TWU staff are excited to share this new collaboration with Barrios Unidos, with support from Colibri Corazon and Feather Catcher Apothecary. Barrio Remedios ("Towa Bi Woh" in Tewa) means "Medicine for the People."
TRANSCRIPT
Lupe: “When I thought about the remedios, there’s been a lot of people struggling with their addictions…. For them to go and get help at the hospital or at a doctor’s office was something that wasn’t happening. And at that time, one of my friends [had a] daughter with an abscess and she wouldn’t go to the doctor because of the way she was stigmatized and the way they made her feel. I knew that happened a lot to many individuals.
So I reached out to Kaisa [Barthuli] and she brought us together to make remedios that we could put together, kind of like a first aid kit, that we could give to individuals out on the street… I remember the conversation that started with homeless on the street… I thought this could be a piece to the soul sickness, because it brought back memories, you could see it in their eyes, it was a good thing.
I am truly blessed to be able to share the remedios like this, and the partnership because it’s growing and it’s bringing the community together.”
Pilar: “Yes, Lupe has held the vision and the seed of providing remedios to the community. I live five minutes from Barrios Unidos and the way I actually found out about it was through some sort of serendipitous ways that connected Kaisa and me. We threw our love and passion into making remedios for the community.
The first thing that I wanted to make was a pain relief support, and wild lettuce grows all around us. People pull it out, it’s a weed and it can sometimes be a nuisance. But it was calling to me, for those of us dealing with pain, physical pain. A lot of times that turns into opiate prescriptions and then opiate abuse, and then it goes on and on. From there we just kept coming up with various formulas that the community were asking for.
Now I feel blessed with the trust and support of Tewa Women United to further collaborate with Barrios Unidos as well as some other herbal medicine makers, Colibri Corazon will be helping with this, Feather Catcher Apothecary, various other herbalists in the community. So we’ll truly be able to support the community’s needs. What we’re hoping for is that it will be a thriving project with a lot of hands-on from the community, just connecting back to the plant medicines, connecting to the plants that grow all around us all the time that are always asking for our attention. The dandelions are asking for attention right now! It’s very very exciting.
Elder Kathy and our Environmental Health and Justice Program helped to give us the Tewa name for the project: Towa bi Woh, People’s Medicine. In Spanish we’re calling it Barrio Remedios or Remedios del Barrio.
Lupe does weekly outreach so she’ll be offering these remedios to the most vulnerable in our community, and Tewa Women United will be doing a different form of outreach… This is the start of a beautiful offering for the community.
[To Lupe:] I am really grateful for all the love in your heart, thank you.