Stories of Salem: Elderberry Wisdom Farm with Rose High Bear
Produced by Meghan Jonas and Ashley Jackson Lawrence. Story by Meghan Jonas.
Gravel crunches under tires as cars turn into the driveway of Elderberry Wisdom Farm. Two large greenhouses glimmer in the sun and bright blue buildings stand out against the green of wild plants. A light breeze wafts the smell of good quality compost and soil from raised garden beds filled with small, growing plants.
A tortoiseshell cat prowls in the distance, acting as built-in pest control. The sounds of birds combine with the noise from trucks passing on the nearby roadway. Elderberry Wisdom Farm is its own living, breathing entity.
Rose High Bear emerges with a smile from the farm’s classroom with Tracy Nelson, the farm manager for Elderberry Wisdom Farm. The one-room classroom was just recently renovated from a garage and now includes a wood-burning stove and running water. Posters of wildflowers and first foods line the bright green walls.
“I wanted to provide a safe environment for my Native students to come in here and learn,” High Bear says, sitting beside rows of USDA agricultural textbooks that line the table.
Rose High Bear (Deg Hit'an Dine, Inupiaq) is the founder and Executive Director of Elderberry Wisdom Farm, a Native American nonprofit that provides agricultural opportunities for all Indigenous people.
“The Spirit World told me to move out of the city of Portland,” High Bear says. “They told me to leave the city and find a place where I could teach people how to grow food so that our people didn't starve to death down the road.”
It would take High Bear five more years to move out of Portland and transition out of her role as Executive Director of Wisdom of the Elders, a non-profit that she co-founded in 1993 and led for nearly 30 years with her late husband, Martin High Bear, a Lakota medicine man and spiritual leader.
Elderberry Wisdom Farm provides resources and experience to pursue careers in earth-based professions, like habitat restoration or farming, to Native Americans and other people of color. “And you know, white is a color too, so we’re not leaving anyone out,” she says.
“I think that is the old-fashioned, traditional cultural values of Native American people that many are not aware of.” High Bear says.
“Many people are not aware of the greatness of our ancestry, the goodness of our people [and] the high level of selfless service that we always considered everyone before ourselves. And these are cultural values that are very strong in Native American communities, but people are not aware of that. So I'm happy to have an opportunity today to introduce the beauty of our ways.”
Since its foundation in 2019, High Bear has built thriving educational programs with powerful partnerships, despite the relatively young age of the organization.
“Some of my jokes are really terrible because I said that we now get to go to preschool. We’re four years old,” High Bear says with a chuckle.
Elderberry Wisdom Farm has worked with Chemeketa Community College, the Chemawa Indian School, Soil and Water Conservation Districts, watershed councils and the Insitute for Applied Ecology.
“Frequently, they look at us and pat us on the head and say, ‘Oh, we’ll help you,’” recalls High Bear. “But us Native people have a lot of wisdom and knowledge and we want to be given a chance to provide what it is that we have in terms of our skills, our experiences, our gifts that we have to offer to the world.”
High Bear also works with Oregon Tilth to transition farms, ranches and other lands to become organic. The organization asked High Bear to be the tribal liaison for Oregon, Washington and Idaho, providing experiential training to tribal members.
In early July, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization asked High Bear to be a part of their task force to develop best practices for land restoration and soil biodiversity. “We’re losing many places on the earth,” High Bear says, making the work a pressing need.
When asked how she has developed so many partnerships, High Bear replies, “Well, each one is a story in itself.”
“I really do believe that the spirit worlds puts me in touch with people, either I contact them or they contact me, and we just develop a collaborative partnership,” she says.
Her partnership with the United Nations came organically after a woman joined the spiritual community that High Bear was a part of. The woman in question was the North American tribal liaison for the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.
“She began sweating with us in our spiritual community,” High Bear says. “We do sweat lodge ceremonies, and she's joined us there and had vision quest ceremonies.”
High Bear became involved with the UN’s Food and Agriculture publications after reading that nearly every biodiverse region outside of the United States is managed almost exclusively by Indigenous people. Biodiversity is defined by National Geographic as the variety of living species on Earth, including plants.
“I think America and the North American continent should play a role in strengthening biodiversity if we are going to save our planet,” High Bear says.
“For 12 to 15, maybe 18,000 years here in Oregon, we have cared for the soil, we’ve cared for the land, for the trees, the plants, the animals. And everything was in a state of balance. We need to restore that, and we need to realize that people need to turn to Native people,” High Bear says.
After losing some of their own farmland, High Bear partnered with Persephone Farm to lease 20 acres of land in Sweet Home, creating their Indigenous Biodiversity Farm. High Bear and farm members will plant traditional first foods, culturally sacred plants and agricultural crops while using the periphery of the farm to restore natural habitats.
Wisdom of the Elderberry Farm’s main project is their Native Agricultural Biodiversity Accelerator, which provides business opportunities to teams of Native Americans. These businesses can then be passed down through a family, creating multi-generational prosperity, High Bear says.
Elderberry Wisdom Farm’s first project was its traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) workforce development partnership with Chemeketa Community College, for which they received $500,000 in grant funding.
Elderberry Wisdom Farm hosts paid internships and externships where they prioritize the dreams and visions of the students they work with. At the University of Oregon, High Bear found four Northwest Native students that are now working on a documentary project for the Farm.
“They're doing a short documentary on their own personal transformation as a result of finding out something about their home, their homeland…Whether it be the traditional cultural values, the oral history, the traditional stories, or even TEK [traditional ecological knowledge] and the sacred landscapes that their ancestors have lived in.”
High Bear is passionate about working with youth. “I know that Native youth are always taught to turn to their elders for wisdom and guidance, but we’re here to ask you what you think and how you feel,” she says.
“We would like to turn it over to them. We’d like to have a partnership with young people and work together to make it possible to do their dreams. I’ve been dreaming a long time, it’s time for somebody else to pick up the dream.”
While Elderberry Wisdom Farm has flourishing projects, they aren’t permanent. High Bear hopes to encourage donors and future partners to help build financial sustainability and create permanent programs for the farm.
High Bear is eager to share her cultural and spiritual values with everyone and ensures that those around her feel welcomed, regardless of race, age, background or sexual orientation or identity. She is abundantly hopeful for the future.
“There’s a prophecy out there that says the day will come when the people of the world turn to Native people to learn how to care for the earth,” she says before adding, “And for one another.”
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