Forest Management and Diabetes, Yup, there is a link

Just before leaving to pick huckleberries last week, I was listening to National Public Radio (NPR) while eating a breakfast of shredded wheat and huckleberries. There was an article about the Umatilla Indians displeasure with so many white berry pickers in the mountains this year. The competition was interfering with the gathering of berries. The woman interviewed feared that they would not get the berries they needed for food, medicine and religious use. The Indian lady said that pharmaceutical companies were paying pickers for berries. That got me to wonder what interest the pharmaceutical companies would have in huckleberries so I have done some research and the findings, I thought were rather interesting. I will share some of what I learned.

First of all let me tell you that the Indian women pictured are Lakota women picking chokecherries on the Plains. I don't have a picture of Indian women picking huckleberries. Now, I can tell you that huckleberry bushes do grow almost as tall as these chokecherry bushes in N. Idaho and Montana. Not quite that tall, but tall enough that one can run his belt through the bail of a pail so that the pail hangs from the picker's waist. Then the picker pulls the branches of the huckleberry (also known as whortleberry) over the pail and strip the berries into the pail. I can' pick berries that way in Southern Idaho because the bushes grow so low to the ground. I set the pail on the ground under the bush and strip the berries into the pail if there are enough berries on the bush to use that technique. Usually, there are not. The Indians used skeletons of salmon as rakes for the purpose of stripping berries, today, one can order online huckleberry rakes.

The title of this blog will not stop the heart of any USFS policy maker because the U.S. Forest Service has been dealing with Indian complaints about forest management since 1904 when the Forest Service first started managing forests in the Pacific NW. Lewis and Clark and fur trapping companies noted in their journals the forest fires that the Indians started. Indians across the continent had burned off forests to create meadows to more easily spot and shoot game, to create fields conducive to berry growth, mushroom flushes, and to travel through. And in the east to plant the Three Sisters (corn, beans, and squash) the staples of their diet. When the white man subdued the Indian and confined them to reservations, they began to manage the forests for timber production, not berry growth. The Indians had little interest in timber, but had a lot of interest in meadows that produce camas roots and at higher elevations meadows that produced large and profuse berries. The USFS and the Indians have been at odds ever since. So what else is new? haha. I can tell you unfortunately one is not likely to find many berries in the shade. Yeah, you really do have to pick berries in the hot sun. It seems that the berries need the sun and the fire produces ash that fertilizes the berries. Constantly burning forests is a good management tool for berry production.

So why do the pharmaceuticals want to buy huckleberries? Huckleberries may hold the key to a diabetes cure. Well, so say the natural pharmacy people. One online natural medicine site claims that their pill made of an extract of huckleberries has a 99% success in curing Type II diabetes and a 64% success in curing Type I diabetes. They also claim they have been offered $30 million by a major producer of an FDA approved diabetic medication to keep the huckleberry product off the market. Others are touting the juices made from huckleberries and huckleberry leaf teas. Some sites are saying that glucose levels can be controlled by cinnamon and huckeberries.

We know that before white contact the Indians did not suffer from diabetes. Of course, that was because of their diet. Their bodies had adjusted to the diet of the hunter/gather that allowed them to put on large amounts of weight in times of bounty so as to survive the times of scarcity which was a regular cycle of their life. (Scientists refer to this as the Efficiency Gene, which I seem to have; but this is a controversial subject among scientists and Native American people.) Now that they have ample food 365 days of the year and have plenty of fats, salt, sugar, alcohol, and pre-packaged foods; Indians have a very high incident of diabetes. Well over 50% in most nations and over 85% in the Tohono O'odham people of southern Arizona. (Tacos and enchiladas just look and taste way too good to be healthy)

I am thinking that the key to the huckleberry diet is in the words of one of the online natural pharmacy sites: "...our pill of huckleberry extract and other natural extracts along with a healthy diet and lifestyle will cure diabetes." I think the "along with a healthy diet and lifestyle" is the key here. But I do love the taste of huckleberries. And maybe I can eat the sugar laden huckleberry coffee cake and call it a health food. Hmmmm! Oh, yeah. Papa Coyote is loving this logic.

Hope I didn't bore you too much with the history lesson.

Yeeeeooooowww, Papa Coyote loves you all.