A few days before summer solstice a small group walked up Gallahorn Hill above Kotzebue. They were looking for sura, young diamond willow leaves, which will be preserved in seal oil or dried for tea. As they walk, the leader and plant guide, Susan Tessier points out newly-sprouted edible and medicinal plants along the path.
Tessier is clinical nurse manager for Maniilaq Health Center’s Cancer Program. The event is part of a new initiative that focuses on harvesting local foods, from sour dock to salmon.
“It's for promoting local foods and living off the land, trying to encourage younger people and everybody just to go out and harvest and eat healthier,” Tessier said.
Tessier has been involved with Maniilaq’s cancer program for almost two years now. Before, there wasn’t a cancer program at all for about a decade, she said.
“So, I was starting from scratch,” she said.
The program is especially focused on lung, breast, cervical and colorectal cancer, which Tessier said hits rural Alaska the hardest.
“We really focused on our colorectal cancer screenings because we have the highest rate in the world right now,” Tessier said.
Back on the trail, the group identifies stands of diamond willow, distinguished by the brown leaves that still cling to the plants’ branches from last fall. In Alaska there are at least 40 willow species, and numerous varieties in the Arctic tundra.
The group harvests the smaller leaves that are around an inch and half long. Tessier said the leaves are an important source for Vitamin C, especially because they can be preserved in seal oil and consumed during the winter, when other sources of the vitamin can be hard to find.
“The Sura has 10 times more Vitamin C than an orange, but we have a lot of plants that are in that category,” Tessier said.
According to Tessier, sura also contains more Vitamin E and Vitamin A than any other plant growing in Alaska.
The leaves and bark also contain a chemical called salicin which Indigenous peoples used to treat pain for thousands of years before modern medicine. Now, aspirin contains a modified version of the compound.
Sura’s leaves have a bitter taste similar to aspirin, but storing the leaves in seal oil over time makes it taste like spinach.
“It takes a while to like, get used to it, but the earlier you pick it, the less bitter it is,” Tessier said. “It seems to mellow out when you put it in the oil.”
She said sura is also culturally important to Iñupiat people. The harvesting season fits in with times when Iñupiat people are out gathering other food sources. Sura picking coincides with the time in spring when hunters look for ugruk, or bearded seal, as the sea ice begins to break up. The springtime plants like sura and tukkaiyuk, or beach lovage, give subtle flavors to the oil, while the oil preserves the leaves for months after the Arctic’s short growing season has ended.
“Most of my life, I've picked sura in the springtime with my Aana - my grandma - when she was alive,” said Tessier. “There's only like a week in the spring when you can pick them, probably the first thing that we pick in the spring,”
Tessier said the cancer program plans to host more harvesting gatherings this summer to collect sour dock, berries and to set a subsistence net for chum salmon. Tessier also hopes to host several food preservation classes this winter and do more outreach with local schools.
Tessier said besides plant harvesting, the cancer program is involved in a variety of other initiatives, including outreach to villages and conducting screenings for the types of cancers that are most prevalent in the Northwest Arctic.
