Métis Medicine Man Shares Knowledge

by Marc St. Germain (Dec 1997)

Traditional healer Eugene Serre was in the woods near his hometown Desaulnier, Ontario, gathering plants when he heard that the Métis Nation of Ontario was holding an Assembly nearby.

"I was so afraid I would miss you," said Serre "I shot right out of the woods; I had feathers in my hair; I was dirty, and there you were."

The following day Serre gave a seminar on traditional healing and herbs under the big tent. It was one of the highlights of the 4th Annual General Assembly, for the two dozen people who attended.

Dressed in a tunic, embroidered with traditional native designs, Serre impressed the attentive audience with his knowledge of herbal and traditional remedies. Spectators shared their own folk wisdom and stories.

"I learned as much as anyone out there," Serre commented afterward.

Serre introduced listeners to the Four Sacred Medicines, sage, cedar, tobacco and sweet grass, as well as many other plants and herbs. In addition, he explained the correct way to gather and prepare common plants in order to create uncommonly powerful remedies for all kinds of ailments.

A resident of Desaulniers, Ontario, a small town not far from the site of the General Assembly at River Valley, Serre learned the specifics of traditional medicine from the Anishnabe. He said:

"I was trained by the Anishnabe, and the outfit that I am wearing, I have only worn it three times. I wore it when I got it, I wore it at my mother's funeral, and I wore it yesterday.

"With the teachings I've had you don't go out and buy a similar outfit and say, 'Well, I'm a medicine man." Some (medicine people) are drum-barriers, others are pipe-carriers, others have eagle staffs. We hear about people who just try and take an eagle staff, but they are not recognised by the nation, these things, you have to earn them, and I have paid the price."

Serre's seminar at the Assembly was the first time he had shared his knowledge with others in a formal venue and format. He hopes to do more presentations, but hesitates to call himself a teacher or even a healer. He says:

"I like to talk about it, but I have never acknowledged myself as a healer. I do gather plants for other people. I do pray for other people. I sometimes turn my mind and energy to a specific problem of another person. I am a helper.

"I do not consider myself a teacher. Elders are teachers. I am just embarking on this road. Myself, I can do nothing. Everything comes from the creator. He might use me as a hunter uses a bow."

Serre remembers his father who used many traditional remedies.

"I am new at this, even though I have always carried and used medicine, the awareness of it is very new. These things rub off on you without you even knowing it." Serre says that, without realising it, he has been training all his life by absorbing knowledge from the world around him.

"They are things that you don't know that you know. It was just a way of life," he says.

Serre is Métis and says,

"We are very much aware, at least in my family, of history and our Aboriginal ties.

"We are Métis. It has always been acknowledged in the family. Our mother always took a special tone of voice to tell us of our grandfather who was out on the fur trade six months out of the year with the Natives.

"I acknowledge my European ancestry. We were all tribes once and a thousand years is not very far removed. I come from a tribe in the northwest of France. These Franks they were close to nature too. They had their hunters, their warriors, and their priests.

"Their blood runs in my veins. Their way of thinking, their values, that feeling of closeness with what's around you; I feel a great deal for the First Nations when they say that the land is their spirit, that if you deprive them of their land you deprive them of their spiritual aspiration.

"You take away my medicines, I am a dead tree."

Serre has used traditional medicines all his life and although he has seen them work, and experienced their worth first hand, he knows that others are skeptical. He chalks it up to faith in ancestral wisdom.

"You have to strip the bark off a poplar from the top coming down, not from the bottom up. 'What's the difference?' the white man will say. These things are known through thousands of years of experience. I know enough not to question those things.

"We are different. We are at home."

The Métis Voyageur Vol. I No. 1 Dec 1997, p. 13
Métis Nation of Ontario, Toronto, ON

[Previous] | [HOME] | [Next]