Ever Good Medicine

09/01/2025

It is officially launched! Rewild Your Workflow has been months in the works and builds off of the success of Agile Willow: Managing Healthy Project Ecosystems course that we’ve run over the past two years.

Rewild Your Workflow is designed for ethical, community-driven and culturally relevant projects
made by-in-and-for the North. It draws on wisdom from the Land, Dene teachings of well-being and best practices in agile project management. It challenges organizations to both learn from and care for the Land as part of their daily workflow. I.e. “How do fireweed’s regenerative properties guide us to reflect after a perceived failure?”, “Transcending metaphor how can we help fireweed to propagate on the Land?” And “What are the many ways that fireweed medicine keeps migraines at bay and skin healthy?” Rewild Your Workflow will literally keep your team and the Land healthy while also learning how to refine your workflow to thrive the way the medicines do on the Land.

We are not separate from the Land, we are part of it. Once we realize that, our workplace and our health will improve. Email info@evergoodmedicine.com to register your company/organization to be part of the Fall 2025 cohort. We are only accepting 5 organizations. Registration closes on September 26, 2025 at 5pm MST

08/25/2025

This summer up in the Sahtú reminded me again how to slow down even more than usual. When there’s not much to DO, you remember how to just BE! You keep yourself busy with things that sustain you like cooking, gathering plants, walking with family and learning from your Elders. Away from the distractions of city life, you don’t feel the pressure to always be on or running from one thing to the next.

This is a reminder for everyone to take a deep nourishing breath and if you’ve never felt this kind of peace before, maybe you just need to book a trip to come up North! There’s a medicine to the Land up here that makes you feel like everything will be alright, and that’s a feeling I hope everyone can know at some point in their life!

08/22/2025

This summer we travelled across three communities in the Sahtú. 5 weeks in Deline, 2 weeks in Tulita and this final week in Fort Good Hope. We’re calling it the Sah-tour. So many memories and learning moments!

We were blown away this week having 9-10 Elders join us ever day here in Fort Good Hope, sharing stories, their language and their incredible laughter. Both us and the youth felt privileged to be in their presence over these past 6 days. We learned how to make and set string rabbit snares, Wilfred caught a rabbit and taught us how to butcher it, make stew and dry the skin. We heard stories of rabbit skin clothing and blankets and had the treat of cutting up and cooking Coney and Whitefish in filets, dry fish and the whole fish cooked right on the fire. We learned many new medicines; different ways to use ones we already knew and heard many stories of how our traditional medicines cured many diseases, injuries and sicknesses and even kept people living until 106 years old. Our traditional way of life is beautiful, rich and awe-inspiring! We are so grateful to the Elders, Wilfred, Lucy, Paula, Margaret, Vicky, John, Joe, Ernest, Michel and several others who stopped by. To the youth, Zari, Charity, Isibelle, Valerie and Nevaeh- you were kind, studious and so much fun! We hope to work with you all again in the future!

Finally, a big Máhsi Cho to Bianca and Tommy!! None of this would have been possible without the two of you and your commitment to the Elders and youth. Until next time!

08/22/2025

Excited to be doing my first bilingual medicine walk. My wife will be translating. If you are interested in hosting a medicine walk in French or Spanish, let us know! One day, I look forward to doing one in my own language and will be adding more of the plant names in Shútagot’ine during my walks. I was so inspired by the youth in Tulita this summer speaking our language and having that visibility in the community of the plant names!

If you speak French and you’re in town the evening of the 28th, consider registering for this walk.

08/15/2025

Some exciting news!!! Over the past two weeks here in Tulita, youth from our apprenticeship program last year have sat with Elders, travelled to Bear Rock, learned 10 words for medicines in Shútagot’ine, learned and taught how to use these plants medicinally, created signs in the language and installed them around Two Rivers Trail and behind the school here in Tulita and had over 20 community members join us on a medicine walk tonight! We are so grateful to have spent quality time again this year with these amazing youth, reclaiming our Shútagot’ine words for plant medicines and spending time with the plants. When asked what they valued most about the program is the new friendships and family they’ve made these past two years. Now that’s ever good medicine right there! ♥️ Can’t wait to see you all again next year!

08/13/2025

I’ve been thinking a lot about what Indigenous Food Sovereignty means here in Denendeh. We are so lucky to be here in the Sahtú where laughter, good food and community meets. What do you love most about our traditional Dene foods?

08/10/2025

An extra special trip to Bear Rock today as part of Reclaiming Our Shútagot’ine Words for Plant Medicines Project here in Tulita. We’re so grateful for our guide, Nolan, for the enthusiasm from the youth to reach the summit and for the beautiful day and climb! Feeling extremely lucky to have shared this experience with everyone today.

Bear Rock is a sacred mountain for all Dene who know the story of Yamoria chasing the giant beavers here and stretching their pelts onto the rock.

08/06/2025

Dinner tonight! Iykyk

Love being back home on my community!

08/02/2025

08/02/2025

Gee whiz! The Sahtú Medicine Learners put on one amazing camp for the kids in Deline. Entertaining 25+ children a day from ages 4-13 years old is no easy feat, but they did it!

Making fish skin canoes (from fish skins they tanned themselves), muskrat earrings and hair pins, mini beaver stretchers, fish scale camp scenes on canvas and teaching the kids how to make their very own fish leather are a few examples of the artwork masterpieces they put together!

Learning the many words for plants and animals, colours, shapes, tools, fruits and celestial bodies in the language was another focus. Wherever they could work in language, they did. The kids also learned some of the memory building techniques like the memory palace that the apprentices learned the previous week.

Every day we sat around the fire and shared traditional and contemporary stories about spirit, smudging, spiritual protection, feeding the fire, sacred places around Great Bear Lake and other teachings that the Elders shared with us during the training.

Finally, going outdoors to touch, smell and sometimes pick the plant medicines was a must. Physical activity both on the playground as well as traditional games played at the gym made many great memories and giving back to the soil by watering the gardens everyday was a highlight. With a few needle pokes from the sewing, some mosquitos bites and an unexpected wasp sting, we got to put our knowledge of plant medicines into practice and witness first hand how powerful the traditional medicines truly are!

We are so grateful for everyone who made this training and camp possible! We could not have done it without you! We will share a more formal thank you later this week, but from the bottom of our edzé, Máhsi cho!!!

# Indigenous

07/31/2025

What a Wednesday! We’ve had so much fun so far this week with the kids at the By the Water, On the Land and In the Air Animal Medicine Camp run by the Sahtú Medicine Learners. Will do a full recap on Friday but here’s a sneak peek at some of the activities we did this afternoon!

Picture one: muskrat earrings (they learned how to use muskrat fat for sore muscles)

Picture two: mini beaver stretcher frames (they also picked the willows and learned about willow medicine for pain and the relationship between K’ai (willow) and t’ehkae (muskrat))

Video 3: kids singing Máhsi Ts’enįwę

Pictures 4-11: on the hottest day in Déline we played “Bundle up Bonanza” hahah the kids had to get the fastest time to dress up in all the winter clothes! They were so cute!

So much laughter and learning today!

07/26/2025

I can't believe this was already the last week of the apprenticeship training! It flew by so quickly! This week's themes were mental well-being, air element, storytelling, culture, language and bird animal medicine.

Youth learned marketing skills and terminology such as promotion vs publicity, how to create target messaging depending on the audience and created their own logo.

Elder Camilla Tutcho taught them about the power of memory, focus and attention to have a strong mind and to carry the teachings on. We talked about storytelling as an important tool for cultural preservation and communal memory, learned song máhsı ts'enı̨wę
and played a lot of memory building games. They learned how to make a memory palace, identify recurring sounds and words in the language, and spot the relationships between words such as k'áı (willow) and t'ehk'áe (muskrat), ı̨tǫ́ (green) and ı̨tǫ́ (leaf), jı́e (berries) and jı́etú (purple).

They learned raven, ptarmigan, duck, goose and bee medicines and accomplished two huge feats of running their first workshop and their first medicine walk. They graduated this week surrounded by friends, Elders and family.

Next week they will run their first full week medicine camp from 10-5pm everyday for the younger children in Deline. Stay tuned to see what they have planned for the camp with our last update next Friday! Keep up the great work!