Indigenous histories in contemporary herbalism: appropriation and relations

• In Event: Plant Knowledge

English Abstract

What is medical appropriation, how is it related to settler colonialism, and how does it act in the context of herbal medicine? What is the value of historical education for contemporary herbalists?

We suggest that appropriation, like settler colonialism, is a structure not an event, one characterized by the denial of Indigenous time, place, people, and future. We theorize appropriation as the movement of plants in and out of laboratory medicine, resource extraction, and ethnobotany. Appropriation has transcribed Indigenous knowledge as unreadable, uncertain, and static through settler space and time. Appropriation continues to act explicitly as a form of settler elimination, allowing uneven dynamics between mainstream herbalism and Indigenous ethnobotany. We suggest Indigenous theories of relationality as a pathway/practice to address the colonial violence of appropriation. Indigenous voices and ideas on appropriate ways to practice and be in relation with botanical materials must be heard and implemented. To do this, we need to revisit and unpack commonly held (mis)assumptions of Native American/Indigenous herbalism.

One way to do this is through education in history, specifically a critical education of settler colonialism and contemporary Indigenous connections to place over time. In this presentation, we identify appropriation in the context of three historical moments: 19th-century laboratory medicine and puccoon/bloodroot; 20th-century white pine in ethnobotany; and 21st-century bear root/osha in the big herb market of consumer herbalism. We situate these within the framework of Indigenous relationality, and suggest how one can support Indigenous futures.

Authors

• Macey Flood

• Natasha Myhal, School of Environment and Natural Resources at The Ohio State University