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Diseases

Story as told by Doreen Patrick

Our Native people did not have any sicknesses until the Europeans came. When we did get sick we had our own medicinal plants for aches and pains and we fixed it..

I remember my dad telling me about his grandfather Jerry Boyd; how he took care of his own broken leg. He said he got birch bark, off a birch tree and he put it on his broken leg. He set the birch bark on fire while it was on his leg and after he put out the fire it set hard like a cast. When they had a headache or pains, they took the sap of a birch tree. When they got sores they used the pitch from pine tree.

When the first Europeans arrived 250 years ago, they brought with them serious diseases; the influenza, small pox, tuberculosis, etc. The small pox epidemics swept BC killing 1/3 of the First Nations population. The small pox/influenza epidemic in 1493 to1520 wiped out 90-95% of the aboriginal people. It continued to wipe out aboriginal communities until the 19th and 20th century.

Before the arrival of the Europeans there was an estimate of 105,000 aboriginal people living in BC. By 1929, the population dropped to 22,000. It was devastating how many people lost their lives to the epidemic. In some cases the entire community and lineages were wiped out, and it especially took the lives of elders and children.

An elder from ‘Uskai Talbun Tl’at (Kluskus) said she survived the small pox epidemic because she stayed in a very remote area around Kluskus. She remembers her grandmother giving her medicinal medication and told her this will save your life. The elder also said that if strangers came they always were carrying sickness. One incredible story of survival she told me was of a child who was always sick and left behind to die by the family. Another family took the child in and gave her their own medicinal medication and she survived.

This elder also told me about another incident of her own adopted child who was very ill and the doctor had no hope for the child’s survival and sent him home. The elder was not going to give up. She went to get the medicinal medication and gave it to the child. The child survived. The doctor thinking the child had died was surprised when she brought the child in for a check up. The doctor asked her what she had done because his x-ray showed everything had cleared up in his chest.

We also had our medicine men that were called dune duyun or nelhujun. When a person got deliriously sick a dune duyun did rituals and amazingly the person got well. I believe in these dune duyuns because I have seen it with my own eyes when a person was healed. My sister and I were frightened by the dune duyun but when my sister got very sick and she couldn’t get up the next morning, the dune duyun or nelhujun came and asked if someone was sick. After he doctored my sister, she got up and said “I am hungry, what have you got to eat”? We all burst out laughing, relieved she was well because she had been a very sick girl.