PORT ANGELES — Elaine Miles doesn’t stray far from her roots — her cultural roots or the roots she digs up, dries, pounds into powder and uses in cooking.
“I was a Native girl before I was an actress,” she said to an audience at the Lower Elwha Klallam Reservation on Friday.
“People are shocked when I go root digging. Kids get amazed that I can do that.”
The co-star of TV’s “Northern Exposure,” came to Port Angeles to speak at the 2005 Tribal Canoe Journey celebration — and visit her family, which includes nephew Darryl Barkley, one of the Paddle to Elwha’s four coordinators.
“She hasn’t changed since she was a kid,” Barkley said.
What’s changed is Miles’ diet. Her mother, grandmother and great-grandmother all have or had diabetes.
“Our whole family changed our way of eating and exercising when my mom was diagnosed with diabetes,” she said.
“It’s important for us to stick to our traditional foods because, so far, I’m not diabetic. I hate needles. I wouldn’t make a good diabetic.”
Now Miles is going around Indian Country with a diabetes/exercise video, “Rez Robics,” and lecturing on the healthful benefits of traditional native foods.
Miles’ menu includes dried fish that she cuts, ties to poles and hangs in trees to dry in the wind at her Eastern Oregon home. She harvests wild onions and wild carrots.
