Harvesting Seneca Snakeroot
Becca Taylor
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  • ROGER CHARTRAND: It’s called Seneca root…Seneca root.

    LIONEL ALLARD: Do you know what that. What that Seneca root?

    
LORRAINE FREEMAN: Yeah I heard about it…What is Seneca root Mr. Allard?

    LIONEL ALLARD: Well…it is a root that went digging a lot. They use that for medicine.

    
LORRAINE FREEMAN: What kind of medicine?

    LIONEL ALLARD: It’s too strong, I would made you taste it. I have some right here.

    LORRAINE FREEMAN: Oh really?

    LORRAINE FREEMAN: How do you find Seneca root?

    
LIONEL ALLARD: It’s uh—Do you know what dandelion is? Well the root spread like a dandelion but leaf there not the same. It’s root just like any other root. It’s a root that grows in the ground and you dig it. I dug it

    
LORRAINE FREEMAN: How big would this root be?

    LIONEL ALLARD: Well how I could say. All depends on where you…where it is growing like anything else. If its in the right soil it grew bigger eh. Its nicer, a lot. You go other places you see the ground be covered in Seneca root but its all small. It’s just like grass or seed or grains, you see anything. If poor soil you plant it get a real big, Seneca root, its the same thing.

    DELIA ALLARD: He’ll show you after he got some in the garage, drying.

    ROGER CHARTRAND: And ah.. and the root, comes— you can tell the root from the flower, there is two or three little flowers around it. Kind of a pale white—a pinkish pale flower, and then you have a root pickers like a pointed shovel and you just dig it out with one, with just one move. You push it down and pull it up. So you go as fast as possible and you have to take have to pull the top off and just keep the root. And usually you have a something like a bag tied around your waist and you just keep filling it up, you see.

    
ROGER CHARTRAND: —and I believe its used in for medical purposes.

    LIONEL ALLARD: —and boiled it and I drink the juice. For arthritis.

    LORRAINE FREEMAN: What is it— For Arthritis?

    ROGER CHARTRAND: I remember reading on some of these herbiest people selling herb medicine, they do sell that root in ground form. They grind it into a powder and sometimes its made into a capsule and sold for medical purposes. Now, there might be some other uses for it to but I don’t know for sure—


    
DORA SIGURDSON: —sometime they would go by with their wagons and tents and everything from one reserve to the other and they picking Seneca roots and they would stop.

    LAWERENCE SCLEPSKI: Sorry, picking what?

    DORA SIGURDSON: Seneca roots.

    LAWERENCE SCLEPSKI: What are those?

    DORA SIGURDSON: They kind of .. they are a root that you dig and make medicine out of it…. They don’t make it but they would sell them…. It was you know all over the bush you could pick that.

    LAWERENCE SCLEPSKI: Would you ever do something like that?

    DORA SIGURDSON: Umm… we did a little bit. Yeah

    LAWERENCE SCLEPSKI: Who would you sell it to?

    DORA SIGURDSON: Umm… just the storekeeper in town.

    LAWERENCE SCLEPSKI: Now, what did your parents think of the Indians?

    DORA SIGURDSON: Well they were very good friends, actually. We did not know them to well but they were always friendly.

    
LAWERENCE SCLEPSKI: Did any of them visit the farm you were at?

    DORA SIGURDSON: They often stopped when they were going by and they would ask for grease which meant butter or you know they would trade for something else.

    MARY BOULETTE: And we will all jig!


    
[Laughter]


    
ROGER CHARTRAND: They were happy people.

    ROGER CHARTRAND: And at the time the roots did not sell for too high dollar wise, but then everything else was low priced anyways so if you went out and picked one dollar or two dollars worth of root in one day that was pretty good because you could buy quite a lot of stuff for that, you know. So like I said before those people managed to make a pretty good living.

    ROGER CHARTRAND: but ah— I don’t know what it is, but it seems to me there was a market in Japan for that root too and they shipped it to Japan.


  • Bibliography:

    •Allard, Delia. “Oral History with Lionel and Delia Arcand of St. Laurent, MB.” Métis Women of Manitoba Inc. Oral History. Manitoba Archives, 1993 (accessed Jan 20, 2023) Time: 01:18:66 - 03:12:63

    •Boulette, John. “Oral History with John Boulette of Norway House.” Métis Women of Manitoba Inc. Oral History. Manitoba Archives, 1993 (accessed March 24, 2023) Time: 54:31:50 - 54:38:22

    •Chartrand, Roger. “Oral History with Roger Chartrand of Erickson, MB” Métis Women of Manitoba Inc. Oral History. Manitoba Archives, 1993 (accessed Jan 20, 2023) Time: 39:07:47 - 41:37:64

    •Hardy III, Charles. “History in Sound: Deconstructing Sound Based Oral History Presentations.” Oral History Centre. University of Winnipeg, 2018 (accessed March 8, 2023)

    •Sigurdson, Dora. “The Winnipeg Icelanders.” Icelandic Canadian Frón fonds, Manitoba Archives, 1989, (accessed Jan 20, 2023) Tape 2 of 3, Time: 10:51:54 - 12:02:85

  • Images

    •Peter Gorman, “Seneca Snakeroot (Polygala senega), Pleasant Valley Conservancy” via Flickr, Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

    Music

    •Kusturok, Alex, Donnie L’Hirondelle, and Garry Pruden. “Red River Jig” Métis Fiddling for Dancing. Métis Nation of Alberta.

    The Red River Jig is performed by Donnie L’Hirondelle and made available through the Métis Nation of Alberta. The Album Métis Fiddling for Dancing, is made available for free to be used for educational purposes, dancing, listening, and most importantly, for the preservation of the Métis dance music.

    Sounds

    •“Shovel Digging” by dummerman licensed under CC BY-NC 3.0

    •“Pull Plant” by GAF licensed under CC0 1.0

    •“Cactus Pull" by Augdog licensed under CC BY 4.0

    •“kettle boiling” by jimsim licensed under CC BY 4.0

    •“Steam kettle boiling and whistling” by Jagadamba licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0

    •“Pouring Tea into cup in Morocco” by florianreichelt licensed under CC0 1.0

    •“Steam Whistle” by LG licensed under CC BY 4.0

    •“Spring Windy Day Ambience” by biawinter licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0

    •“Prairie Sounds - Cicadas - raw” by Liancu licensed under CC0 1.0

    •“Walking through Hugh grass long” by mirko111 licensed under CC BY 4.0

    •“Wagon cart on gravel” by Martineerok licensed under CC BY 4.0

    •“Running ship steam engine” by deployer licensed under CC0 1.0

    •“Navy ship night” by IsraGallo () licensed under CC BY 4.0

    •“Tokyo-street-market.wav” by xserra licensed under CC BY 4.0

    •“Ueno Shamisen - Japan” by RTB45 licensed under CC BY 4.0

Artist Statement:

According to the oral historian Dr. Charles Hardy III, sound is used to contextualize a story; sound can take you through a moment in time or someone's life. It can give you a reference to timelines and open narrations up sonically to engage people to keep listening.

Harvesting Seneca Snakeroot, explores reflections on Seneca Snakeroot through the memories of Lionel Allard, Roger Chartrand, and Dora Sigurdson. Sharing the journey from harvest to a Japanese marketplace through sounds and personal interpretation, while focusing on Métis perspectives and knowledge of the root. Utilizing the familiar sounds of the crunch under your shoe as you walk into the bush, the sounds of the environment around you, the wind in the trees, the sounds of the shovel digging into the ground, and the sounds of the roots ripped from the soil, brushed off and placed in a basket. But mostly, the experience alongside quiet moments of silence in reflection and giving thanks as we learn about the uses and identifying factors of Seneca Snakeroot.