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Four Sacred Medicines – Cedar

 

by Katarina Ziervogel

On this website, there is an e-ceremony and e-smudge available to honour the families and of the Missing and Murdered Indigenous women with four Sacred Medicines (Tobacco, Sage, Cedar, Sweetgrass) to choose from. Four Sacred Medicines comes from one of the First Nations’ tribe Anishinaabe. But the sacred medicines are used widely for all Indigenous people within their prayers, rituals, and healing circles within the community and our people. Many cultures and religions use plant medicines for several reasons. In Anishinaabe and for all Indigenous people, this is best known as smudging. Each of four Sacred Medicine has its own healing for specific areas to a human being or the environment.

Cedar is the South of the four Sacred Medicines. Cedar can be used in a different way, such as brewing into tea, cedar bath, or smudging. It is an excellent medicine to treat people who are unwell and in need of nursing themselves back to good health. Cedar has a great benefit of purifying a person or a place. Like other Sacred Medicines, it’s best if Cedar is picked from nature although you should leave a tobacco offering for the nature.

All Sacred Medicines benefits both people and the Mother Earth greatly and should be taken care of with great caution and respect. If you wish to honour one of the missing and murdered Indigenous women or their families, smudging is the way to do it. You can choose to perform an e-smudging available on the website or reach out to the Indigenous community and ask where you can find some.

Katarina Ziervogel is a Toronto-based writer who was an intern in Taken’s writing department last season, and is now studying at @RyersonU. Katarina was an @myorangedaisy documentary subject and keynote speaker, and a recent nominee for the YM-YWCA Women of Distinction Awards. Follow her journey as a deaf, Indigenous female filmmaker from Winnipeg living her dreams in Toronto on Twitter @katarinaun . Each week, Katarina will share a new blog with Taken’s audience that relates to Canada’s MMIWG2S. This week is part two in a four part series on sacred medicines.

# MMIW #MMIWG #MMIWG2S