Finding healing roots between Ojibway, Mennonites

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 20/03/2016 (3381 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A pair of researchers—one of Mennonite background, another an Ojibwa elder—have collaborated to show the link between early Mennonite settlers and the Aboriginals who first occupied the land is stronger than what some assume.

The story as it has been told, of hard-working Mennonites descending on untouched terrain, battling the elements to find their way, is not inaccurate. But Jason Dyck, an independent researcher from Winnipeg who grew up in Morden, and David Daniels, an Ojibwa from Long Plain First Nation near Portage la Prairie, believe more could be said about how Mennonites came into contact with their Aboriginal neighbours.

The duo approached this research in an unorthodox fashion, by examining a medicine chest on display at the Mennonite Heritage Village in Steinbach that does not acknowledge whether its various bottles and jars have been influenced by Aboriginals.

Daniels heard about the medicine chest and figured the artifact must hint at the common historical roots in the healing traditions of both Ojibway and Mennonite people, a subject he and Dyck felt deserved further probing.

Although they did not find evidence the medicine chest is directly linked with Ojibway insight, the trunk helps illustrate commonalities in how the Mennonites and Ojibway, two of Manitoba’s defining groups, shared a history in medicine traditions.

“The bottom line is that we just don’t know and this research is incomplete in making a concrete link,” explained Dyck. “What is for sure is that they did use common healing ingredients. Some of the plants that they used in those remedies were also held in common.”

The medicine chest in MHV’s possession belonged to Aeltester Franz F. Enns, who used it beginning in 1901, the first years of the Terek Mennonite settlement in southern Russia. Enns learned and then practiced homeopathy, utilizing an ample supply of herbs he prepared himself.

“Even though there was a medical doctor and a drugstore in the settlement, many people came to father for help,” reads a note written by one of Enns’ children.

A written record specified how often certain medicines were dispensed. In the left margin was the price expected, to the right was what Enns received. In some cases where no price is listed he gave away medicines for free to relatives, close friends and those who could not afford it.

Enns moved with his family to Canada in 1918 and taught homeopathy until shortly before his death in 1940.

Though a direct connection between the chest and Ojibway health traditions is not traced, it is obvious the trajectories of Ojibway and Mennonite health traditions took similar paths.

Collaborations between the two groups and medicine date back to Elizabeth Russel, an Ojibway healer, who is said to have cured hundreds of various illnesses like cancer in the early decades of the 1900s. The Winnipeg Medical Association, though, sought to stop her practice because she did not have a formal license. The court did not stop her.

One of Russel’s patients was Heinrich Doerksen, a Mennonite man told by multiple doctors his cancer was incurable and leg amputation was the lone solution. But he was cured by Russell, who applied her poultice of herbs and used drawing plaster to discard the residual cancer cells from his body.

“This meeting between Ojibway and Mennonite individuals stands as an example of the meeting of two cultures in the context of an appeal to traditional medicine,” reads the study.

The paper added that this case is one example of how plant-based medicine treatments have been marginalized by formal medical institutions.

The Mennonite and Ojibway traditions were also related in that they felt an individual’s health was not dependent on physical symptoms but also psychological and spiritual conditions.

There is also a noted collaboration, acknowledged by archivist Conrad Stoesz, of an East Reserve midwife whose time with an Aboriginal woman healer encouraged the remedies she used.

Dyck and Daniels presented their paper last fall at the Mennonites, Medicine and the Body conference at the University of Winnipeg and more recently at a church service last month at Mitchell Community Fellowship.

“Our Mennonite settlers have more things in common with the Aboriginal occupants of this land than we tend to think about,” said Dyck. “We both used to use natural remedies to heal ourselves in simple cost-effective ways and the plants around us have a lot more valuable properties than just eye candy in our gardens.”

The duo helped plant a medicine garden at Thunderbird House in Winnipeg, a centre serving the city’s aboriginal communities, and plan to involve inner-city youth in their gardening again this year.

Daniels said he was pleased his hunch shows there are links in the health traditions between the two peoples, even if those connections are not readily known.

“Cultures can co-exist, that’s one of the things Jason and I are trying to reinforce,” he said.

Daniels explained traditional medicines practiced by Aboriginals have been demonized for decades, although its success is recognized in historical writings. He said these days other cultures are more open to hearing of the benefits of medicinal plants.

Andrea Dyck, the curator at the Mennonite Heritage Village, considers it a fair assumption there wasn’t much interaction between Mennonites and Aboriginals, but that doesn’t make it true.

“We acknowledge now and see a little bit more that (the immigrants) weren’t settling empty land, the land had been cleared of Aboriginal inhabitants, but that isn’t the way the story has been told in the past,” said Dyck, noting other immigrant groups have also historically avoided telling of Aboriginals.

“In the case of the Metis, it isn’t a story that I think Mennonites have talked about a lot, and one that I do think would be very neat to get into a little bit more,” she said.

Jason Dyck said their research paper is not fully complete and may be made publicly available at a later date.