Note: This article represents only a small portion of sacred Indigenous teachings and acknowledges the diversity of practices across communities and regions. For more information, consult a Traditional Elder, Healer, or Medicine Person.

For over 12,000 years, Indigenous peoples across the Americas have drawn knowledge from the medicinal properties of plants. The Four Sacred Plants — tobacco, cedar, sage, and sweetgrass — are honoured and burned by First Nations people in blessing and purification ceremonies as the way to “remember to remember” as Robin Wall Kimmerer describes in their book, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants. The burning is grounded in principles of respect, humility, and patience towards Mother Earth, reaffirming awareness of our relationship with the land, the ancestors, and the Creator.

The circle is the most sacred shape, uniting the important concepts of the Sacred Fire and the Four Sacred Medicines. The circular Medicine Wheel, Medicine Circle, or Mandala has also been used for time immemorial around the world as a map of the cosmos to conceptualize the interconnectedness of existence and cycles of life. 

Smoke-based remedies allow for rapid delivery to the brain and greater absorption efficiency in the body, as airborne transmission is a significant route of infection for diseases. The sweat lodge ceremony, a sacred and ancient purification ritual practiced across the Americas, typically takes place in an enclosed dome structure in complete darkness to evoke the primordial darkness of a mother’s womb, or the ‘navel of the universe.’ 

Outside of the lodge, a respected Firekeeper tends to the Sacred Fire, serving as a spiritual bridge between the Creator and the ancestors. Stones are brought into the lodge in symbolic numbers, placed in the central pit, and greeted as grandfathers and grandmothers during the ceremony. Once brought inside, water is then poured over the glowing red rocks, filling the lodge with steam. 

By bridging ancestral knowledge with concepts now known to modern pharmacology, modern sweat lodges seek to restore harmony in the body, mind, and spirit. Through prayers and songs, smoke is produced and sweating is induced for those in the lodge as the temperature increases. This promotes the absorption of plant-based compounds that support overall balance, well-being, and healing for the lungs, heart, and nervous system.

Tobacco

Every plant has a spirit. As the first of the sacred gifts given by the Creator, tobacco is understood as the main activator of all the plant spirits. The term tabako, or tobacco, originates from the Taíno-Arawak language of the circum-Caribbean islands and was appropriated by the Spanish in 1550 — an act of linguistic erasure foreshadowing centuries of cultural genocide. 

For the Lokono-Arawak Eagle Clan in Northeastern South America, tobacco leaves are harvested only when they begin to turn brown, signalling that the plant no longer needs the leaves; picking green leaves harms the tobacco and is disrespectful. Among the Anishinaabeg of the Great Lakes region, when offered properly, tobacco binds truth and honesty to the smoke and completes the circle; as mentioned in a 2004 study published in the Journal of Holistic Nursing that interviewed traditional Indigenous healers, “If tobacco is not used in a sacred manner, the circle is broken and a disconnect occurs in relation to the culture.” 

In Indigenous ceremonies, movements often follow a clockwise or ‘sunwise’ direction, in alignment with the cyclical rising and setting of the sun. In this context, a tobacco ceremony is a practice of ‘rituals of healing’: the fire burns and carries thoughts and prayers to the Spirit World, while also cleansing the air we breathe. 

Cedar

The Tree of Life, or arborvitae, cedar is native to much of north-central and eastern Turtle Island. It is a protective medicine; its presence is heard in the crackle of a fire. 

In Anishinaabemowin, the language of the Ojibwe, cedar is known as Grandmother Cedar or the Long-life Maker. Based on terms of respect and affection, the elderly are treasured and considered living libraries. Grandmother Cedar opens and maintains that line of communication. 

When cedar leaves are cut and covered with boiling water, inhaling the steam produced stimulates blood flow in the lungs, enabling the absorption of more oxygen into the blood and removing waste. Nutrients flow more readily into lung tissue, whereas debris from fighting the infection is carried away. Cedar helps the body heal more quickly by acting as a mediator, creating a neutral space and assisting the immune system.

Sage

The genus Salvia, commonly referred to as sage, repels viruses and other negative energies to cleanse the spirit of harmful thoughts of a person or place. There has been an increase in mainstream medical interest in the antibacterial, antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and antitumor effects of sage. One 2017 pharmaceutical review in the Journal of Traditional and Complementary Medicine describes the plant as being highly effective in the ongoing development of novel drug candidates for the treatment of diseases such as diabetes, cancer, Alzheimer’s disease and dementia.

Sweetgrass

Found near rivers, lake edges, and wet meadows, sweetgrass is the sacred hair of Mother Earth. To gather sweetgrass is to enter into a relationship with it; the plant gives freely when approached with respect, and its spirit remains in the medicine. 

With its distinctive fragrance, sweetgrass embodies healing and attracts positive energies. This contrasts with sage, which is used to ward off negativity, ensuring that balance is preserved so that no void is left open for greater harm to enter. 

A natural anticoagulant, the chemical coumarin, gives sweetgrass its characteristic ‘sweet’ smell and is the derivative of modern blood-thinning medication. Among the Nehiyawak people of the Great Plains, once sweetgrass is gathered and dried, the leaves are often braided together into three sections, representing body, mind and spirit. Sweetgrass also carries antimicrobial compounds that reduce inflammation and fluid buildup, as well as limit harmful bacteria in the air we breathe. 

The Four Sacred Medicines are living teachers, asking us to breathe with intention, protect what is sacred, and understand that purification is an act of restoring balance. Mother Earth is a self-regulating organism; flowers, grasses, and herbs are the covering or blanket of the earth. 

If too much is plucked, harvested, or ruthlessly destroyed, the Earth is sorry and weeps, making extreme weather, year-long droughts, rapid intensification, and wildfires. If you pause to take notice, she teaches humanity that our well-being is bound to the harmony of all living things, people, communities, the Earth, and the cosmos.

Sabrina Isabelle McLennon is Lokono-Arawak, Indo-Guyanese, and Jamaican Maroon, with ancestral roots in Orealla and Crabwood Creek Village, Skeldon, East Berbice–Corentyne (Region 6), Guyana, and Jamaica. She is a fourth-year law and history specialist and biomedical toxicology major at the University of Toronto, studying world history, Indigeneity, and the criminalization of spirituality.