Jennifer Fedun, a researcher, writer and editor based in Yorkton, visited the Canora Ukrainian Heritage Museum on October 20 to give a presentation on Ukrainian Folk Medicine.
Her interests and areas of study have included the Eastern European diaspora (mass dispersion of a population from its native territories), early 20th century prairie life and foraging practises. She currently studies Social and Local History with the University of Oxford (UK) and continues to devote much of her time to collecting oral histories of Ukrainian Canadian domestic life.
Fedun said in Canada, an interest in Ukrainian Canadian folk medicinal and herbal practices is a part of a general preoccupation with the so-called pioneer generation of Ukrainians, their children, and their frontier experiences of adaptation to new culture and a new environment, after leaving the Ukraine and coming to Canada beginning in the 1890s.
“The overwhelming majority of 170,000 emigrants were recruited to settle the Western Canadian frontier on the prairies,” she said. “They were conceived by the Canadian government as Canada’s future agricultural base.
During those early years in Canada, identifying and foraging for wild and semi-wild plants, herbs, and mushrooms was an important part of folk medicine practices amongst the Ukrainian Canadian settlers.
“Healing techniques typically required both wild and cultivated species,” said Fedun. “Clearing land for a garden was a priority for a people long accustomed to agriculture and food self-sustainability. This was usually done at the same time as home construction. While a garden helped create food security and could host and grow familiar healing flora brought from the Old World, it was indispensable to know and use nature’s wild bounty for food and for remedy-making.”
In the immigrant Ukrainian communities, traditional medicinal practices were passed on by word of mouth, through observation and discernment that came through experience. Those who were born in Canada had knowledge passed down to them, typically by mothers and grandmothers or other senior female relatives, learning plants’ uses by watching others forage and then treat illnesses.
Both fresh and dried versions of plants could be used, with others being muddled into elixirs, boiled down into infusions, and added to pork fat to make a rich salve, said Fedun.
Prevalent foraged plants included stinging nettle, a valued treatment for arthritic joints
when warmed and taken as a tisane, and the rosehip, which was boiled with willow bark and sugar, strained, and mixed with alcohol to make an effective cough syrup.
Chaga, a fungus which grows on birch trees and has been found near Crystal Lake, is effective at reducing tumors and has been used to fight cancer.
Non-native/cultivated plants were also used with frequency, said Fedun.
“A tea made from miata yabluneva (‘fuzzy mint’/apple mint) would settle upset stomachs, as well as provide a breath-freshening sweetness after a meal,” she said. “A liquid prepared by infusing or boiling hops could heal urinary problems, as well as relax those suffering from restlessness. Hops would also be stuffed, along with wool, into pillows to prevent insomnia.
“‘Kitchen medicine,’ or home remedies made from readily available resources such as
foodstuffs, alcohol, cleaners, and kitchen materials rounded out folk treatments. Heavy rye bread, dipped in boiled milk, would be used as a poultice to absorb pus from boils. This act of drawing out, pulling out both the manifestation of the illness (pus), along with the root of the illness (emotional or mental in nature), is a theme found again in treatments such as the use of ‘holy mud’, a mixture of black soil and blessed water. This mud would be packed onto a wound and left for a period of time in order to draw out infection and cleanse; both physically and spiritually; the area of the body that was harmed.”
Fedun said a parallel can be drawn between these folk treatments and the spiritual healing practice of the water and wax ceremony, whereby a healer (baba sheptukha), a woman thought to have sacred, metaphysical healing skills, ‘draws out’ fear from an individual with ritualized prayers and the pouring of wax into water for divination purposes.
She said many Ukrainians still living in the Ukraine have carried on these and other folk healing traditions in recent years.
“When the Soviet Union dissolved, there was very little hospital or health care available,” said Fedun “So many people simply went back to the woods for these healing plants.”
Fedun continues to travel the prairies and give presentations on Ukrainian Folk Medicine in an effort to ensure that this knowledge is not lost for future generations.
During her travels, she said she regularly acquires new knowledge from meeting those who have extensive experience with Ukrainian Folk Medicine.
