Darlene Etcitty, Hogback NM
The difference between how we lived before and how we live now, you can see it in something as simple as this (points to a soda can). Processed foods, fast food… we eat it every day. It tastes good, but it’s changed us.
Now we sit more. We eat and don’t move like we used to. You can see it in our young kids more weight issues, more health problems. We go to the doctor, and they tell us to eat better, to cut back on sugar and salt. We hear it but we don’t always listen.
Back then, we didn’t have those kinds of foods. We planted and grew what we ate, even in the desert. We didn’t say it couldn’t be done. We made it happen. We prepared our food, stored it, and made it last through the seasons. We watched the moon, the sun, and the stars they guided us. They told us when to plant and when to harvest.
We gathered plants, bundled them, and stored them. We had cellars for our food, our own kind of refrigerator. We dried our meats and saved them. We planned ahead.
When people got sick, herbalists would go out and gather medicine from the land. That was our pharmacy. Those were our remedies for colds, coughs, and more. It came from what was given to us.
Now, we don’t do that the same way. We go straight to the hospital, take what we’re given, even when we don’t fully understand it.
I’m not saying everything from today is wrong but we’ve forgotten what we knew.
We were taught how to take care of ourselves from the land, from the seasons, from our own knowledge.
That’s something we need to remember.