Blackberry

Common Name: 
mossberry, crowberry
GNWT, RWED
Gwichya Gwich'in Name: 
dineech'ùh
Teetł’it Gwich’in Name:: 
dineech’uh
Latin Name: 
Empetrum nigrum
Categories: 
By Uses
Food
Medicine
By Type
Berries
Uses: 
Food
Medicine

As food 

The berries are edible and make good jam. They are ready to pick in August and September and are tasty when eaten as is or eaten with other berries. Blackberries can be mixed with cranberries and added to it’suh, a Gwich’in dessert made from pounded dryfish.

Blackberries and Fish

Take the fish broth from boiled whitefish, add a pail of blackberries, enough sugar to sweeten it up, and a dipper of fish blood, hearts and liver. Cook this mixture. Then you take it down (off the stove). It is just like jam.

-Effie Francis (COPE)

As medicine
Annie Norbert remembers that Old Joe Natsie used to make a medicinal tea that was considered as good as spruce gum tea.
Old Joe Natsie’s Medicine
This medicine was considered as good as spruce gum tea for stomach aches and bad colds. This tea was made by collecting and boiling blackberry roots, berries and stems.
- Annie Norbert, Tsiigehtchic (COPE)
Source: Andre, Alestine and Alan Fehr, Gwich'in Ethnobotany, 2nd ed. (2002)
 
As medicine

This plant with its black berries is also known as mossberry or crowberry. The above ground parts and roots of the blackberry plant are used to make a tea that is drunk for diarrhea. According to Ruth Welsh the stem and roots are crushed and then boiled,

     … let it steep for a while (and then) drink the tea. It helps to stop the diarrhea.

Source: Andre, Alestine, Nan t'aih nakwits'inahtsìh (The Land Gives Us Strength) (2006)