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>>Theresa Bierer: the San Juan River has been designated as a potential area for a critical
environmental concern. Which is part of the reason the Landsward Institute is overseeing
a project creating a formal record of the regions flora and fauna.
>>Bierer: As a guide and a teacher Jonah hill has been on several trips like this one. One
of the things he most enjoys about this water shed near the Arizona-Utah border is the ethno
botany, a passion inspired in part by his Hopi medicine people.
>>Jonah Hill: I think for me it's really important that people learn as much as they can about
plants because they are here to help us and we can learn so much from them.
>>Bierer: Along the river he is taking samples and putting them in a plant press. The collection
will soon fill a book similar to this one which details plants on the Colorado River.
But greater detail to utilitarian and medicinal uses of these plants.
>>Hill: They help the ecosystem; they help us, help wildlife. The diversity down here
is really good too because with the plant list I've compiled its almost every plant
has a use. I think there's like 30 plants that we have documented so far.
>>Bierer: Jonah Hill's interest in ethno botany evolved during his time working with Phyllis
Hogan of Winter Sun. An expert in herbs and their medicinal uses.
>>Phyllis Hogan: If things are growing all over the place and are coming up as weeds
and growing all over we're gonna need them alright? So this is that wild lettuce, that
Lactuca. And remember we tinctured it before, you picked a bunch of it and we tinctured
it. >>Bierer: Nearly 30 years ago Hogan started
the Arizona Ethnobotanical Research Association to record and preserve traditional plant use
in the southwest. She says cataloging plants of the San Juan River is a valuable undertaking.
>>Hogan: This book will be really really important to document over a certain period of time,
what plants are actually growing there and then with the ethno botanical aspect of the
scientific part of it, will show how people used it over time.
>>Bierer: Hogan works closely with northern Arizona's native populations where she is
observing a renaissance of sorts >>Hogan: Because they're very interested in
not using medicines from allopathic doctors so much anymore, maybe their parents did,
but now there's a swing to get back to natural medicines. Natural teas and being a little
more healthy. >>Bierer: Maintaining good health through
nature and sharing that knowledge with others is something Hogan and Hill share, along with
nurturing the environment. Jonah regularly visits the San Juan where he takes samples
and gives extra care to certain plants in what he describes as an alliance.
>>Hill: I'm taking care of the plants, you know, and they are taking care of us. So it's
kind of a hand and hand relationship and I really enjoy that, I get a big kick out of
that. Knowing that these plants are actually thriving because of our contact and interaction
with them. >>Bierer: The project of documenting these
plants along the San Juan is part of sustainability and safe guarding the centuries of cultural
diversity in this region.