down for about 10 to 15 minutes and you can use that liquid on any poison ivy rash and you can use any species of oak for this. And it's wonderful for getting rid of a poison ivy rash. Look at this gorgeous Burr Oak I found right behind this park bench. This is amazing medicine. It's a bitter root but I use Burr Oak root to treat everything from eczema and psoriasis to actually cleansing the blood when people have blood infections. I also use Burr Oak root as a tea to treat any sort of viral illnesses because the root is powerfully anti-viral. If you're looking to make a really simple Burr Oak sav, just harvest these gorgeous huge leaves and soak them in some olive oil for a couple of weeks and you can actually use that olive oil as a sort of lotion for any kind of itchy rash like eczema and psoriasis. Fantastic Burr Oak medicine. Right here in the middle of this city park, there are amazing medicines growing right under this one pine tree. Not to mention the fact that pine trees actually are fantastic medicine. You can use pine pitch for a variety of ailments. You can actually put some into tea and use that as lung support to help clear up the lungs and pine pitch will actually relieve lung and sinus congestion. You can use pine pitch on any kind of wound, open cuts and scrapes and things like that. It'll close up the wound and stop it from bleeding but it'll also help to prevent infection. So it's an amazing medicine to have around. We have some amazing medicines growing right under it as well. So these are stinging nettles, irdica diawisa and if you look closely, you can actually see a lot of stinging hairs all along the underside of the leaves and all along the stem. Those stinging hairs are very well known to have medicine that's powerfully anti-inflammatory. They're great for arthritis so sometimes you'll see people with arthritic joints in their hand whipping themselves with the nettles to get rid of that inflammation but you can also use nettles as a medicine internally to treat things like seasonal allergies and arthritis. Now why would you want to consume something that stings you? Well, with any cooking or drying all of the stinging effect goes away so you don't have to worry about that. So you can make fantastic nettle tea. You can also use the younger leaves at the top of the plant in any kind of recipe. We make nettle pesto, we throw young nettle leaves into all of our soups and stews and so you can eat anti-inflammatory pesto. Isn't that fantastic? But you know what else? Right under the same tree where these nettles are growing in the middle of the city park, we have some gorgeous catnip growing. It's a member of the Mint family and it's an amazing medicine for lung support. We actually have used this a lot during the COVID-19 pandemic. We make a tea out of nettles and out of catnip to treat all kinds of lung inflammation and lung congestion. If you're someone like me who has asthma, you can use catnip to help clear up the lungs and strengthen the lungs so that you're better able to fight infections off. Not only that, under this same tree we see some gorgeous violet leaves. Violets are wonderful for skin issues. Earlier I talked about burdock. A lot of times I'll actually mix burdock and violet leaves together to make a fantastic skin sav. Violet leaves are very soothing for any kind of skin rush, but they're also deliciously edible so you can throw them into all of your salads. Yum. Right now I'm standing under a linden tree, also known as basswood, also known as tilia americana. It doesn't matter what you call it. It gives off such an amazing energy. I actually feel good just standing underneath it. But what a lot of people don't know is that linden, whether you're using the flowers or the leaves, make an amazing tea to help treat anxiety and depression. You can make a tea out of the leaves any time of year when they're available and drink a few cups of that a day and it's just a very uplifting tea. I love to use the flowers that have that gorgeous linden fragrance to them, that beautiful floral scent. And it always makes me feel better and it always just gives me a really nice lift. So don't forget lindens are all around you in almost every city park in the United States. You'll find them right down the street. Check out this amazing rose bush, you guys. Even in here in the middle of October, there's still some beautiful red rose hips. Rose hips are actually really high in vitamin C. So they're used to boost our immune systems so that we can fight off infection. Whether you're going through surgery or you're afraid of developing pneumonia, rose hips can be a fantastic way to boost your immune system and fight off any type of bacterial and even viral infection. Make them into tea, put them in some muffins. Just make sure to remove the seeds because the seeds are actually covered in some tiny little sharp hairs that you definitely don't want to consume. So filter your tea really well, start drinking some rose hip tea. This is Motherwort. Motherwort is a member of the Mint family. It's an amazing medicine for nursing and postpartum mothers. It's called Motherwort for a reason. It alleviates depression. It helps with milk production. But it's also great for anyone who's experiencing some anxiety and depression. A lot of times I'll actually mix this with the linden that we were talking about earlier as a wonderful uplifting tea to help people get through tough times. So don't forget to look for Motherwort. It's really common along edges of wooded areas, shady areas. It loves to grow there and it's always, always there for you. Today we walked around Riverside Park in the middle of Minneapolis and we found so many amazing foods and medicines. I didn't even go over half of what we actually found. A lot of people are concerned when I tell them to, hey, try urban foraging, try foraging in your local city park. They get concerned about pollutants and toxins in the plants. My ideas on foraging are maybe a little different than others because I basically do a comparison. Any time I'm foraging, I ask myself, is this going to be any dirtier or any more polluted than the stuff that's in the grocery store? And the answer is almost always no, of course not. Even here in the middle of Minneapolis, we're able to find foods and medicines that are actually probably a lot cleaner than what you'd find in any of our local grocery stores. Most foods, vegetables, fruits that are in grocery stores have been sprayed with numerous herbicides, pesticides, fungicides in all manner of chemicals and compounds in order to make them more attractive to buyers or in order to increase production and kill the insects that feed on them. And a lot of times those can actually have adverse impacts on our health. So I would much rather take the chance that a dog peed on a plant that I'm about to eat or that a neighbor from two blocks away might have been spraying their lawn for dandelions once this summer than to take my chances on things in the grocery store that are sprayed with all manner of herbicides, pesticides, and fungicides. So I hope that all of you guys will take that chance with me. Get outside, find out what's being provided for you for free right here in Nature's Pharmacy. Find out about all of these amazing foods and medicines that surround us all the time. Thanks for joining me, guys. Thank you all for watching and thank you to Linda for taking the time to share this knowledge with you. She is just an absolute wealth of knowledge. I learned about her first about three or four years ago and have been following her since then and is a huge source of inspiration and education for me. So it really is an honor for you all to get to learn from her. You can follow her on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. And then also she teaches at United Tribes Technical College and you can actually take those classes online which is a really special opportunity out there. So I feel like Linda could spend the next three days in this park alone teaching you what she knows. Probably. But yeah, so thank you all and thanks so much, Linda. Thanks so much, Ro.