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ABOUT US
Native Roots is an ancestral folk and herbal medicine school that was created to honor the elders and to hold space for all peoples to reclaim and reconnect to their own ancestral roots while responsibly honoring and celebrating those of others. Teachers focus on sharing healing modalities from the tradition that they come from on self-care and community health. Native Roots teachers are dedicated practitioners, and leaders and are highly involved in medicine traditions within their respective communities. They all walk the medicine path that they were called to. We aim to make classes available to all local community members and offer work trades and scholarships to local Taosenos and
New Mexican tribally affiliated members are welcome to attend classes on a by-donation basis.
Native Roots hopes to bridge the generation gap in healing modalities, promote cultural pride and the reclamation of each individual’s healing lineage through true health. We aim to hold a brave space where the elders can be honored and respected, and the students can truly go through the process of the practices they are learning. Students have an opportunity to study medicine in the context it is relevant to and classes are often taught in a nonacademic way. Several of the teachers have written books, and may have a masters or PhD but this is not our focus. We value the grandma healers, and the ones who carry the knowledge of many generations of their elders doing the same thing, the people who are actively working with their community and being in touch with their roots.
Each individual becomes ready in their own timing to practice the tools that they learn be it on themselves or their loved ones, community members, or the people that come to seek them. We ask that our students do not self-proclaim but allow the community to recognize them when they are ready.
Native Roots hopes to bridge the generation gap in healing modalities, promote cultural pride and the reclamation of each individual’s healing lineage through true health. This school was created by the seed of an elder who passed to his apprentice the wisdom that the knowledge of medicine was worth more than the medicine itself. That seed blossomed an ambition of honoring the elders who have honored the calling of the medicine ways, those who are now finding the courage to step into that path, and those who seek guidance and mentorship for coming into good relation with the medicine traditions.
We see the importance of creating a container where the teacher can be truly honored, the student can truly practice and work on self healing, the integration is experiential and the initiations of wisdom and medicine transmit through ancestrally rooted context.
Native Roots has an 8-year history of combining traditional healers, indigenous peoples, and their knowledge of herbal medicine, hands-on healing, Curanderismo, Jewish & Celtic Folk medicine, and land-based spirituality. After cultivating year-long relationships with individuals or their communities we set forth on a path to establish and create Native Roots.
Native Roots School is a team of 10 teachers based in Taos, New Mexico for in-person and online classes. The teachers uniquely focus on teaching their own ancestral medicine traditions. Each teacher has been of service to their respective community and actively in practice of the medicine tradition they teach. Our teachers are leaders and activists, land advocates and stewards, and prioritize accessibility of medicine, well-being, and food to low-income communities. Our teachers have dedicated their lives to traditional medicine as a lifestyle and way of being.
This takes form through time and practice, a deep dive into shadow work and accountability, and the practice of humility for students that are stepping into traditional medicine circles. Teachers also focus on supporting students in reclaiming their own ancestral healing modalities.
The Native Roots teacher team is made up of Indigenous Peoples of the Americas as well as some teachers of European descent that focus on Celtic and Jewish traditional medicine.
Participation in these programs not only teaches on the ways of traditional knowledge and medicine but a life style and a way of navigating in the world ethically and responsibly. It requires a level of dedication, discipline and devotion like that of traditional indigenous life ways. One of the ways this is taught is through community free clinics and volunteer hours within traditional medicine communities.
Because we value our teacher’s time, knowledge and experiences only dedicated and serious individuals need apply.
Though our community work began 4 years prior to the launching of the Native Roots School, Native Roots began to establish itself by reaching out to communities who have been marginalized or underserved by providing alternative ways to health and healing. We established a network of community resources by reaching out to members who shared the same vision.
While the school is not a 501c3 it continues to do on-the-ground service to the community and grassroots care for the medicine people, ceremonial leaders, and the elders.
Native Roots school deeply feels that the teachers are family. Supporting teachers in their health and well-being has always been a priority and like the rest of our medicine family we do what we can to take care of one another with herbal medicines and sessions, the elders have access to financial support when needed for emergency medical expenses.
During the pandemic Native Roots donated thousands of dollars worth of antiviral and immune-boosting herbal teas and extracts to Taos Pueblo, Doctors, Nurses, the teacher team & their families, and many people in the community. Native Roots School participated 4 years of a free clinic for indigenous communities in Window Rock Arizona and neighboring areas offering herbal and bodywork care. The school fundraised and collaborated with herbal shops for herbal donations and harvested many plants for these clinics. For 3 years of Folk Farm and Forest Youth Camps Native Roots raised funds for youth scholarships and to offset the costs of the camp for local families.
Native Roots works closely with an Itza Maya Run organization in Guatemala. Together with student alumni that have studied on our yearly trips, we continue to donate for the rangers and the people to protect the rainforest lands from poachers, and wildfires during slash-and-burn agriculture, and for the health and well-being of our late teacher Don Reginaldo Chayaeux for his well-being and health expenses.
Lastly, all programs are by donation for tribally affiliated people of NM and we work with other tribal peoples that would like to take the classes to do trades or exchanges. We donate 5% of every sale of wellness care and herbal products to Indigenous peoples of New Mexico.
To this day we have an extensive network of individual and community leaders who maintain this vision of community and individual healing. Native Roots has worked with University of New Mexico in Taos and Albuquerque, Taos Municipal Schools employees and teachers to teach well-being support, and indigenous run nonprofit organizations including Flowering Hill Institute and Tewa Women United and Bio Itza Society, Guatemala’s only national park managed by indigenous peoples, and additionally fund raised for 3 years of a 2 week Folk Farm and Forest youth camp.
Native Roots relationship with medicine man Don Reginaldo Chayeux started in 2010. In 2014 the school brought students to work with Don Regi’s non profit Bio Itza Society to stay in the rainforest reserve and also to do Mayan home stays for up to 17 days at a time each year. While there, the local Itza youth group also was invited to study and the children of medicine people in Belize were invited to join. A collaboration with traditional medicine groups in other parts of Guatemala started to join the program to study Mayan Medicine and medicinal plants.
Native Roots also brought groups of student engineers from Colorado school of Mines for a group thesis project that the organization explored on building off the grid sustainable bathrooms and housing for the park rangers and guests there. During Fire season (from slash and burn agriculture) when the rangers fought to protect rainforest land from burning down Native Roots donated funds for extra fire fighters. One group that came on the trip even funded a ranger program enabling several rangers to be in the park to prevent poachers that is still running and funded by previous Native Roots alumni to this day. When the late elder and our beloved teacher Don Reginaldo Chayax was sick the school donated for his medical bills and medical support.
Bio:
Morgaine Witriol is founder of the Native Roots School of Ancestral, Folk & Herbal Medicine in Taos, NM, a collective of 10 different teachers that teach each about their own ancestral healing modalities. Morgaine is a clinical herbalist, wild crafter, gardener, medicine maker and intuitive being in service to the plant and fungal folk. At her private practice in Taos, NM people can recieve a combination of clinical, spiritual and medical intuitive treatments including bodywork, herbal consults, somatic trauma release, repatterning and reconditioning intergenerational and ancestral wounds, lymphatic drainage, abdominal massage, and sound healing. Morgaine’s focus in her practice aside from trauma work is focused working with people that were diagnosed with cancer, diabetes, arthritis, depression or hard to treat chronic disease that western medicine is stumped by. At Native Roots, Morgaine teaches about reclaiming one’s own ancestral traditions as a displaced person, Jewish Folk Medicine, SW Materia Medica, Herbal Allies for Trauma & Grief, Ethics, Cultural Appropriation, Plant Energetics, Energywork, Clinical Herbalism, Flower Essences, Medicine Making and leads several multi-day field trips doing medicinal plant walks. Really she feels she teaches how to come into relationship with elemental, plant and fungal medicine, and then the indigenous science from all cultures of listening to the body and its layers of epigenetic, ancestral, childhood, organ, and energy center imbalances. Morgaine developed and ran educational programs accredited through the University of NM, has taught at the American Herbalist guild conference twice, UNM Albuquerque and is now teaching at Northern University on herbalism for the nursing department. Her favorite people to teach are doctors, nurses, children and teachers. She has led plant and mushroom walks for the New Mexico Association of Osteopathic Medicine, Flower Hill Institute, presented for Native Plant Society, and taught wellness through plant and mushroom medicine for Taos Municipal Schools Employees.
In 2010 Morgaine lived in Belize and had the opportunity to apprentice tropical medicine with one of the most revered medicine men in the country the late Don Heriberto Cocom for 1.5 years and with his good friend Don Reginaldo Chayeux in Guatemala. She brought groups down to study Mayan medicine, herbalism and abdominal massage with him for 7 years until creator called him home. She collaborated for 10 years with his Nonprofit Association to support the protection of the fully Mayan run rainforest Reserve Bio Itza and brings groups of students to study with him. Morgaine has recognized the importance of honoring healing modalities of all cultures and especially the ones of our own tradition even if they have been forgotten by a few generations.
Morgaine studied at the Northwest School for Botanical Studies, The Dandelion Center, California School for Herbal Studies, The Dhyanna Center, Blue Otter School, Acutonics Institute for Integrative Medicine, Ethnic Studies and Anthropology at the University of Colorado. She often attends herbal and mushroom conferences.
She grew up with an immigrant community and found herself easily honoring the elders that still remembered their own language, their own healing modalities and traditions from that community. It was a journey of many years before she started to look deeper into reclaiming the healing practices of the ancestral traditions that she came from and hopes to share with all people of European descent to remember to honor their own ancestors, to connect to the land and the people that are currently practicing and keeping the context of European tribal healing traditions alive today. She hopes to create a safe space to bridge the intergenerational gap of knowledge, cultural similarities and healing tools to encourage self healing and community healing.
Morgaine worked for Teambuilders counseling Services in 2008 in Taos, New Mexico as a Comprehensive Community Support Specialist teaching “life skills” including communication, stress and anger management, and parenting skills and offering social work opportunities for children and their parents. Later she worked at nonprofit Rocky Mountain Youth Corps with “at risk youth” doing hands-on experiential learning in nature focusing on useful life skills and training once a week for teens. Afterwards she ventured to Guatemala to volunteer at an orphanage and was responsible for 30 girls ages 10-17 as their live in caretaker and teacher for 5 months. in 2011 Morgaine found herself homebound and endured hurricane Sandy’s destruction leaving 13 million people on the East coast without electricity. She coordinated one thousand volunteers a day in Staten Island, New York and spent months doing grass roots disaster recovery with Feeding Family including immediate needs donations and distribution of water, food, respiratory masks, clothing, tho food, medications and animal rehoming, demolition, and later therapeutic urban gardening in elevated community garden beds, fundraising, and more demolition, raw sewage clean up and mold control.
Rates:
$225-375 sling scale for 1.5 hours, $300-500 for 2 hours
Miram’s sessions are intuitive. Her body and words are a vessel for divine healing and often she channels intuitively the heart medicine that supports one to create and develop their own healing. Miriam awakens the self worth, self value and realignment with ones higher self.
A combination of these services is provided in one session. Distance sessions and in person.
$150 deposit is quired in advance
Rates:
$225-375 sling scale for 1.5 hours, $300-500 for 2 hours
By-donation for all New Mexican heritage peoples