Pact forged with National Park Service for plant gathering – Cherokee Phoenix

TAHLEQUAH Cherokee Nation citizens will be allowed to gather more than 70 culturally significant plants within the Buffalo National River Park in Arkansas under a new agreement with the National Park Service.

This memorandum of agreement will ensure that by working together Cherokee citizens and we will manage that in a responsible way together can access those areas of the Buffalo National River for collection of those very important plants, Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr. said.

For plant gathering, the CN will create a process for citizens to register online at the Gadugi Portal, then will submit those names to the NPS. The Cherokee Nation will keep records of the gathering under the agreement. Plant gathering areas within the park include Lost Valley, Tyler Bend, Buffalo Point and Rush.

Certainly modern pressures such as climate change threaten medicinal plants across our reservation as they do for Native peoples around the world, Hoskin said. So its important that Cherokee Nation take steps to protect, in particular, medicinal plants because the knowledge of those plants is something that is in scarce supply these days.

CN leaders and representatives of the NPS officially sealed the deal outside the Tribal Complex on April 20, two days before the international Earth Day celebration. Mark Foust, the NPS Buffalo National River superintendent, said his agency has a long history with the Cherokee Nation, especially at Buffalo National River, which is 135 miles long and spans three Arkansas counties.

We consult frequently over all of the management activities that we do in the park, Foust said. This particular relationship with the plant gathering started several years ago. We will work side by side with them to help ensure that the plants and the ecosystem that they live in are protected for current and future generations.

According to those involved, the agreement is both a first between the tribe and NPS Buffalo National River and the first regionally between a tribe and the NPS.

Plants named in the agreement include maidenhair fern; buckeye; wild onion; wild potato, hog peanut, ground nut; leadplant; green dragon; Jack in the pulpit; river cane; Canadian wild ginger; paw paw; walking fern; wild indigo; chittamwood; pecan; shagbark hickory; hickory; white mockernut hickory; New Jersey tea, redroot; spricewood, spicebush; false Solomons seal; sensitive briar, cats paw; redbud; ivy treebine; flowering dogwood; hawthorn; common persimmon; eastern purple coneflower; horsetail; rattlesnake master; boneset; wild strawberry; honey locust; goldenseal; yaupon holly; jewelweed; black walnut; eastern red cedar; oxeye daisy; mulberry; sheep showers; ginseng; May apple, May pole; white oak; southern red oak; shingle oak; bur oak; blackjack oak; swamp chestnut oak; chinkapin oak; pin oak; dwarf chinkapin oak; northern red oak; Shumards oak; post oak; black oak; smooth sumac; black locust; dewberry; cochanny, Arkansas tumbleweed; dwarf prairie willow; frostweed, white crownbeard; wild (possum) grapessage; bloodroot; sassafras; wild senna; compass plant; green briar; buckbrush; meadowrue; spiderwort; trillium; cattail; bellwort; huckleberry; and mullein.

Also on April 20, the chief signed an executive order designating 1,000 acres of land in Adair County as a Medicine Keepers Preserve.

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Pact forged with National Park Service for plant gathering - Cherokee Phoenix