Keewaydinoquay Peschel

Keewaydinoquay Pakawakuk Peschel was a scholar, ethnobotanist, herbalist, medicine woman, teacher and author. She was an Anishinaabeg Elder of the Crane Clan. She was born in Michigan around 1919 and spent time on Garden Island, a traditional Anishinaabeg homeland.

Keewaydinoquay Pakawakuk Peschel (1919 – July 21,1999) was a scholar, ethnobotanist, herbalist, medicine woman, teacher and author. She was an Anishinaabeg Elder of the Crane Clan. She was born in Michigan around 1919 and spent time on Garden Island, a traditional Anishinaabeg homeland.

According to her biography, she was born in a fishing boat en route to the hospital from the Manitou Islands, which capsized shortly thereafter, and her survival was interpreted as miraculous. Her childhood name, meaning "Walks with Bears", derived from an incident where as a toddler she was left on a blanket as her parents gathered blueberries, returning to see her standing by bears, eating blueberries off the bushes. Her adult name Giiwedinokwe, recorded as "Keewaydinoquay", means "Woman of the North[west Wind]" and came from her vision quest.

She apprenticed with the noted Anishinaabeg medicine woman Nodjimahkwe from the age of 9 and worked for many years as a medicine woman, at a time when her people had little access to conventional medical care and when conventional medical care failed to cure them, healing more than several patients deemed to be terminally ill. At the age of 57 she decided to study anthropology, realizing that people would listen to her more if she had a degree. She received a Master of Education Degree from Wayne State University, and had finished all course work for a Ph.D. in ethnobotany at the University of Michigan. She was awarded the Michigan Conservation Teacher of the Year in 1975 for her "Outstanding Work in the Field of Conservation". She taught classes in ethnobotany as well as philosophy of the Great Lakes American Indians at University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee where she was a professor in the 1980s, and lectured at many herbal conferences. She was consulted for many prestigious books, including several on Great Lakes indigenous plant use.

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