Tobacco Is a Sacred Medicine

What Colonization Tried to Turn Into a Weapon

There’s so much turmoil in the world right now, so much grief, noise, and disconnection. And I keep returning to the idea of relationship. The world feels upside down because we’ve lost touch with the things that once rooted us. That’s why I wanted to write about tobacco. Not the kind you buy at the store, but the kind our people once grew with prayer. The kind you offer to the earth or to an Elder. The kind that carries your voice to the spirit world.

In Ojibwe culture, and many other Indigenous nations, tobacco (asemáa) is sacred.

Photo by Provincial Archives of Alberta on Unsplash

It is the first medicine. It’s how we begin things in a good way. It’s laid down when we ask for help, guidance, or healing. It’s how we give thanks, how we honour someone’s life, and how we let the land know we’re entering with respect. If you’re asking for a teaching from an Elder, you offer tobacco. If you’re picking medicines from the land, you lay tobacco down in thanks. If someone has passed on, you place tobacco with their spirit to help guide them home.

Protocol and Power

Traditional Ojibwe protocol guides how tobacco is offered:

Asemáa Nitam (“Tobacco First”) teaches that we lay tobacco as the first act of kindness and reciprocity, before asking, taking, or beginning any ceremony. We wrap it in cotton cloth and offer it left-handed, near the heart. We speak our intention. Recipients can accept or refuse. That tobacco is then smoked, burned, or returned to the earth, water, or fire respectfully, never tossed. Only Pipe Carriers smoke it in a ceremony. Most people do not inhale sacred tobacco. Its power lies in intention, not ingestion. This protocol is living medicine: relationship before request. Respect before receipt

But like so many other things, colonization tried to take that away from us and replace it with something commodified.

Sacred vs. Commercial Tobacco: A Broken Relationship

The tobacco our ancestors used was often a strain called Nicotiana rustica — strong, ceremonial, and rarely inhaled. It was grown with care, often sung to, and harvested with prayer. It was used with a clear purpose and humility. It was bundled, smudged, offered in ceremony, and never smoked out of stress or impulse. That shift, from relationship to addiction, didn’t happen by accident. It happened by design.

When settlers arrived, they saw tobacco not as medicine, but as an opportunity.

By the 1600s, European empires were cultivating tobacco on stolen land, using stolen labor, turning our sacred plant into a global commodity. They removed it from ceremony, packaged it with chemicals, and marketed it, sometimes intentionally, to Indigenous communities.

Today, commercial tobacco-related diseases are among the leading causes of death in many Indigenous communities, something that was never meant to be our burden.

What was once a sacred plant became a tool of harm.

But here’s the truth: this wasn’t just about economics. It was about erasure. Tobacco addiction hit Indigenous communities hard, not because we “misused” it, but because the medicine was altered and weaponized, turned into something it was never meant to be. That’s the violence of colonization.

And if you’re someone who smokes, this isn’t a call-out. It’s an invitation. There’s no shame here. Many people smoke because they’re coping with pain, grief, disconnection, stress, or trauma. I get that. It’s human. But there’s also something deeply healing about remembering that this plant was never meant to be used that way. That it still knows how to carry your words to Creator. It can be offered instead of consumed. This story is about remembering that there was always another way. That the plant itself was never the enemy.

For those trying to quit commercial tobacco or shift their relationship with it, some turn to gentle plant allies like mullein or rose. Mullein is a soft-leafed plant traditionally used to soothe the lungs and support respiratory healing. Rose petals, especially wild or organic, are known for calming the heart and spirit. These plants can be used in teas, smudges, or even in ceremonial smoke blends, used to reconnect with breath and intention. They help people move away from addiction to tobacco and toward a more sacred, grounded relationship with medicine.

What Reclaiming Tobacco Looks Like

All across Turtle Island, Indigenous people are restoring that relationship.

We’re growing tobacco from ancestral seed lines. Teaching youth the difference between sacred use and industry use. Bringing back offerings and ceremony.

Tobacco Restoration & Reclamation Projects

• Reclaiming Sacred Tobacco Coalition (RST): Since 2022, this national movement supports Indigenous communities in growing traditional tobacco, restoring ceremonies, and shaping smokefree policies on tribal lands, like the Eastern Band of Cherokee restoring not just their tobacco, but even traditional place names like Kuwohi, where “our spiritual leaders went…things were given to our people,” as Lavita Hill shared.

• Keep It Sacred (National Native Network): A movement to distinguish sacred tobacco from commercial products, teaching that traditional tobacco (N. rustica) “is not associated with addiction and adverse health impacts” when used with proper ceremonial respect.

• Indigenous Peoples Task Force’s “Asemáa” program in Minnesota: Youth-led restoration projects, ceremonial tobacco planting, and cultural teachings that honor tobacco’s spirit and reduce cravings for commercial use, summed up in their slogan: “Tradition Not Addiction”.

In a time when the world feels like it’s unraveling — war, injustice, climate collapse, I.C.E. raids — sometimes the most radical thing we can do is remember who we are. To sit with the old medicines. To say thank you to the land. To offer asemá with a prayer and let it rise.

Because even now, especially now, that little bundle of leaves still knows the way home.

Every time we plant sacred tobacco, we’re also planting memory. A truth that colonial systems tried to bury. But those seeds remember. And so do we.

Migwetch,

Julie