cedar tea, bad teeth and the knowledge we were taught to forget

 cedar tea, bad teeth and the knowledge we were taught to forget

Dr. Jill was talking about people having bad teeth, and I commented:

I have no back teeth.

I have a bridge in the front, and I am grateful for it.

I've had bad teeth since I was a kid. Too much pop certainly didn't help. But there was also stress, and I've been a terrible jaw clencher and tooth grinder for years.

I have broken teeth that way.

I've broken teeth that already had root canals.

And eventually, I lost all my back teeth.

I'm 64 now, and I still hope I'll get them fixed someday.

But I'm not counting on it.

Dental work is expensive.

When you're unhoused, when money is tight, when you're trying to buy groceries and keep yourself going, hundreds or thousands of dollars for your mouth can feel completely impossible.

So I started paying much more attention to the things I could do.

One of those things was cedar.

I made a cedar tea and used it as a mouth rinse.

I did not swallow it.

I kept a toothpick nearby and made sure food wasn't sitting around the places where my back teeth used to be.

And when my gums became inflamed, I rinsed with cedar tea.

My gums healed remarkably fast.

That is what happened to me.

I'm not going to pretend I don't know what I experienced.

I know my own mouth.

I know what my gums were like before.

And I know what happened after I started doing this.

There is a difference between saying “this helped me” and claiming that something has been scientifically proven to treat every person's dental problems.

I'm making the first statement.

This was my experience with cedar.

And yes, I want people to research cedar for themselves.

Because Indigenous peoples throughout the Pacific Northwest have long used cedar for an extraordinary range of purposes—not simply as a “plant,” but as a material woven into daily life, culture, technology, medicine and ceremony.

Cedar was clothing.

Cedar was shelter.

Cedar was rope.

Cedar was baskets.

Cedar was canoes.

Cedar was tools.

Cedar was medicine.

Cedar was knowledge.

And that knowledge didn't disappear because it stopped working.

Colonialism disrupted Indigenous systems of knowledge. Languages were suppressed. Ceremonies were restricted. Children were removed from their families and communities. Traditional knowledge was often dismissed as primitive while Western institutions decided what counted as legitimate knowledge.

And then we entered an era where corporations could patent, package and sell things that people had known about for generations.

I'm tired of pretending that this history doesn't matter.

I'm tired of the assumption that an Indigenous grandmother's knowledge becomes “real” only after somebody with a university degree studies it.

Maybe we should have been listening in the first place.

But listen carefully:

I'm not telling you to swallow cedar tea.

I'm not telling you to replace your dentist with cedar.

I'm not telling you every cedar species is interchangeable.

I'm not telling you to put concentrated herbal preparations in your mouth without understanding what you're using.

Research it. Know your plant. Know the preparation. Know the risks. And don't swallow it.

That's my disclaimer.

But I'm not going to apologize for saying that cedar helped me.

Because it did.

And maybe we need to start asking a bigger question:

What knowledge have we dismissed simply because it didn't come through the system we were taught to trust?

We live in a strange time.

We have artificial intelligence.

We have space telescopes.

We can map DNA.

We can communicate instantly around the world.

And yet people can't afford dental work.

People can't afford groceries.

People are developing nutritional deficiencies in wealthy countries.

Scurvy still happens.

I've even had someone close to me experience it.

And then we tell people:

“Eat better.”

“Take care of your teeth.”

“Go to the dentist.”

“Be healthier.”

Well...

with what money?

There is a huge difference between knowing what is healthy and being able to afford a healthy life.

I have no back teeth.

I have my bridge.

I have my toothpicks.

I have my cedar.

And I have learned a few things the hard way.

One of them is that I wish someone had taught me about dental health when I was a kid.

I wish I'd understood what years of pop could do.

I wish I'd understood stress and grinding.

I wish I'd known more about nutrition.

And I wish we had been taught more about the knowledge that existed here long before Canada existed.

Because knowledge doesn't become worthless just because someone decided it wasn't part of the official curriculum.

Maybe it's time to remember.

Not blindly.

Not romantically.

Not by turning everything natural into a miracle cure.

But by actually listening.

Researching.

Respecting Indigenous knowledge.

And asking who benefited when certain kinds of knowledge were pushed aside.

I'm 64.

I hope I get my teeth fixed someday.

But until then, I'm going to keep doing what I can.

And I'm going to keep talking about what I've learned.

Because enough with the shame.

Enough with blaming poor people for having poor people's problems.

Enough with pretending everyone has equal access to health.

And enough with assuming the only knowledge worth hearing comes from people who can afford to put letters after their names.

Sometimes an old cedar tree has something to teach us too.

Take care of your teeth, kids.

Research.

Ask questions.

Listen to your elders.

Listen to Indigenous knowledge.

And don't let anybody convince you that poverty, disconnection and lack of access to care are personal failures.

We've forgotten a lot.

Maybe it's time we started remembering.