Coral berry, Symphoricarpos orbiculatus

      Symphoricarpos orbiculatus, coral berry or buckbrush, is a plant of the Caprifoliaceae, formerly Lonicera known as the honeysuckle family.

Back in the biospirit hit zone with an amazing herbal friend. As always face to face, plants in my face pushing me out of your comfort erasure zone. "He didn't urinate down his leg and that's a great place to begin.", Mike Tomlin. Latin name, ‘Symphoricarpos orbiculatus’ from greek and  latin meaning ‘to bear together’ as the fruit drupes are born in a round, clumpy cluster at terminal bud ends and along stem, from bell shaped pale pink white flowers at the axillary leaf nodes in spring and ‘round, sphere shaped’, referring to the shape of the fruit. Found here on central eastern turtle island, east of the spine of mountains drained by the Ar’kanza river basin. The area Kanza is from the Kanza people, ‘aca’ meaning ‘of the south wind’. 

    

     Coral berry is quite opportunistic to any shady area and is abundant in oak hedge post woodland lots, railroad rights of way, field edges and established forest. Symphoricarpos is a woody perennial shrub with opposite leaves, prominently veined, bright green on upper surface, slightly hairy less intense green on the underside, resembling a pinnate leaf pattern. At the leaf axillary junction, in June July midsommer, during longest days dense flowers which become the red coral berries that remain on the thin brown woody branchlets through winter into springun. Coral berry is easily seen, visually noted as you move within the pale gray windy southwind landscape with an exclamation point, due to the rose colored, red glossy berries that persist. Each individual berry looks a tiny pomegranate viewed thru a lope. Why would brilliant showy berries persist through the winter? One taste tells you why hungry critters, mammals leave them alone. Saponins, the berries have a distinct soapy,  unpleasant taste that says on the tongue, as you spit out the berries, leave me alone. Which is the same reason you don’t find huckleberries or blackberries in the winter, because the taste and I already ate them all up this autumn. While sitting with the plant the genius wild herb ways teaching all things needed, in the open wild environment, face to face in the bio spirit hit zone which we all do for biospirit, for the robins who have recently returned from their migration north, duly noted eating the berries, grateful for your song and flapping wings, building nests, the seeds passing through their digestive system and so it goes, the herbal shit chronicles like the divine wind blowing through the bones of my face. The roots form dense mats from suckers.

    A lot of this is random to you not because it’s disconnected. It’s random precisely because of the connection and your disconnection. Things with medicinal plants frequently seem random from the outside, yet from the inside it's clear like thick mud pond scum and Nelumbo lutea. Mainly because with our big monkey brains we can say the words together, ‘medicinal plants’, yet contrary to saying things into existence, manifesting things and so on, plants are a priori living beings in their own sphere. Sometimes the human sphere meets the plant sphere and sometimes it doesn’t. I can call a plant medicine but the plant is always true to itself first. Soapy plants, rheumatism, biofilm, erasure of a people, herbal medicine and so on. 

     The Kanza people and the related tribes of the bioregion all reportedly used coral berry as evidenced by numerous now dated, hard to find ethnobotanical references. They lived within the bison culture. At one time there was an American five cent piece called a buffalo nickel, because the bison or buffalo was truth on the plains prairie province, walking snorting, pounding truth far beyond anything said on paper. On one side was a portrait of a crusted faced elder native american and on the other side a great plains prairie bison.

Recently a penny and a nickel fell out of my wallet and hit the asphalt without making a sound. The coins which within my memory were made of copper and nickel, and made an generous audible, ping, a bell sound when hitting a hard surface. Now the same coins appear counterfeit, stolen, soundless, weightless, worthless money made of pop corn. There is something resonant in loss, like a heart ache, like a broken promise. Because at least the loss is acknowledged within memory as a loss. As time passes further there is no loss because everything is crumbled forgotten. No one is left to remember. No hello and no goodbye, nuthin. No one remains to forget. These cultures and the bison were erased and whatever they knew, both the bison and the people of the plant is more or less suspended, like the February sadness. Unlike plants further east coral berry wasn’t part of the materia medica of the 20th century eclectic physicians. The erasure of the knowledge base of the Kanza people was later applied soon enough to the erasers.  The United Nations in 1948 issued in the Genocide Convention: “Only one of the five means defined in the Genocide Convention is mass murder. The others are: “causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;” “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;” “imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;” and “forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.” So by this definition imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group is a kind of genocide. So we have the bizarre ubiquitous dog park style cult substitution and various childless persons, carting around chihuahuas and parading monstrous pit bull attack dogs on studded chains as deep throted pickup trucks with black tinted windows with bumper stickers saying, 'no today, no tomorrow.', crawl by. As a native american woman told me, "I was poor before they cut me, (for the sterilization procedure) the only difference now is, I'm still poor but now no kids, nuthin." 

     

There are cinema specials on how to conceal and erase your grandfather and grand mothers name. Mirror'd ceiling rooms without time pieces with dazzling lighted fountains of fossil water like giant flushing toilets. One of the ways to erase a people is to erase a people’s womenfolk birthing of children. If you eliminate mother’s you destroy the child. If family planning means abortion and sterilization you will have in time perfect erasure. What you are calling family planning is by the united nations called definition genocide. 

     The IHs began providing family planning services for Native Americans in 1965…the same family planning medical miracle model was also ironically applied to both white women and native american women. Different contexts, different health care delivery systems, different verbal spin, same result. So that by statistical analysis both white women and native american women by 1980 were reproducing at levels below their people's replacement, how convenient. The statistical “The average for white women was 2.42 children in 1970 and that number lowered to 2.14 in 1980; a difference of .28 children in the ten-year span compared to 1.99 for the Native American community. Cheryl Howard, Russell Thornton, and Veronica Tiller, in their separate studies on Navajo, Cherokee, and Apache tribal demographics, contend that higher levels of education among American Indian women, along with the availability of family planning programs, may have contributed to the lower birthrates in 1980. They do not specify sterilization as a partial cause of the decline, but sterilization must be considered as a factor.” You know for me you have to ask, how can a bunch of super educated women, with all kinds of big degrees, not consider sterilization a factor in lower birth rates? Especially in the Dine' culture where wealth is considered your family, your kids, your relations. To deprive people of themselves is a special kind of sick. 25%-50% of these women were sterilized in an atmosphere of trust. They trusted those doctors and nurses, they were trusting people. In 2004 “the Urban Indian Health Institute found that among women using contraception, the most common methods used by urban American Indian and Alaskan Native women age 15–44 years were female sterilization (34%), oral contraceptive pills (21%), and male condoms (21%), not using contraception (25%). However, among the urban Non-Hispanic Whites, the most common methods were oral contraceptive pills (36%), female sterilization (20%) and male condoms (18%), not using (25%)” Let’s be clear a female sterilization rate of 34% vs 20%, native american vs white is statistically a tragedy for native american women in the 1970’s using IHS. Especially when a young woman goes to the IHS to get her tonsils removed and ends up sterilized. Up to 25%-50% of native american women were sterilized in the 1970’s at IHS facilities. Consent was a significant issue. Let’s also be clear 34% vs 20% native american vs white women is not statistically important if all child bearing age women, in both cohorts are using contraceptives at the rate of 75%, and that is not even considering abortion as a method of family planning. A replacement birth of 2.14 vs 1.99 is not statistically important, both numbers mean the same same thing within population demographics, below replacement births. The important point to grasp is that the medical system of health care since 1945 is part of a politicized goal driven agenda delivering both what we could call ‘traditional doctoring’ and less apparent regime objectives. Some of these objectives fit in with health others are questionable. Some practices at this time can no longer be questioned or debated openly in a public forum. A young woman goes to the hospital for possible emergency appendicitis and is discharged with a removed appendix and a BOGO free sterilization. Some one goes in for voluntary substance abuse treatment and gets a free sterilization, chemical lobotomy a long acting antipsychotic injection and another couple of ‘vaccines’. If these things sound 1970’s, 55 years ago history. Think again. These things are happening today, right now. They have chemical injection sterilization like hormone implants, depo provera injections, long acting anti psychotic behavioural health medicine. There are permanent risks, consequences to all these injections. And if you think your light skinned daughter, or son, blue or brown eyed child is somehow so privileged she lives outside the arm of the pharma medico police public health bodhisattva, do gooders, think again. They are everywhere, legion. Always there to help, lend a hand and so on. 

     What exactly is a saponin or a plant that has these constituents? Saponins are foam generating substances, naturally occurring surfactants that produce a lather when stirred in water. For one thing saponins have strong detergent properties that form stable foam and reduce the superficial tension of aqueous solutions, in short a soapy lather. By reducing surface tensions we have the phenomena of removing and settling dirt and oil, washing, washing our skin, washing clothes, cleaning. We love colorful things and the dying of fabric is assisted with saponin materials as mordant so the color will adhere and penetrate the fabric. There are two broad categories of saponins in plants, steroidal saponins and triterpenoid saponins. Steroidal saponins in plants either tend to mimic steroidal substances in the body and can sometimes function as an analog bodily substances or agonist counters, in additional saponin triterpines have a more generalized non-specific effect best understood as a catalyst usually involved in cellular membrane permeability and thus absorption. Some examples of well known herbs with a saponin profile are licorice Glycyrrhiza lepidota triterpine saponins, Aesculus hippocastanum horse chestnut whose saponin content lends it to antiinflammation and venous tissue, Actea species as blue cohosh, Apiaceae species Angelica, ginseng and other aralia species, that significantly contain saponins and also in some way mimic these substances in the body. So women take herbal extract of cohosh or angelica and sometimes in some situations they can help with issues that some link with sex hormones at different stages in the life cycle. Triterpenoid saponins are less steroidal and more analogous to the nebulous areas of anti-inflammatory, absorption of substances on a more cellular level. We can think of saponins ingested orally as a kind catalyst that facilitate a wide variety of positive effects in the body. As an example ginseng is usually considered as a tonic which it is, but a key component of ginseng are the saponins. In TCM or traditional Chinese medicine ginseng is used for surprisingly for the post  MI patient for MIRI. MI is heart attack, and MIRI is the dangerous phase after the heart attack. The infarction refers to size and area of heart tissue damage which we could call primary initial damage within the heart attack event and damage occurring mainly after the repefusion, or restarting up of the heart, heart damage due to a complex but non specific inflammatory response. So MIRI is damage to the heart muscle in the immediate time frame after the heart attack. Normal perspective is that, ‘ok great recovery time, he or she had a heart attack’, but up to 50% of heart muscle damage happens after the main heart attack event as an inflammatory response. In TCM ginseng and its high saponin content is used as a key herbal oral strategy to reduce the inflammation response in the immediacy of the cardiac event.  “Myocardial ischemia is a high-risk disease among middle-aged and senior individuals. After thrombolytic therapy, heart tissue can potentially suffer further damage, which is called myocardial ischemia-reperfusion injury (MIRI). At present, the treatment methods and drugs for MIRI are scarce and cannot meet the current clinical needs. The mechanism of MIRI involves the interaction of multiple factors, and the current research hotspots mainly include oxidative stress, inflammation, calcium overload, energy metabolism disorders, pyroptosis, and ferroptosis. Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) has multiple targets and few toxic side effects; clinical preparations containing Panax ginseng C. A. Mey., Panax notoginseng (Burk.) F. H. Chen, Aralia chinensis L., cardioprotection, and other Chinese herbal medicines have been used to treat patients with coronary heart disease, angina pectoris, and other cardiovascular diseases. Studies have shown that saponins are the main active substances in TCMs containing Panax ginseng C. A. Mey., Panax notoginseng (Burk.) F. H. Chen, Aralia chinensis L., and Radix astragali.”

     Then with regard to saponin containing plants there is the anecdotal co-happening of plants that are used to wash the hair and address joint pain. One plant like that is the thin leaved yucca soap root. Yucca roots when cut up and mixed in water have been used by nearly all native american people for shampoo. In the Dine’ kinalda coming of age ceremony a teen age girl’s hair is washed with yucca roots. Probably her grand mother may know that the same root is a kind of joint life medicine remedy. There was a weekly summer swap meet market place near Tuba, and Kayenta and you could buy these herbs when I lived near there in 1991. Likewise the trading post near Navajo mountain and another near Kaibeto. 

    “Microbial biofilms can be defined as surface-bound microorganism communities that form on living and inanimate solid surfaces and grow embedded in a matrix of extracellular polymeric materials. They are imagined as a significant virulence factor causing permanent chronic and repetitive infections; they are extremely durable to antimicrobials/antibiotics and host immune defenses. This situation seriously complicates treatment options. Approximately 75% of bacterial infections contain biofilms maintained by an extracellular matrix. Various reasons, such as limited diffusion of antibiotics into the biofilm matrix, expression of multidrug efflux pumps, type IV secretion systems, reduced permeability, and the effect of antibiotic modifying enzymes cause biofilm resistance..” ( Irem Tatli Cankaya, E. Inci Somuncuoglu, "Potential and Prophylactic Use of Plants Containing Saponin-Type Compounds as Antibiofilm Agents against Respiratory Tract Infections", Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine, vol. 2021,)

   As we note the written ethnobotany of coral berry written roughly one hundred years ago, it was used similarly by all first nation people of the Arkanza river drainage.

Native American Tribe: Ojibwa, South

Use category: Drug

Use sub-category: Eye Medicine

Notes: Cold decoction of root bark applied to sore eyes. 

Ponca Tribe:Use sub-category: Eye Medicine

Notes: Ponca,  Infusion of leaves used as wash for weak or inflamed eyes.

Notes: Dakota, Decoction of inner bark or leaves used for sore eyes.

Gilmore, Melvin R., 1919, Uses of Plants by the Indians of the Missouri River Region, SI-BAE Annual Report #33, page 116

Used by Ponca, Ojibway, Dakota, Omaha And Ojibway. 

    ‘The long, straight tillers are used as play arrows by young boys. All parts of the plant are used as a poultice for wounds. An infusion of the leaves is used as an eyewash. An infusion of the roots is drunk as a tonic. An infusion of the inner bark is used to treat constipation.’ “culturally Important Plants of the Lakota 1998 Linda Black Elk. Sitting Bull College 1998. 

     It should be noted that Symphoricarpos albus, the white snow berry, is used similarly in TCM traditional Chinese medicine, as an external wash for rashes and irritated skin. It is also used internally to clear heat, promote urination. “Snowberry fruits contain saponin, a naturally soapy substance with antioxidant and antimicrobial effects on the skin. Fresh berries can be crushed and rubbed on skin to cleanse and soothe; they also heal rashes and burns. Native Americans used the berries to clean their hair. Roots were soaked to make tea to treat stomach disorders, and tea made from twigs treated fevers. The spindly branches can be tied together to make brooms. The berries are not edible for humans as they are distasteful. They are considered toxic if eaten in large quantity.’ National Park Service website

     Culpeper on the European honeysuckle, “

'Honeysuckles are cleansing, consuming and digesting, and therefore no way fit for inflammations. Take a leaf and chew it in your mouth and you will quickly find it likelier to cause a sore mouth and throat than cure it. If it be not good for this, what is it good for? It is good for something, for God and nature made nothing in vain. It is a herb of Mercury, and appropriated to the lungs; the celestial Crab claims dominion over it, neither is it a foe to the Lion; if the lungs be afflicted by Jupiter, this is your cure. It is fitting a conserve made of the flowers should be kept in every gentlewoman's house; I know no better cure for the asthma than this besides it takes away the evil of the spleen: provokes urine, procures speedy delivery of women in travail, relieves cramps, convulsions, and palsies, and whatsoever griefs come of cold or obstructed perspiration; if you make use of it as an ointment, it will clear the skin of morphew, freckles, and sunburnings, or whatever else discolours it, and then the maids will love it. Authors say, the flowers are of more effect than the leaves, and that is true: but they say the seeds are the least effectual of all. But there is a vital spirit in every seed to beget its like; there is a greater heat in the seed than any other part of the plant; and heat is the mother of action.'

  “A decoction of the inner bark or leaves has been used as a wash in the treatment of weak, inflamed or sore eyes.

A cold decoction of the root bark has been used as an eye wash to treat sore eyes.

Root is considered anodyne, depurative, and febrifuge and is used to stimulate blood circulation.

In traditional Chinese medicine, roots used for treatment of tonsillitis, toothaches, arthralgia, respiratory infections, and menstrual disorders.” (White Rabbit Anne Christensen)

“BLESS ALL WALKING HERE” PRAYER 

Iⁿdáje Wakáⁿda, 

Father God, 

Yegá aⁿmáⁿyiⁿbe che yak’éwayàbe, Iⁿdáje Wakáⁿda, 

Bless those of us who walk here, Father God. 

Ye dádaⁿ blóga shkáxe daⁿ huwaáli níkashiⁿga aⁿgóta wayágikhìaⁿze che aⁿgíbahòⁿbe. 

We know that you have made all these things and that you have taught much to our people who are your own. 

Wíblahaⁿ.

Iⁿdáje Wakáⁿda, 

Father God, 

Ye gistó wéwihnàⁿ akháhe. 

I am grateful to you for this gathering. 

Yegá zaaníⁿ yáli wayákhiye kóⁿbla akháhe. 

I am wanting you to make it good for everyone here. Wanóⁿble yéche wéwihnàⁿ akháhe. 

I am grateful to you for the food. 

Maⁿyíⁿka Ináⁿ wéwihnàⁿ akháhe. 

We thank you for Mother Earth. 

Dádaⁿ aⁿgóⁿyabe che omáⁿyiⁿka wak’úbe. 

She seasonally provides us with that which we need.

Thank you, Father God. 

Gashéhnaⁿ. That is all.

-Kanza prayer

Find your spot. Dig in. Dig in. Dig deeper.

Deeper into the earth mother. Make love to the earth mother.

Sacred land, sacred sex, the earth mother on the medicine road. 

Chapter 3: Absolute erasure hood: One of the best illustrations

of erasure-hood goes something like this: there are 7 seven

styles of (x) but then then there’s this super special exception

case (y), which is totally different than (x) and absolutely

opposed to (x), and we and everyone of us is totally about (x),

which is why you have to hate (y) and do at least 4 dominant

culture virtue signals to your target demographic, to prove we

can acknowledge your existence. Without those clever virtue

signals, we will have to shun you, disavow your existence. Or

else, and this is not a threat, it's an operant within the program,

when we look at you we can’t see you because you’re not within

our AI algorithm.  Otherwise sorry not sorry, we must deny your

existence, so if you’ve somehow been associated with (y),

there’s still time to virtue signal disassociate with (y). Have

nothing to do with (y). Disavow (y), there’s still time to virtue

signal to the accepted demographic, the right hairstyle, the right

clothes, the right techno accessories, all the right stuff. Then

everybody makes the ‘mmmm ahhh (pause)’ sound, in the back

of the throat,   which emulates a cross between a deep orgasm

sigh heard from mutual pillows, and a super secret hand shake,

“You are so right.”, ‘mmmmm ahhh (pause)’, throat fry, creaking

deep register tone. we have nothing to do with (y) because we

are totally (x). There is no (y) within (x). Look, this whole story 

of this fantastic bravo sierra garbage reveals the fundamental flaw which goes back to the middle eastern bogey man and his

middle eastern fairy tales. The big sky dude created

everything, right? Big sky dude makes these stupid rules,

see the beautiful tree with the luscious fruit? Don’t eat it because if you do then all your children will have to get the trump-biden vaccine, and have heart attacks, just like LeBron James kid Bronny, you know super healthy athlete, 20 years old, ba-boom, heart attack. Oh well, get your booster. Then when everything crashes, always remember, it’s the little mystery guy hiding in the corner who somehow is now pulling all the strings, calling all the shots.

     So who is responsible for all the bad shit. Even though I created the whole universe I am only involved in good stuff. If the big sky dude made everything he sure as hell made the little creepy dude in the corner. It’s a question, either he is empowering the creep and is a wolf in sheep’s clothing dude, or else it’s a huge snow job of an erasure-hood story. Which is it? Let me tell you, it’s trash.

There can be no (x) without (y). (x) is part of (y) and (y) is part of (x). There is no absolute (x) and no absolute (y), (x) and (y) arepart of each other. If someone tells you. “I am the light.”, it’s an impossibility. Light requires darkness to exist. 

Dig in stay out of the spotlight, do no harm. Keep busy. Movement always movement,

even within stillness, be prepared for action . Be well friends.

References:

Gilmore, Melvin R., 1919, Uses of Plants by the Indians of the Missouri River Region, SI-BAE Annual Report #33, page 116

I. Irem Tatli Cankaya, E. Inci Somuncuoglu, "Potential and Prophylactic Use of Plants Containing Saponin-Type Compounds as Antibiofilm Agents against Respiratory Tract Infections", Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine, vol. 2021, Article ID 6814215, 14 pages, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1155/2021/6814215

Practical Kanza vocabulary: https://www.kawnation.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Practical-Kanza-Vocabulary.pdf

https://www.kawnation.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/compiled-prayers.pdf

https://www.fs.usda.gov/wildflowers/ethnobotany/medicinal/ingredients.shtml

Wang R, Wang M, Zhou J, Wu D, Ye J, Sun G and Sun X (2021) Saponins in Chinese Herbal Medicine Exerts Protection in Myocardial Ischemia–Reperfusion Injury: Possible Mechanism and Target Analysis. Front. Pharmacol. 11:570867. doi: 10.3389/fphar.2020.570867

Christensen White Rabbit Institute, https://www.whiterabbitinstituteofhealing.com/herbs/snowberry/

General Accounting Office. (1976, November 4). Investigation of allegations concerning Indian Health Service. U.S. Government Accountability Office. https://www.gao.gov/products/hrd-77-3

Pember, M. A. (2018, March 15). ‘Amá’ and the legacy of sterilization in Indian country. Rewire News Group. https://rewirenewsgroup.com/article/2018/03/15/ama-legacy-sterilization-indian-country/

Tucker, L., & Doherty, G. (Producers), & Tucker, L. (Director). (2019). Amá (mother) [Streaming video]. United States: Bullfrog Films. Retrieved July 13, 2022 from https://docuseek2.com/bf-ama.

Velasco, D. (2018, March 16). Sterilization and secrecy: A Navajo woman tells her story. Gallup Sun. https://www.gallupsun.com/index.php?option=com_content&id=11301:sterilization-and-secrecy-a-navajo-woman-tells-her-story&Itemid=600