Page 27 - The Noise November 2016

The complex dynamics of the shop can be hard to keep-up with at times. It’s certainly disconcerting, trying to sell turquoise earrings to one customer and another comes up asking how to heal a sinus infection.
After two years-and-a-half years of interning at Winter Sun, I started going to Northern Arizona University for Biomedical Science. At last, being able to see these plants under a microscope. Finding out why these plants heal the way they do, is a most gratifying experience. I now live in the dorms, and already people on my floor are knocking on my door to ask for tea that will ease their cough, or
a steam that will help with acne. I hope to continue this medicinal practice and eventually become a Naturopathic Doctor. For now, the most educative and enlightening moments, are when I listen to Phyllis impart the knowledge she thinks is just common sense.
She once told me the story of one of her mentors, a traditional Hopi elder. He said of a dream: “I was walking in the fields, and the plants, they were crying. When I asked them why they were so sad, they told me, ‘the children don’t know us anymore.’”
Phyllis has since gone out of her way to teach young people the ways of
the herbs, so the knowledge will not be forgotten. She helped create the Ethnobotanical Research Association, and spent many moons documenting plants and their uses so that the information will remain preserved. Phyllis has taken on many apprentices before me, and I’m sure I won’t be the last. Happy to be among the students of Phyllis Hogan, I’ll remain listening — the next link in the chain of Southwestern herbalists.
Camp Verde Corn Maize Photography by Miguel Guzman exquisitelabs@gmail.com
Global Food Activist in Flagstaff on Nov. 15
Green NAU is excited to announce an evening with Dr. Vandana Shiva Tues., Nov. 15, 7PM at the Prochnow Auditorium.
This event is open to all NAU students, faculty, staff and the general community.
Dr. Vandana Shiva is an author, activist and scientific advisor who focuses on global food security and environmental sustainability. Dr. Shiva combines intellectual enquiry with activism, and her work spans teaching at universities worldwide to working with farmers in rural India. Her books The Violence of the Green Revolution and Monocultures of the Mind, pose essential challenges to the dominant paradigm of non-sustainable, industrial agriculture.
Through her books Biopiracy, Stolen Harvest and Water Wars, Dr. Shiva outlines the social, economic and ecological costs of corporate-led globalization.
In 2003, Time Magazine identified Dr. Shiva as an environmental ‘hero’, and Asia Week has called her one of the five most powerful communicators in Asia. In 2010, Forbes Magazine identified Dr. Shiva as one of the Seven Most Powerful Women on the Globe.
27 • NOVEMBER 2016