Echinacea gold rush: Curley Youpee fights to preserve an ancient legacy

When the cold winds of winter are barely a memory for the Native Americans who live in Poplar, Montana, a flourish of the Yah'pehu, or Echinacea angustifolia, plant emerges from the new prairie grass. The arrival of this long-cherished herb should be a welcome sight, but Curley Youpee, a Sioux tribal leader at the nearby Fort Peek Reservation, knows that once the flower blooms, this lonely corner of the state will be overrun by herbal company employees and root diggers hoarding Montana's purple gold.

Since the mid-1990s, Youpee, director of Fort Peck's Tribal Cultural Resource Department, has been trying to save the plant from being overharvested. But every year, he watches his people sharpen their digging tools as they wait for the plant to bloom. And once buyers post freshly painted signs offering the latest market price for echinacea, the mayhem really begins.

To Youpee, each root pulled from the ground weakens the land and the spiritual significance and healing properties of the plant. The constant digging also chips away at his relationship with other tribal members on the reservation.

rush to profit

For centuries, tribes in the region have cherished the plant's spiritual and healing power, curing ailments ranging from snakebites to sunburn. Youpee, a traditional Native American healer, uses the plant as his ancestors did. "To our people, echinacea is used as a blood purifier to cleanse the body before healing can begin," he says. "But we don't hold the spiritual significance of echinacea above or below any other herb. It has always been important, as are many others, to my tribe, the Sioux, and the Assiniboine and Navaho people."

About seven years ago, herbal companies discovered that the land Youpee calls home is Mother Nature's pharmacy, rife with millions of pounds of native echinacea and its valuable root. They also found a severely depressed economy, with unemployment rates double, and even triple, the national average. The herbal companies took full advantage of their discovery, and tacked signs on every telephone pole offering to buy roots from diggers desperate for money. Since then, every summer from dawn to dusk, root prospectors from outside the reservation, and even the state, join local Native Americans in their rush to dig up the plants. Some even destroy private property in their efforts to get to them.

When the "purple poaching" first began, Youpee was sympathetic to the financial needs of his people. But he soon began to see the frenzy it caused and the resulting pockmarked land as signs that the sacred plant was being stripped from the hearts of his people. "With unemployment rates as high as 70 percent, I understand that digging the root means food on the table--how can I argue?" he says. But he adds that his role as a public official and traditional tribal member and healer made the conflict all the greater. "I was really torn as to what to do."

As the reservation's cultural director, Youpee, 51, preserves as many traditional tribal practices as he can. On a daily basis, he wears his lightly graying hair in braids, but for ceremonies he takes great care preparing his hair and traditional costume. For decades, it was forbidden for Youpee and other tribal members to hold pow wows or practice spiritual dances such as The Sundance. But in the late 1960s, tribal leaders began reintroducing forgotten ceremonies to the reservation.

feeding frenzy

Youpee says the battle to save the echinacea plant has been his biggest challenge yet because it divides two segments of his community--the traditional leaders, who care about the erosion of the land and the tribe's cultural heritage, and the remaining majority, who've never known the old ways but need money earned from selling the plant.

Youpee's first attempt to stave off the damage was to educate the community about the long-term damage echinacea poaching could cause. He posted signs informing diggers about the importance of sustainable harvesting, in which they fill in the holes and replant seeds. In addition, he created classes to teach his people about echinacea's spiritual significance and medicinal properties. But no one came because they were too busy digging for roots, Youpee says. The herbal companies' promise of money to satisfy hungry stomachs and empty wallets was a stronger force than tribal, cultural and conservation concerns, so the pillaging continued.

As the rest of the world learned about the healing properties of echinacea, demand for the herb increased. The level of poaching rose to millions of dollars, with one company buying up an average of 1,200 pounds of roots a day at $8 per pound. Additionally, University of Montana research estimated that in one summer, four commercial buyers purchased more than 700,000 pounds of roots. Herbal companies even held contests to find the biggest root, offering market prices plus a $100 bonus. The Wotanin Wowapi, tribal newspaper for the Fort Peck Reservation, published a picture of the 38-inch winning root, and wrote about a 6-year-old, second-place winner, who claimed to be "heavy into rooting." Clifton Cheek, root buyer and one of the contest sponsors, was quoted as saying, "We will be buying roots until the ground freezes up, and we will buy at all times of the day and night."