Growing up as a member of the Coast Salish First Nation's Sliammon band near Powell River, Jeanne Paul was accustomed to having medicines made of herbs, berries, and bark around the house. Her belief in plant-based remedies has never waned, and her affinity for natural-healing methods made her career choice clear. Paul is a licensed naturopath. She happens to be Canada's first First Nations practitioner, in fact, a title she's clearly proud of. But what Paul is most passionate about is how naturopathy is so closely aligned with the values and practices with which she was raised.

"Our people used Mother Earth's products, the bountiful treasures from Mother Earth, all the time," Paul says in an interview in her newly opened Vancouver office, which is decorated with boldly coloured Native art. "We didn't believe in pharmaceuticals; I've never used them."

First Nations Health The overall health of First Nations members is poorer than that of other British Columbians, partly because of difficulty accessing care and services. The BC First Nations Health Handbook, which was released last winter, contains resources for Native people to get information and help. Among the organizations included are the Children's and Women's Health Centre of B.C.'s aboriginal health program (604-875-3440; www.cw.bc.ca/); the Association of B.C. First Nations treatment programs ([250] 503-1135; www.firstnationstreatment.org/); the B.C. Aboriginal Network on Disability Society (1-888-815-5511; www.bcands.bc.ca/); and the Canadian Diabetes Association's Native project (604-732-1331; www.diabetes.ca/).

Paul, sitting beside dozens of tincture bottles next to a room filled with glass jars containing everything from strawberry leaf to devil's club, explains that she was also easily won over by naturopathic medicine's holistic approach. For her, health isn't defined by the lack of illness or disease; rather, as her grandparents taught her, it has always encompassed physical, mental, and spiritual wellness.

"You need to look at the whole lifestyle; this is where the answer lies to problems," the spiky-haired Paul says. "To bring something to resolution, I have to listen to all your stories....It's almost hackneyed, but you have to look at the whole picture instead of the individual parts. Arthritis, diabetes, heart disease...these are all related to how we've eaten...whether we exercise, how we are spiritually, how we've lived.

"The first thing you notice when you feel well is that your mind clears up; you're not as fatigued, tired, stressed," she adds. "Then your energy comes up."

Paul studied at the National College of Naturopathic Medicine in Portland, Oregon, and graduated in 1991. She practised in Kamloops for seven years before moving to Vancouver this past summer. Although her East Vancouver office door is open to anyone who walks through, Paul focuses on the needs and concerns of First Nations people.

Their state of health can be traced to their history. According to the BC First Nations Health Handbook, a provincial-government publication and companion to the BC HealthGuide, this group was extremely healthy before European contact and had a high level of physical fitness, a nutritious diet, and a vast knowledge of homemade, plant-based remedies.

"Even as young children, Aboriginal people practised healthy living in daily and seasonal practices such as fasting, sweating, and eating or drinking certain medicinal herbs," the handbook states.

"Various groups of Aboriginal people were able to prevent scurvy by brewing tea from spruce bark (rich with vitamin C); they were able to reduce pain by using willow extract, which contains salicin (similar to aspirin); they had various kinds of anaesthetics, emetics, diuretics, and medicine that could induce labour or numb labour pain."

But once colonization was under way, First Nations people in B.C. suffered outbreak after outbreak of infectious diseases, including measles, whooping cough, influenza, smallpox, syphilis, and tuberculosis. Residential schools only worsened the physical and mental well-being of this group. In place from the 1860s to 1970, these institutions aimed to assimilate children and provided them with largely negative experiences. Paul says she regularly treats people who are still dealing with associated issues of grief, anger, and abandonment.

The health of First Nations members today still suffers. The population has lower incomes, education levels, and employment rates than other people. "Life expectancy is shorter, infant mortality is higher, suicides are more common, and dependencies and related deaths are more frequent," the handbook says.

From 1991 to 2000, accidents and violence caused 27 percent of deaths among status Indians in B.C., more than three times the provincial average. About 33 percent of First Nations people in Canada over 15 report some degree of disability in mobility, agility, vision, hearing, or speaking, which is double the rate of all Canadians.

To treat the various health problems of her patients, Paul uses a range of techniques, including homeopathy, nutrition, herbal medicine, musculoskeletal therapies like cranial-sacral bodywork, and allergy testing and desensitization. She also makes her own herbal products, such as skin, wound, and burn creams as well as a herpes cream, which contains plantain, gigartina, myrrh gum, and aloe. Then there's her bug-repellent spray, made out of pennyroyal, eucalyptus, and wormwood.

Paul also offers "soul-retrieval healing". She describes the treatment as a "ceremony" for people who have experienced some kind of trauma or abuse and who feel as if a part of them has been stolen. It's another aspect of her practice that has a direct link to her heritage.

Paul says that she often has visions, and a particularly vivid one struck her shortly after she moved to Vancouver. The experience led her to a rebirth and also prompted her to come up with a name for her practice: Red Shawl Naturopathic Clinic (736 Kingsway; 604-708-1951; www.redshawl.com/).

Ask her to tell you the story. Storytelling may be the one element of her ancestry that naturopathic medicine doesn't already embrace.