SPEAKER_01: 0:00

Welcome to Strictly Facts, a guide to Caribbean history and culture, hosted by me, Alexandra Miller. Strictly Facts teaches the history, politics, and activism of the Caribbean and connects these themes to contemporary music and popular culture. Hello, hello everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Strictly Facts, a guide to Caribbean history and culture, where we connect the dots between history, culture, and in today's episode, wellness. And so today we are diving into the world of Caribbean herbalism, a tradition rich in wisdom and healing, more deeply and more rooted. In our modern, fast-paced world, we often lose touch with the earth beneath our feet, but for generations, Caribbean communities have turned to the land for physical and emotional healing through the use of local plants and herbs. There have long been established a relationship between people and the land and the herbal traditions that have been part of that. In this episode, we'll reflect on the ways these practices remain relevant today and consider how we can all learn from them. Whether we're rooted in the Caribbean or in the diaspora, building a stronger connection to where we come from, physically and emotionally, can shape our well-being in ways we cannot have otherwise understood. Joining us today is Aaliyah Fraser, the author of Caribbean Herbalism, Traditional Wisdom and Modern Herbal Healing, a brand new book that is out right now. So I'll make sure to link it for all you in our show notes. And so, Aaliyah, thank you so much for joining us. Why don't you kick us off with you know telling us a little about yourself, um, your connection to the Caribbean and what inspired your work in Caribbean herbalism, wellness, and agriculture.

SPEAKER_00: 1:55

Yes, thank you for allowing me to be here. I'm really excited to connect with your listeners. My father's from Trinidad and Tobago, uh, came as a teenager to the States with his mother, and my mother is actually from the Midwest. So I have both of those uh lineages inside of me. But I grew up with a very strong Caribbean influence. We would go to Trinidad for summers, even without my parents, they would ship off me and my cousins down there. As all of us had these experiences. I'm still shocked. Like we were on planes at five by ourselves, but I'm I'm really grateful for that. And so I grew up, you know, with Carnival. I was a Carnival baby. I played still pen and always really wanted to keep that Caribbean connection going into my adulthood as well. And um, when I played Stillpen in college, my still pen teacher was a Trinidadian. It was called Pan Masters Still Orchestra and out of DC. And he taught me for free, Mr. Leonard Jack. But he always said, I'll teach you for free if you like really keep this connection going. So I always think of that as the reason why I moved back to Trinidad because he planted that seed that it was possible. So, you know, long journey through I was farming in Maryland. I formed a couple different farm collectives, but then I got this, you know, internal urge, spirit was calling me back to Trinidad. So I started researching different farms that I could work on and different people that I could connect with in Trinidad. And I think that was around 2017 when I went to spend a month there just to like, that'll be my longest trip as an adult. And yeah, just all the all the doors opened. And I ended up meeting my husband on that trip, and he's a Trinidadian as well. So I moved there. Um, you know, we had a long-distance relationship, and I moved there in 2020 to settle in in our business, uh, working with chocolate and cacao. And yeah, it's it's been an incredible journey. Um, like I was saying, I started out farming. So for me, the connection to herbs was always the land and growing and land stewardship. I would be weeding these plants from the garden and knowing and feeling that they had other uses. So I turned to research, I turned to herbalist in my area that I could ask questions to and started documenting more. And then once I moved to Trinidad, I didn't have a garden like I had in the States where we were selling vegetables, but I was living in the middle of the rainforest. So I had all these plants that are literally used to create Western medicine at my disposal to study. And I met ethnobotanists named Francis Morion, who really took me under his wing and we would go interviewing elders. I was holding the tape recorder and doing transcriptions. And that's where it hit me that I wanted to, you know, really bridge that gap with elder knowledge and modern knowledge with the plants. And yeah, so from there, yeah, the rest is history, and we've been rocking ever since in this lane of Caribbean herbalism and land stewardship and ethnobotany.

SPEAKER_01: 5:23

You bring up a really interesting point in sort of your more recent understanding and love for for agriculture. I think, you know, even to hear this experience of your work in ethnobotany, um, you know, and recording elder stories certainly is something that I'm also very passionate about. Um but I think, you know, for a lot of us, these are things that we come to, as you sort of also said, these are things that we come to as we're like rounding out our adult life, right? Um, but what was sort of your experience understanding the impact and the importance of, you know, Caribbean herbalism even as a child, right? We might not have called it that. Um, but to see granny, I mix up something or whatever, right, at home. What were those sort of experiences like for you that, you know, may have also helped field um your life experiences early on and your career experiences early on? And if any, what sort of challenges did you feel like you experienced sort of maintaining this balance between Caribbean herbalism and also this like modern globalized world that we also live in today?

SPEAKER_00: 6:36

Yeah, that's a really good question. One of my first memories that I feel like sparked farming in particular was like growing up and seeing my grandmother and her sisters sharing things from their yard. You know, I always felt like no one should be hungry, especially in a Caribbean country where people are sharing mangoes and avocados. And yeah, it was just that communal effort to take care of each other. And more specifically with herbs, you know, my grandmother always had a garden and she was always taking us through it, pointing out things. I love the uh Caribbean granny question, our auntie question, like, you know what that is for? And it's like a question and an answer because they they want to tell you what it's for, but they want to see what you know. And so I think my first memory for sure is aloe's. Um, and it was very empowering to like you get a bug bite, because I used to get horrible, horrible reactions to bug bites in Trinidad, and they thought something was wrong with me, but they just say, go pick some aloe and you know, you know, put it on yourself. And so, and you you would feel better. So it wasn't, it wasn't some abstract idea of healing. It was like very tangible. Um, my grandmother also taught us how to prune with the moon and like when to prune things so that they'll grow tall or so that they can be bushy. She used to always talk about um people in the neighborhood would always try to teefer plants and how you know people with bad energy teeth your plant and then it die. So just all of those ancestral wisdoms that are just being passed on through storytelling was really important. Um, when I think of challenges, my mother-in-law uh is also really deep into plants and herbs and really, you know, into transferring that knowledge. And I interviewed her for my book and the interview's in there, and she mentions how the convenience is kind of like one of the challenges. So back in the day, it was more convenient to get a plant from your yard because that was close by and the pharmacy was far away. But now, because of industrialization and urbanization, you can't find those plants in your yard, but the pharmacy is on the corner. So, you know, when we rewire our brains to think of what's really convenient and what's um what's available to us, you know, that's important. But at the same time, we're fighting urbanization and these habitats for these plants being lost. And I see it for myself when I'm talking to like true bushmen who go into the forest to get herbs. They they talk about how they have to go further and further. They have to walk for hours versus minutes to find the plants that they're looking for. So part of my work too is um, yeah, repopulating these plants in the wild. And I have a 20-acre estate in Trinidad that's in the mountains where a lot of these plants are growing, and I want to create a space where we're propagating these plants, giving them to people, and also just preserving those habitats so that um, you know, people can see these things as convenient as well.

SPEAKER_01: 9:52

I think that's such a beautiful story for a lot of reasons. But I think, you know, for the sake of time, I will say I think there are a decent bit of us that are aware and even still use, you know, some of Granny's old remedies, etc. Right. Um but we don't necessarily have this awareness and passion for agriculture um in that same way. And that I mean, maybe because if you live in fire and how much land you have to, you know, plant uh that's a whole nother story we won't get into, but for the sake of um time, could you sort of map for us what that relationship has been like for you? Because I think, you know, from reading the book, it's more than just, you know, knowing that aloe can heal a mosquito bite, right? Or that we can use Cersei for this, or um what has it been like in terms of understanding your relationship between agriculture and wellness in a lot of ways?

SPEAKER_00: 10:55

Yeah, I think agriculture and and being surrounded by these plants has really helped me be, you know, a wellness practitioner because, well, a friend called me an embodied practitioner once because I'm I don't consider myself an herbalist. Like I don't know enough to treat other people because you, you know, that takes a lot of a lot of time to get to know a person, their body. But I'm the one who you come to when you're like, I want to find guinea hen wheat in the wild. Where can I find it? And I'll and I'll show you how to identify it and get the right plant. And it's because I'm I'm living with these plants, I'm working with them on my body, on myself, on my family. So yeah, you it's this, it's the relationship that I think I've built with the plants because of being in agriculture, whereas sometimes herbalism can be um divorced from that relationship. You know, you go online and you look up what you have and you're like, oh, I could use this for that. And that relationship isn't there. And that doesn't mean the plants won't work, but I I encourage people to build that relationship. Even if you can't grow the plant yourself, do the research, learn about how it grows, learn about where it grows, learn about the traditional knowledge around the plant, not just what the modern research is saying as well.

SPEAKER_01: 12:16

You make a really interesting point in that, you know, it's more than just simply understanding, right? One thing that I found really interesting about your book, Caribbean Herbalism, is that, you know, these things can be challenging, right? It's not necessarily the most um evident thing in a lot of ways for us to document certain stories and histories that are passed down from generations. Um, but then I think in a lot of ways, Caribbean herbalism goes a little bit of a step further, or it's a combination of a lot of things, right? You don't have interviews with elders, you walk us through certain plants, etc. Um, how did the book come about for you at this stage in your life and in your career and sort of what were some of the difficulties you faced in researching and even compiling the book?

SPEAKER_00: 13:05

Yeah, um it was an alignment for sure of like prayer, following spirit, persistence, because I've just known that I was on this path with the land and the plants, and I knew I needed to share because I have been blessed basically to get this information from so many people that also told me you need to be sharing this information. So I had started writing on Substack, and through there a publisher found me and asked if I would write this book. I didn't feel like I was ready, but you know, it's like, well, this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, of course, to do what I've been saying that I wanted to do. So it has been difficult, you know, like as a mom, a business owner, but because it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, I knew I had to prioritize it and by any means necessary. And that meant, you know, taking time to myself, um, using my advance to travel the Caribbean and collect more stories. So, like going to Guyana, going to Barbados, all of that I knew was really important to, you know, round up this book. So yeah, I just I had to prioritize those things. And it was really fruitful. And um, and the people that I met along the way, you know, sometimes you feel like you are extracting some knowledge, but there's this reciprocity that comes with um not just going to an elder and saying, what's this good for? Like that's our least favorite question. It's like, um, what's your favorite herb from childhood? What was your favorite bush tea? Um, usually these relationships start with me helping them in some other way. You know, I have an elder midwife in in southern Trinidad that I like to visit because she's just a wealth of knowledge. And she lives by herself. So, you know, we're gonna go there and help her with her garden first. We're gonna bring her food and fruits that she likes and um yeah, and just really again building the relationships with the people you're learning from, just like you're building relationships with the plants, makes it a lot easier. Yeah. And elders, as you know, they they have their ways and they're looking at you sideways, like, are you really serious about this? So once you show that you are serious and you're gonna really um pass down these traditions how they want them to be done, I find the floodgates of information open and um and it was a pretty easy process altogether. Probably the hardest part was researching the modern side. Like I had to spend a lot of time with scientific journals and um yeah, I had to pay through different paywalls to get access to things because I'm not at a university, but it was really, really, really important to do that. And right now I've working hopefully on another series of essays or books because I'm on sabbatical at Oak Spring Garden Foundation, and they have a rare book library with these first-hand accounts from the 1600s to 1700s from the explorers slash colonizers who came and extracted knowledge. And it's really hard to read and go through these accounts, but it's also fascinating because these are the these plants have the same names, they they have the same uses. So you can see that like unbroken thread of of knowledge that like modern medicine is just catching up to. So it's it's not easy, but it's fun. And I feel like I'm a a detective at a lot of times uncovering these things.

SPEAKER_01: 16:43

I really enjoyed that third chapter because it for me was um sort of a place where I was like, okay, that's what I know from you know, familial ancestral knowledge and not necessarily having, you know, had to do the sort of like scientific journal. Yeah, yeah. But like for it to really come together and understand, you know, how both meld together, as well as your own personal connections to these relationships, you know, I thought that was a beautiful part of the way chapter three came together. How would you sort of describe the relationship between these two aspects of herbalism and healing? You know, how have you blended the two between the science and the ancestral wisdom and knowledge in your own experience and um practices? And how perhaps has writing Caribbean herbalism helped deepen your understanding of how traditional and Western medicine can work together?

SPEAKER_00: 17:46

Yeah, yeah. I always say that modern is catching up to ancestral, and that's you know, it's a good thing in our society now. We still want that um that validation from quote unquote science. And that's okay. Like I don't throw either knowledge away because they're both important and they build on each other. But because nowadays, you know, you know, our ancestral knowledge and our grandmothers can tell us how to take things and, you know, drink a cup of this a day, put three leaves. But as we get further and further away from our grandmothers being able to tell us that, we do probably need science to to standardize things a bit. And if we're not using these things on ourselves and building this citizen science, um, I think it will get lost. So I'm really big on citizen science. I really hope one day we can be all coming together and sharing how we're using these plants and how they're affecting us so that it can like inform Western medicine as well. And I was recently at a conference in Barbados through the Biocultural Education Institute. And um what was really important there is like there were medical doctors, there were chemists, there were physicists, there were nutritionists, and there were practitioners, like herbal medicine practitioners. And it was it was heaven for me because we're so isolated. But to know there's a group of people knowing that we have to work together. Whereas I can, you know, go to someone at UE that I met at this conference and give an idea for something that they should be researching. One of my favorite um topics that was uh research was like the medicinal benefits of Maubi. And this woman was a nutritionist and chemist and really broke it down. Like we know Maubi is medicinal, um, but she she put it in the paper. Another woman was testing the difference in taking a tea versus a tincture. So, like, how does rum extract um medicinal qualities? And it just demystifies it for people. And it's not just this, oh, what granny said, it's it's what's actually happening in your body and with the plants. And I think um just like all aspects of life, like medicine is ripe for decolonization. Like the facts that we know of today, like that's something that was developed over the last couple centuries. Like back in these documents from the 160 and 1800s that I'm reading, these are actual medical doctors from Europe who are describing the uses of plants and how they use them in their practices. Granted, they got the information from indigenous people and Africans, but it was recognized as these all go together. So I think in the future, um, I really hope that we see these ways of knowing, you know, coalesce more so that, you know, the these healing remedies can be more accessible and feel like it's not magic or like it's not something that we can't do, that is something that everybody can do.

SPEAKER_01: 20:53

I really like that point of citizen science. Um, because I think when we start to think of herbs and remedies, it's very to a point, it's very like medicinal, right? But it's a very serious part of our culture as well, right? And so um of course, you know, it's it is for the mosquito bite or whatever, right? But it's also very much sort of ingrained in who we are, how we approach things, as you even said earlier, right? We had to find a source when the pharmacy was 50 miles away, sort of thing, right? So it is very much so a part of how who we are and how we've evolved even beyond just, you know, having to heal a particular ailment. What cultural significance do you believe sort of these herbal practices hold for Caribbean people and how do they sort of represent us as being resilient people, as self-sufficient people, um, especially in this ongoing relationship with nature?

SPEAKER_00: 21:56

Yeah, yeah. I see herbal medicine and traditional knowledge around plants as like the epitome of Caribbean creolization. Um, I talk about that in the book a little bit. And a woman named Cheryl Lanz, she's a Trinidadian. Um, she passed away, but she wrote a lot of um papers and books around creolization of plant knowledge. Because, you know, the Caribbean is a mix of indigenous, African, European, Southeast Asian cultures. And within, you know, any particular remedy, you can pull out which parts came from indigenous knowledge, which will be the plants, because a lot of the plants we use are native to the Americas and the Caribbean. But then how we create a ritual around it might have come from our African ancestors. The same with the Southeast Asian and the European influences, like they're just all in there. So for me, since our culture is such a Creole culture, these plants give us a pathway to understand how people and plants move around the world through different means. The Atlantic slave trade, indentured servitude. Um, there's just a lot to pull out there and learn from our ancestors because of that mix. Uh, I like to call like the tonics and Jamaican tonics, you're real familiar with, they're the epitome of creolization because they will have like Comfrey root in it, which is from Europe. They'll have barks from Africa and barks from the Caribbean, and, you know, and they're healing for all the nations. So I think it's really important for us to recognize that and see that, and see that because of the Caribbean herbalism is storytelling and is part of our culture, it's this unbroken thread of knowledge that that we can tap into at any time to like learn more about our past and and figure out ways to be more resilient and healthy in the future. It's just, to me, it's just the perfect way to blend and learn about our cultures and appreciate them for all of the different magic that they've brought and the healing that they've brought to us and our ancestors.

SPEAKER_01: 24:13

Um, I think I would be remiss to have you here and not ask you what is sort of your favorite, um, you know, whether that's a herb or a tincture or a tonic, um, what is, you know, one of your favorites in terms of what it does for us, but also how it's become part of your own individual practice?

SPEAKER_00: 24:33

Um, I would say guinea and weed. That's also known as gully root in Trinidad, Anamu in different parts of the Spanish Caribbean, and the Latin name is Petaveria Aliacie. And that plant, it's one of those that I have been looking for for a long time. I have this thing where like I hear about a plant and then I have to see it and feel it before I'm gonna use it. And I was walking with my friend Francis along my road leading to my house, and we're smelling like, you know, guinea hemweed has a strong smell. It smells like a chicken coop almost. Like it has a lot of sulfur compounds. And there was like a whole hedge of it growing right there in my neighborhood. So from there, I started using it for different things. It's it's known for being um good for your immune system, good for clearing out your sinuses. It's also known for cleaning out your womb. And I've started making tinctures of it. It's the one herb that I feel comfortable telling people you should use this for this or that because it is pretty universally used. I have a friend even in the America who isn't even Caribbean, but she had a bout with cancer, and she swears by it for helping with her symptoms with um with her bout with cancer. My father, I've given it to him for his high blood pressure, and he's seen it go down with my grandmother. Uh, she she had lost her smell due to COVID, and that was pretty scary because she was 94 at the time. But I made her a sign of steam where she like, you know, we boiled it and she smelled it and she got her smell back. So it's just one of those plants that I have um a real personal connection with because it grows in my neighborhood, and I've also seen its healing benefits in real time. And it's it's pretty well known. It's one of those you could buy online as well. You don't have to grow it yourself, but it is something, even if you live in the States, you can grow in a pot indoors and um and get its healing benefits.

SPEAKER_01: 26:40

I'm always really intrigued to learn the various names that we call things with even within the region. Um, just because, of course, we all stemming from various linguistic backgrounds and things, but uh that I think was also, you know, a very important part of me sort of like learning and understanding how we navigate, um, how we all come together, right? That, you know, if you call something one thing and I call it something else, we sort of do need to figure out the bridge to connect each other.

SPEAKER_00: 27:11

Umfort, unfortunately, Latin names help with that talking across cultures. Of course, they're not they're not from us because our names give so much information, like Guinea hen weed. My mother-in-law told me they called it that because they put it in the um guinea hen cages to help keep pests away. So, yeah, yeah, there's just so much in a name and talking across cultures about them.

SPEAKER_01: 27:38

I would also be remiss to have you here and not ask my favorite question of all. Um, and so what is your sort of favorite example of how this history of Caribbean herbalism shows up in our popular culture?

SPEAKER_00: 27:52

It doesn't, I I say it doesn't show up as much anymore because like calypso and soca, everything was so a lot of them were rooted in Caribbean herbalism and the plants that were used. Bill Rogers has an amazing song called Weed Woman that just names all the plants that you could think of and is about a woman at a market selling them. So I encourage everyone to look up that song. Um, Sugar Aloe's is a is a famous calypso artist, and you know, that just means bittersweet. You know, sugar is sweet and aloes are bitter. So you see that. Um, and in books, I would say my favorite book that really bridges that is Nalo Hopkinson. She has a lot of books about Caribbean culture, but her one called Brown Girl in the Ring, I actually just picked it up from a free library in the middle of Virginia, which was wild because it was a very country town. And um reading it, you know, the the main character lives with her grandmother, who's an herbalist and spiritual healer who grows herbs in her garden, prepares bush. And what I love about this book, and it's a big um a passion of mine to talk about the future. So Afrofuturism. And this is a book about post-apocalyptic Toronto and how, you know, once the pharmacy's closed, what are we still gonna have? We're still gonna be able to have our gardens, we're still gonna be able to grow um our plants. So keeping this connection um through the culture, through the books, so that we know that even if it's not in our generation, you know, at some point, if all these things aren't as available, we still need to understand how to heal ourselves.

SPEAKER_01: 29:33

I will bring us a little bit to a close, um, sort of just asking you your own personal expertise and sort of advice for our listeners, especially for some of us who may be um either growing up in the diaspora or just sort of wanting to navigate, you know, understanding who we are and where we come from in a very intentional way. And I think the land Is a big part of that and one that, you know, can for some because of some sort of like systemic issues and all of these things be one that's difficult to navigate, right? And so how do or rather what role do you hope this book will play in our preservation of Caribbean herbalism and herbal traditions and really understanding who we are and where we come from and even to your point about being us sort of us understanding our futuristic selves, um, what do you think the future holds for Caribbean herbalists and herbalism for all of us?

SPEAKER_00: 30:40

Yeah, I I like that earlier you mentioned reading the book. You you saw yourself and you saw you saw what you already knew and had learned from your family. So I really hope people read it and and look at Caribbean herbalism as not this other thing that um that isn't accessible again. Like I want it to feel accessible, I want it to build curiosity, I want people to build relationships with the land and plants and your community. And with that, you know, no matter where you are, that looks like joining foraging groups, volunteering at your local farm, um, connecting with local herbalists, and those types of things are accessible to us, even if you can't have your own piece of land to grow on. Also means supporting the people who are growing these plants and preserving these landscapes. And then the last piece would be the community aspect. Like I said in the beginning, like Caribbean herbalism is a communal effort. Like if your grandmother didn't know everything, you know, she went to her her sister or her brother, and everyone holds a piece of that knowledge. So it's like connecting the puzzle pieces again. Um, and in order to connect those puzzle pieces, we do have to sit down with the elders in our community. Even if they're not in your family, um, it's it's really important to really sit with these elders. They're they're ripe with information, they want to share it and, you know, do whatever we can to sit at their feet. So that again, that thread of of knowledge won't be broken again. A lot of people say that it is being broken and we're losing this and that, but I'm optimistic that many of us aren't losing it. You know, it's not mainstream yet, but I I do think it it is becoming more and more mainstream. I mean, you know, the medical system is expensive, people are losing faith. And I think we need to, we need to have faith in it because it is accessible to us, but at the same time, we should be exploring these other modalities that are accessible to us. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 32:44

Beautifully said. Um, well, I really enjoyed reading your book. I think for all of our listeners tuned in, be sure to check out Caribbean Herbalism, Traditional Wisdom, and Modern Herbal Healing. It is a wonderful book. I will link it in the show notes for all of us to check out in our free time. And Aliyah, it was so great having you. I appreciate you sharing all of your knowledge and wisdom with us on Strictly Facts and for our listeners. Thank you. Thanks for having me. And for our listeners, till next time, lickle more. Thanks for tuning in to Strictly Facts. Visit StrictlyFacts Podcast.com for more information from each episode. Follow us at Strictly Facts Pod on Instagram and Facebook and at Strictly Facts PD on Twitter.