As a child, after her school day ended, Ramona Walema’s favorite classroom on the Fort Hall Reservation was Ferry Butte or Mount Putnam, just about anywhere a plant was growing, so her father Charley Bell could point it out to her and describe its medicinal uses.

    “He was a Bannock medicine man and would take me out on a horseback ride and tell me to jump down and study this or that plant and remember what it looks like and how to use it,” says Walema, a Shoshone-Bannock tribal elder whose sons recently filmed her for a DVD called “Traditional Uses of Plants.”

    Walema’s dad not only taught her about plants, he also told her traditional Bannock stories, which she shares in a separate DVD, “Oral Tradition Stories of the Bannock,” that her sons also made.

    “My dad was the best storyteller,” Walema says. “Sometimes, he would tell us funny stories or scary stories at night before bed, so after he was done, we would run into our rooms and pull the covers over our heads. And before we knew it, we were sound asleep.”

    Walema’s sons Charley B. Plenty Wounds and Dorsey C. Plenty Wounds helped her make the two DVDs because she wanted to pass on the knowledge she had gained from her late father, who raised Walema and her sisters on a cattle and horse ranch north of Fort Hall, where she still lives.

    “So many elders pass on without passing on their knowledge to a younger generation,” says Walema, who declines to share her age, adding with a laugh, “it’s my secret.”

    While she keeps her age a secret, Walema has shared her plant expertise, tribal lore, native language and arts and crafts knowledge through the public school systems in Fort Hall, Blackfoot and Pocatello.

    “I’ve been in education for about 50 years,” says Walema. She has worked as a teacher’s aide, taught students about basketry, beadwork, quillwork, cradle boards and moccasins at Blackfoot High School, and because she is fluent in Bannock, she also has taught language classes.

    In 1990, Walema was honored for her decades-long contributions to arts and education, when she received the Idaho Governor’s Award.

    At the same time Walema was working in schools, she not only valued educating others but also herself. She enrolled in classes at Haskell Junior College and earned a social sciences degree in 1982. In 1987, she graduated from nearby Idaho State University with a bachelor of arts degree, emphasizing Native American studies.

    She laughs when she recalls taking botany classes at ISU. “I knew all the plants’ names in the Bannock language, so here I had to learn them all over again,” she says of memorizing plants’ Anglicized common names and scientific names.

    Walema gives a few examples of how some common plants are used. Peppermint growing along moist creek banks can be made into a tea to clear the sinuses and soothe a sore throat. Sagebrush leaves can staunch nosebleeds or be made into a tea to ease rheumatic pain. To relieve a headache, peel and chew pieces of aspen bark.

    “Anyone who wants to learn about plants should take someone knowledgeable with them,” Walema advises. “There are poisonous plants around here, too, like water and poison hemlock.”

    Walema is well known not only for her plant lore but also for her storytelling, which she has done throughout Idaho, Wyoming, Nevada and Montana at colleges, museums and schools.

    The characters of cottontail, squirrel, beaver, cougar and coyote as “animal people” come to life as they learn valuable lessons through their many adventures on Mother Earth.

    “When I go into preschool and kindergarten classrooms, they call me ‘Grandma.’” Walema says. “One of their favorite stories they ask me to tell is about Fat Boy and the Horse Race.”

    As she tells the story, she gestures gracefully with her slender hands, speaks in a soothing cadence and laughs easily and often. Once, a boy was so obese, his parents worried about him, so his grandparents suggested he eat the heart of a killdeer. After eating small pieces of the heart, Fat Boy soon became as active as a killdeer, darting here and there like the bird.

    Soon he became slim, and one day a boy astride a horse challenged him to a race. She does the sound effects of the boy running steadily along and makes her fingers walk along her right leg. Then she makes the sounds of the horse galloping, and her other fingers fly along her left leg.

    “But soon the horse got so tired, and here came Fat Boy who was no longer fat,” she says. “Well, he won the race.”

    It’s like the fable of the tortoise and the hare, she says, and it teachers the little ones to be persistent in reaching a goal.

    Besides school, Walema’s most recent place to tell stories is in the theater. She wrote a script, and her sons made a 45-minute movie, “Many Rivers,” filming local actors in nearby locations. The Spearhead Productions film tells the story of a young man who is separated from his sister for many years and is eventually reunited.

    “I’m excited about it,” Walema says. “I’m pleased with how it turned out.”

    She and her sons are in the final editing stages and hope to enter it in Idaho State University’s annual film festival this winter.

Ramona Walema’s DVDs are available for $17.50 each and may be purchased from her by calling 237-6345 or 681-0300 or by writing to her at P. O. Box 866, Fort Hall, Idaho 83203. She also is available to tell stories.