How can plants be recognized for their ‘personhood’? Who are the keepers of plant knowledge? Who has access to traditional plant knowledge? How could the knowledge be affected over time? Many plant species are preserved in herbariums, but talking about plants preserves them too. Caring for and using plants allows plants to benefit their caretakers too. This digital archive aims to visually narrate the personhood of plants through oral history narrators’ own relationships to them.
“In some Native languages the term for plants translates to ‘those who take care of us.’”
― Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants
When you recognise the agency of the nonhuman, you can have a reciprocal relationship with the plants. I invite you to build your own relationship to a new plant. Which plant is speaking to you?
“Our indigenous herbalists say to pay attention when plants come to you; they’re bringing you something you need to learn.”
― Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants
Clarissa Shane is an interdisciplinary creative and oral historian-in-training from Stockton, CA. During her Oral History Masters of Arts program at Columbia University, she collected and mapped plant knowledge to create intergenerational connections. As a OHMA/GSAS Research Grant recipient, she worked on “Re-Rooting Orality: On Plant Oral Histories In Paredones, Michoacan, Mexico” under the guidance of Dr. Amy Starecheski, Sara Sinclair, and Sara Shane. She graduated with a BA in Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought from Bard College Berlin. As a recipient of funding from the OSUN Experimental Humanities Collaborative Network, she did multimedia research in her maternal ancestral land with the support of her advisor Dr. Agata Lisiak. She learned how wild plant usage in ceremony, medicine, and cuisine impacts cultural traditions and environmental conservation which can be read in the paper: “Local Traditions and Global Entanglements: Human-Nonhuman Trajectories in Paredones, Michoacan, Mexico.” In her free time, she studies ayurvedic herbalism.