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Photo by Sam Harrel

During the summer months, Audrey “Babe” Sunnyboy forages around the countryside, gathering healing plants that she makes into salves or dries for teas.

A traditional healer and lifetime-certified traditional counselor with the State of Alaska, Sunnyboy recently self-published her second medicinal plant book, “Denyaavee: Medicine Plants of Interior Alaska’s People.”

Her first book, “Denyaavee Medicine Plant” was published when she worked for Tanana Chiefs Conference as its alternative/traditional healing program director, which ran for three years before ending in 2000.

Today, the petite woman works as a traditional counselor out of her office: Sunny Denyaavee Center, at 59 Recency Court.

Sunnyboy doesn’t take credit for any healing that takes place under her ministrations.

“The healing, that is God’s. No human does that,” she explained. “A lot of people don’t understand how healing works, and they’re afraid of it. The Creator does all of that, so we shouldn’t be afraid.”

Joyce Demoski often joins Sunnyboy on plant-gathering excursions. The two women hit the highway and side roads as far south as Healy, collecting plants along the way.

“Before going out with her, I never realized how many plants there were,” Demoski said. “We’ve traveled hundreds of miles.”

Demoski describes her friend as quiet, very dedicated to helping people out, but not very outspoken, “unless it’s something she believes in.”

Sunnyboy first became interested in nutrition, plants and diet in 1969 after reading “Let’s Eat Right to Keep Fit” by Adele Davis. She quickly became “a serious fan” of the now-deceased author.

She also holds in high esteem Dr. Joan Larson, author of “Seven Weeks to Sobriety.” Sunnyboy studied under Larson and worked with her for a year as a biochemical counselor at Larson’s Health Recovery Center in Minneapolis.

What started as an interest for Sunnyboy grew throughout her lifetime and her own experience with alcohol abuse.

In 1986, she quit drinking and her quest for more information and knowledge on nutrition and diet continued to grow.

“I wanted to learn everything,” Sunnyboy said. “I didn’t think of it as a way to make a living.”

As she read, her interests broadened to include herbs, vitamins, nutrients, minerals and plants.

Sunnyboy said she wishes that somebody had taken her by the shoulders when she was young and advised the following:

“Life goes by very, very fast and you need to know that and be aware of it, so you can conduct your life accordingly,” she said, adding, “I wish the elders or our parents had done that to each and everyone of us.”

Born and raised in Nenana, Sunnyboy’s parents, Robert Sunnyboy and Elizabeth Earhart, met in Tanana, her Athabascan mother’s home village, where her father, Robert, a Yup’ik Eskimo from Pitka’s Point, was a cook at the hospital.

Following their marriage, the couple settled in Nenana, where Robert worked for the Alaska Railroad, and they raised a large family.

Sunnyboy credits her parents for instilling in her a good work ethic and the desire to to learn.

She recalls her father buying a typewriter and covering the keys in dark tape and teaching himself how to type.

Sunnyboy struck out on her own as a teenager. Following a failed youthful marriage, she moved to Anchorage in the mid-1960s with her young son, Wes.

“I thought, ‘I can’t raise my son here (in Fairbanks).’ There was too much prejudice, so I moved.” she said.

In Anchorage, Sunnyboy supported herself and her son by first washing dishes and working as a waitress, which she didn’t like. She then tried cooking, which she did like, advancing from fry cook to dinner cook.

Sunnyboy joined the Culinary Union (previously called Hotel and Restaurant Workers), worked on the North Slope and served as the union’s business agent and vice president. She also worked for the state’s Human Rights Commission and Anchorage’s Equal Rights Commission before taking the position at Tanana Chief Conference in 1997.

“She’s always looking out for others,” said Sunnyboy’s ex-sister-in-law, Jackie Sunnyboy. “All of the nieces and nephews, when someone is sick or in trouble, they all call their Auntie Babe.”

Jackie Sunnyboy also admires her relative’s strength.

“When she gets something in her head and makes a goal for herself. She’s very tenacious,” she said, alluding to Sunnyboy’s continuing quest to aid others along the path to sobriety. “She’s never wavered.”

According to Sunnyboy, the first steps for anyone struggling to overcome alcohol abuse are to stop drinking and stop using sugar (which triggers alcohol cravings), and to start taking nutrients to repair the damage done to one’s body and build it up again.

“You need vitamins, minerals, essential fatty acids and amino acids to help rebuild the neuro transmitters in the brain,” Sunnyboy said.

Although Sunnyboy, at age 62, is nearing the commonly accepted retirement age, retirement isn’t in her vocabulary. Her dream is to put together a nonprofit health recovery center franchise in Fairbanks, much like her mentor, Larson.

“Dr. Larson has the best program for drugs and alcohol,” Sunnyboy said.

But the venture would entail a considerable sum of money, a community board of directors and many other details, she said.

According to the traditional healer, doctors all over the United States who are interested in addiction believe nutritional deficiency is a large part of the problem.

Sunnyboy mentions in her most recent book that the high incidence of depression and suicide in addition to substance abuse issues among Alaska Natives is related to dietary changes from a traditional Native diet to a Western diet.

“This (Western) diet consists of foods that have been processed and no longer have the amounts of nutrients that are needed to sustain good human health. Since we changed our way of eating — our diet — from our old way to this new way (in the last 50-75 years) we are paying a high price with our health and with the health of our children and our elders too,” she wrote.

For her latest book, Sunnyboy again relied upon elders for sharing much of their traditional knowledge for plant uses — including birch fungus, Labrador tea, wild roses and many other plants, trees and berries.

In addition to medicinal uses, Sunnyboy includes interesting details and stories throughout the 70-page book, illustrated by her husband Harry T. Littlefield with clear, colorful photographs.

In the book’s preface, Sunnyboy cautions readers to contact medical doctors and nurses for serious medical issues.

She also adds this advice, given by an elder who shared plant knowledge with her:

“Remember to respect the plants if you go out to gather them. Don’t disturb them in the evening or night; explain to them the reason you are picking them. And, most important of all, thank them for sharing their medicine with us.

“If you don’t do these things properly, the medicines that you make from the plants might not turn out very good.”