Making a Space for the Four Directions: Growing the Southern Miss Medicine Wheel Garden

Dyeing cloth with native plants is not so straightforward. Cellulose fibers do not open themselves to the colors produced by other plants. There needs to be a mordant, a middle step, something that transforms the fiber from resisting to accepting the color. Oftentimes, as a tribal member and also an academic, I play the role of that mordant. 

In 2004, Joe Bohanon (Oklahoma Choctaw), who was a graduate student at Southern Miss, asked me to help out with both the Southern Miss Powwow and the Golden Eagles Intertribal Society student group. Native Americans are less than 1% of college faculty and organizing an event like a powwow and advising a student group is lots of work. When I partnered with Joe, he asked what I wanted to bring to campus and to the group. I was prepared to assist with whatever else was already happening, but I was not prepared to initiate something new. I recalled, however, several elders speaking about losing our relationships with our plant brothers and sisters, how these elders no longer knew the names of the plants in their original languages, and how they had forgotten the uses of the plants from this place. 

This loss of connection with the rest of the natural world is common and part of my own story as well. When I was a kid and my dad needed to expand our family’s garden, he had to cut down pine trees. He allowed my brother and me to climb into the pine needle part of the tree, and as he chopped, he told us to hang on and let us ride them to the ground. That garden, the creek, the woods and those trees were integral to my childhood. I had not, however, gardened on my own as an adult. There were very few forests involved in my time in the army as a counterintelligence agent, undergraduate training at the University of New Orleans, graduate training at Tulane University and new professor duties at Southern Miss. I missed those woods and our gardens. 

When Native communities were uprooted and removed from territories east of the Mississippi to Okla (people) Homa (red) to make room for settlers, so, too, were many of our plant brothers and sisters removed to make way for the cotton industry where monocultures dominated, and “wild” was considered “barbaric.” As swamps were drained and levees were built, our native plants were harvested for timber, plowed down for lawns, and sacrificed for interstates with little consideration of their needs for space and community. We seem to have forgotten that it was in our partnerships with these plants, in their wild, tended communities where they are foundational for the entire food web, that, really, we were making room for ourselves, for our own futures, for future generations. And it is in remaking those partnerships with our Southeastern plants that we are making room for the return of many aspects of our cultures. 

I had all of this in mind when I proposed that we build a garden. Joe found a book about Medicine Wheel gardens and suggested that we build the garden in the shape of a Medicine Wheel. We discussed how teachings of the four directions and the shape of the garden would speak, unequivocally, to the welcoming of Natives to our campus. While Medicine Wheels were located all across the Northwest U.S. and Canada, Southeastern Natives were mound building peoples. Both, however, served as orienting structures, aligned with constellations, cardinal directions, and important and sacred sites. The truths they tell about the importance of balance, how to be in relationships, and how to tend to ourselves and the natural world, resonate with most all of Indian Country. Medicine Wheel teachings point to a more holistic approach to, well, just about everything. They acknowledge the four directions that indicate different aspects of our world and of ourselves, the different seasons of the year and of our lives, and the different types of beings and tribes of the earth. They speak to the tremendous diversity necessary to survive and thrive and how that diversity needs to be respected and balanced. Because we are on a college campus with youth who are learning about how to live as they make their way, we decided that this multi-layered, meaning-filled symbol would serve these youth and shape our garden.

To finance this dream, we applied for and received a $2,000 grant from SEVA Foundation to seed our garden. Gregg Lassen, the Southern Miss CFO, gave us a space on campus that was centrally located, just behind the International Building, and so the garden was open and accessible to our USM community and the public. In the summer of 2005, we purchased top soil to improve the health of the garden that had previously been a parking lot. We bought crushed rock for the directional walking paths and river rocks to surround the garden. And we began searching for plants. We wanted for our garden to nurture the plants who were the building materials and weapons, clothing and cordage, food and drink, dye and pigment, and medicine of our ancestors. We wanted to tend those plants who tended our ancestors. And we wanted to tend them as our ancestors did – in wild spaces, so that, mostly, they would provide for themselves, build their own communities, and thrive even after we were long gone.

Finding native plants was harder than we imagined. For the most part, they were not at any of the home improvement or supercenter stores, as we were just beginning to recognize our own Southeastern natives as valuable companions in our yards and public spaces. Moreover, in many tribal teachings, these plants are known as our elder brothers and sisters, having been on this earth for much longer than we humans. As our elders, they have much to teach us about how to survive and live our best lives. I notice these plant lessons anytime I get close to Spanish Dagger (Yucca aloifolia) and carelessly violate her boundaries. I have lost plenty of blood being thoughtless around that plant. I think about Spanish Dagger when I encounter friends who are prickly. I have learned to be careful around them as well and respect their boundaries. But Spanish Dagger roots have saponin that can be used to wash clothing. The needle of the dagger can be used as a needle for sewing and the leaf can be pounded and used as thread. Spanish Dagger puts up a stalk and the flowers atop that stalk are great to eat in a salad. The stalk, when dry, is pithy and can be used as a fire starter. That awesome and spikey plant reminds me to take care with other people’s boundaries and, also, not to judge so quickly – as awesome qualities may lie just beyond those jabs and pokes. 

There are cautionary tales as well. Supplejack (Berchemia scandens) is a strong woody vine that twines up trees to get to the sunlight. That vine was used to lash canoes to the bank and to form basket handles. Supplejack berries are eaten by deer and racoons and squirrels and turkey and quail, and the tangled vines provide shelter for numerous small creatures. But supplejack, who needs those trees to climb to the light, to provide food and shelter for all those others, can, as well, girdle the very trees who support her on her journey. And watching that happen, it’s easy to see the implications. Because even as we nourish, support, and provide shelter for others, we can fail to take care of, forget to notice, and, ultimately, do harm to the very ones who support us as we journey. And that mistake, ultimately, affects everyone in our care. These plants carry  lessons that we need in this world. We wanted a garden filled with these plants, full of lessons.

In 2009, when Joe and Merrill Willis, owners of the Yoknapatawpha Heritage Museum, called and told us to get some help ready because they were coming down with native plants for the garden, I got some students together and my own children as helpers. I met Joe and Merrill at the Choctaw Indian Fair, just a month prior. They expressed interest in our garden and told me that they could help with getting native plants. I expected 5 to 10 plants, but they arrived with their second and third row seats laid down in their Toyota Sequoia and the back full of buckets with multiple native plants in each one. And they were pulling a 20-foot trailer loaded with native plants as well. That weekend, we planted hundreds of plants including Yaupon Holly (Ilex vomitoria) – the dwarf and tree and weeping varieties. Yaupon has caffeine in her leaves and was revered all over the Southeast as both a sacred ceremonial drink and as an everyday pick-me-up. Historically, a tea made from our Southeastern Coastal Yaupon figured prominently in the Green Corn Ceremony that was held at the most sacred time of year, our new year, when the green corn appeared. Yaupon leaves were traded all over North America. Gulf Coast left-handed (lightening) whelk shells (from the mollusk Sinistrofulgur sinistrum) have been found with Yaupon residue as far north as Cahokia.

We also planted Cabbage (Sabal palmetto), Dwarf (Sabal minor) and Saw Palmettos (Serenoa repens), whose hearts were used for basketweaving and whose fronds were used to build palmetto huts that served as seasonal homes during hunting, fishing and trapping seasons. 

Over the next year, Joe and Merrill visited the garden numerous times, providing much needed and hard to get plants from their own forests. They introduced us to Tate Thriffiley, an Ecologist at the De Soto Ranger District, who provided us with permission to dig in the Desoto National Forest for plants to populate this educational garden. And within a short time, our wild tended native plant garden was thriving. 

Tending these plants involved gathering coffee grounds from local coffee shops and ashes from Bianchi’s Pizzeria to amend the soil. We flattened and placed cardboard boxes down around plants and mulched to reduce non-native seedling volunteers. There seemed to be an endless supply of coffee grounds, ashes and discarded boxes in Hattiesburg and around campus, so maintenance costs were negligible. We watered plants who were new to the garden from milk jugs but only for a couple of weeks to encourage them to dive deep and find their own sources.  The garden has no watering system and does not need one because these plants are native to this area, and they work with our hot and humid environment to survive and thrive.

The garden changes every season and is always open to the public for walks around the directional paths, for workdays to those who want to help with caring for the plants and removing non-natives, and, during certain times of the year, for seed collecting. We have events in the garden, including a yearly Native Ways School Day, where 4th graders who are learning about Native Americans in their Mississippi History class come to our garden and play Southeastern Native games like stickball, create mats from palmetto, eat leaves and flowers from our garden, make pigments from garden plants, and learn about our mound-building cultures. This year, Southern Miss students from Dr. John Winter’s Native American History class worked with these 4th graders from Sacred Heart Catholic School in Hattiesburg and taught them crafts and games. So, our college students worked with 4th grade students to learn more about Southeastern Native cultures. 

During each November, for Native American Heritage Month, we have programming in and around our garden. We have featured “A Taste of the Garden” where folks are treated to muscadine jelly, Southeastern hominy, banaha, muscadine dumplings, and yaupon tea. We give tours of the garden, describe the paths and their meanings, and introduce our native plants. Often, we set up a table with different types of baskets, carvings, and weapons from Native tribes of the Southeast and speak about our plants who provide those aspects of material culture. 

Just recently, Mississippi Humanities funded a year-long grant titled, “Okla Achokma, Yakni Achokma” (Healthy People, Healthy Land), where we held a series of four workshops at our garden. We focused our efforts on waking aspects of our Southeastern American Indian cultures that have been sleeping – those traditions that need to be returned to Southeastern tribal people. We processed plant-based cordage from Bear Grass (Yucca filamentosa) and Button Snakeroot (Eryngium yuccifolium), carved ancient symbols into seashells, created pigments with blueberries (genus Vaccinium), pokeberries (Phytolacca americana), black walnuts (Juglans nigra), and made medicine with the inner bark of Wax Myrtle (Morella cerifera) roots. These workshops were well attended by Natives and non-Natives, students and community members who came from all over the Southeast including Tennessee, Alabama, and Louisiana as we all worked together to wake up these sleeping Southeastern traditions. 

I am in community with a group of Indigenous gardeners who have partnered with the Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN) to improve Southeastern Gulf Coast food and medicine sovereignty. WECAN supports the purchase of tools to tend our garden, pine straw mulch to protect our plants in the hottest months, and metal signs that educate about the benefits of wilderness, the beauty of wild, and the balance in wild tending. This signage is important for our garden because our garden, the diversity of plants, the circular shape and tended wild design, challenges our row and column expectations, embraces randomness, wholeness and a wildness that is necessary for our garden’s survival and, truly, for our survival as well. 

We built this garden because native plants are very important to our Southeastern Native American cultures. They are the cane (Arundinaria gigantea) of Choctaw, Poarch Creek and Chitimacha baskets; the white oak (Quercus alba) of our Houma baskets; the long leaf pine (Pinus palustris) of Coushatta, Tunica-Biloxi, and Clifton-Choctaw baskets; and the palmetto hearts (Sabal minor and Sabal palmetto) of Houma half-hitch coil and plaited baskets. These plants are the willow (Salix nigra) and palmetto (Sabal minor and Sabal palmetto) of Houma palmetto huts, the Hickory (genus Carya) of our stickball and rabbit sticks, the Spanish moss (Tillandsia usneoides) of our moss dolls and bed stuffing. But they are more than that even. They are the wilderness in our forests and in our lives. Wildness is hard to understand, though. We have been conditioned to fear wilderness, depend on monocultures, and embrace concrete. Wild landscapes, however, are able to provide food, shelter, medicine, and beauty for a plethora of pollinators, other beneficial insects, animals, birds, fish, and for us. When nature is allowed to freely extend herself into a space, plant communities form that are better able to survive droughts, floods, wind and other stressors. Reestablishing community, one with another, one with the “other” and embracing the need for reciprocity in all our relations is how we find balance, in ourselves and in our world.

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