Medicine of Community and Place (remote/in-person*)

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

To successfully participate in this on-line program, students need a computer with reliable internet access for class sessions on Zoom and program engagement on Canvas. While synchronous (live) class sessions will take place on Wednesday evenings and alternate Saturdays, sessions will be recorded for students who must periodically miss class.