Medicine of Community and Place

Community-based herbalism expands the concept of medicine from pharmaceutical drugs to a continuum that begins with food; from laboratory products to nourishment that takes place in the kitchen; from passive doctor visits to activities that include gardening, harvesting, and medicine-making; and from standardized prescriptions to cultural, family, and neighborhood knowledge and sharing. However, Western herbalism also needs to be challenged due to its colonization of healing traditions, plants, and places -- especially traditional Indigenous stewardship. This program lays a foundation for understanding these issues as well as addressing them. Our studies will draw from several disciplines including medicinal botany, community studies, cultural ecology, and US and Indigenous history. We will identify plants, make kitchen medicine, network with community herbalists and community gardens, engage in garden care and service learning; and consider our own ethnic and cultural traditions with plants. We will link with the local food movement with a view toward cultivating local medicine; we will commit to the hard work of decolonization; and we will engage with the Longhouse Ethnobotanical Garden as both resource and teacher.