[dropcap size=big]I[/dropcap]t’s a chilly night by Southern California standards in the backyard of this East L.A. home, but no one seems uncomfortably cold. Students sit in a large circle, bundled up in whatever hodge podge of winter attire they own. Two friends chatter quietly, sharing a fuzzy Lion King blanket. Classic oldies like, “In the Still of the Night,” warm the air with nostalgia.
The instructor, Berenice Dimas, begins with a blessing. She calls everyone’s ancestors into the space and then blows smokes from a goblet-like clay vessel over the students’ open palms.
Not sure if I too will be receiving a blessing, I stand anyways. Dimas motions for my hands and bathes them in smoke. All anxieties I have about infringing upon their intimate gathering melt away, I am welcomed.
Dimas is the founder of Hood Herbalism, an education project that teaches indigenous practices of medicine making to communities of color. The inspiration for this came when she was teaching 9th grade health in Oakland and asked her students to document family home remedies. “I realized I want to see this more…to have herbal classes, kind of like what I'm experiencing, but in the community that I come from,” Dimas recalls.