Natalie Pepin

About Natalie, and why Two Roots exists

Tanisi. My name is Natalie Pepin. I am a Métis woman, though we refer to ourselves as Otipemisiwak, from a family whose roots reach deep into this land, through the fur trade and further still, into the Red River, and into the valley where I now live and raise my children in Northern Alberta.

Two Roots takes its name from the two rivers that run through me. The Indigenous roots, Cree, Saulteaux, Ojibwe, Dakoda, and the European roots, Scottish and French. Both are real. Both inform how I understand health, healing, and our relationship with the plants that sustain us.

I have been thinking about medicine most of my life. I just didn’t always call it that.

I have been thinking about medicine most of my life. I just didn’t always call it that.

What I believe about plants

I was taught by Blackfoot elders, particularly by Narcisse Blood, a deeply respected Kainai elder, that everything we have as Indigenous peoples comes from the land. Our language, our ceremonies, our arts, our medicines…all of it.

Not figuratively…literally. Our bodies are built from the land. The plants are our kin. We share a mother.

Culture without land is rootless and can’t survive. And the land does not belong to us. We belong to her.

Because of this, I understand plants as relatives. Not figuratively…literally. Our bodies are built from the land, through the foods our mothers ate as we were forming, through the plants and animals whose bodies also came from her. The plants are our kin. We share a mother.

This shapes how I approach herbology entirely. I use an analogy when I teach that I find people understand immediately: you would never walk up to a stranger and take something from their body without introduction, without relationship, without asking. We understand that instinctively with other people. And yet we do it to plants constantly. We walk up to a blueberry bush we have never met, in a place we have never been, and we start taking. It is, by the same standard, deeply inappropriate.

Getting to know a plant, really know it, takes time. You observe it across seasons. You sit with it. You learn what it looks like, how it smells, where it grows, what it does. You build relationship before you ask for anything. And even then, you ask. The plants are generous. They know they are supposed to give us food and medicine, and they do so freely. But we are still supposed to ask, and to be grateful.

This is the foundation of how I grow, harvest, source, and work with every plant medicine at Two Roots.

I also want to be clear about something important: I am not a medicine person. In our culture, medicine people occupy a distinct and sacred role, one requiring decades of sacrifice, deep spiritual relationship with plants, and a level of cultural training I do not hold and do not claim. Herbology is something different. We know the plants deeply, their physical medicines, their effects on body systems, their traditional and evidence-informed applications, but we do not carry the same responsibility or the same gifts as medicine people. That distinction matters, and I name it out of respect for those who do carry that responsibility in our communities.

Science is one of the lenses I use to know plants, like one sense among many. It gives me tools for understanding beings who are largely nonverbal. But it is not the foundation of relationship, any more than reading someone’s medical chart is the same as knowing them as a person. I use science. I value it. And I hold it in its proper place.

This is personal.

I live with complex chronic health conditions myself. For years, my symptoms were acknowledged as troubling and then set aside. Too complicated. Unclear on bloodwork. Come back later.

I did what many of us in that position do: I researched. I drew on my knowledge of plant medicine, anatomy, ecology, and science. I found the experts in these conditions. I developed my own protocols. I found relief…real, functional relief, using a combination of plant-derived compounds, targeted supplementation, and the broader tools of herbal medicine and homeopathy.

I am not cured. But I understand these conditions more deeply and I understand how to work with my body, I manage these conditions effectively, and I know there is genuine support available for people who have been told there isn’t.

The medical system is not equipped to hold complexity well. When a condition doesn’t resolve cleanly into a diagnosis with a clear pharmaceutical pathway, people are often handed a label, fibromyalgia, IBS, anxiety, that means *we’re not sure, and we’re done trying.* I have a very tender spot for those people. Because I have been one of them.

Traditional medicine, Indigenous understandings, herbal medicine, homeopathy, have always understood that trauma lives in the body, that health is relational, that the whole person must be seen for healing to happen. This is not fringe thinking. It is old knowledge that modern medicine is slowly, partially catching up to.

If you have been told your case is too complicated, too unclear, or too chronic to help…I want
to hear from you.

This land, this practice

I have lived in this valley for ten years, and on this land for over six. I am building a working apothecary farm here, growing medicinal herbs including rhodiola, which thrives in northern Alberta’s climate and is among the most research-supported adaptogens for fatigue and resilience. The farm is part of my practice and part of my story, but it is not the whole of either. When I source beyond the land where I live, I apply the same standards: ethical, traceable, organic where possible, treated with care and gratitude from the moment it arrives.

Medicine that begins in relationship is different from medicine that doesn’t. I believe that. And I try to ensure that every remedy I offer reflects it.