Return to the Earth: Herbalism, Rootwork, and Black Femme Ecologies of Survival

• In Event: New Horizons in Black Geographies: Charting Unexplored Terrains of Diaspora, Ecology, and Resistance

Description for Program

This paper examines how contemporary Black femme herbalists and rootworkers in the United States forge alternative epistemologies through their nature-based spiritual practices, developing what I term a "Black femme eco-erotic consciousness." Black femme practitioners approach ancestral herbalism and rootwork as both scientific and spiritual practices requiring deep sensual intelligence to craft remedies for body and spirit. Through examining their creative collaborations with plants, I show how these practitioners articulate alternative frameworks for understanding gender, sexuality, and the human that unsettle colonial epistemologies. I interrogate how an intimate relationship with plants develops a political consciousness, challenges racial logics of extraction, and nurtures alternative ways of relating to both the earth and each other. Building on scholarship in Black feminist thought, Black religious studies, and Black ecologies, this research contributes to discussions of how Black communities create life-affirming practices in the face of ecological crisis and anti-Black violence, while also advancing theoretical understanding of how spiritual relationships with nature shape Black feminist political consciousness.

Author

• Kiara Sample, UC Berkeley