Enrique Salmón - Iwígara: American Indian Ethnobotanical Traditions and Science

Enrique Salmn

Timber Press
Portland, Oregon

Copyright 2020 by Enrique Salmn. All rights reserved.

Photography credits appear on .

Cover illustration credits: (Front cover) Shutterstock: Andrenko Tatiana; AVA Bitter; Dn Br; Hein Nouwens; mamita; MicroOne; Morphart Creation; Nastasic; Olga Korneeva. Adobe Stock: Morphart Creation. (Back cover) Shutterstock: Morphart Creation.

Published in 2020 by Timber Press, Inc.

The Haseltine Building
133 S.W. Second Avenue, Suite 450
Portland, Oregon 97204-3527
timberpress.com

Text design by Lauren Michelle Smith

Cover design by Faceout Studio

eISBN 978-1-64326-034-1

Catalog records for this book are available from the Library of Congress and the British Library.

To my grandmother Maria and my mother, Esperidiona.

You taught me so much about plants and about life.

Happily abundant passing showers I desire.

Happily an abundance of vegetation I desire.

Happily an abundance of pollen I desire.

Happily abundant dew I desire.

Happily may fair white corn, to the ends of the earth, come with you.

Happily may fair yellow corn, to the ends of the earth, come with you.

Happily may fair blue corn, to the ends of the earth, come with you.

Happily may fair corn of all kinds, to the ends of the earth, come with you.

Happily may fair plants of all kinds, to the ends of the earth, come with you.

NAVAJO (DIN) NIGHT CHANT

I was raised by a mother, a grandmother, and other extended family members who were living libraries of indigenous plant knowledge that has been collected, revised, and tested for millennia. This kind of knowledge is not housed in a building, stored on shelves according to some fixed system; it lives in the memories, oral literature, and daily rituals of its practitioners. As I grew up, I was exposed to this plant knowledge during regular plant-collecting excursions, and it was reinforced each time we cooked a traditional meal, every time my mother or grandmother treated me for an ailment, whenever I helped my grandfather in our cornfield. I took this early exposure to plant knowledge for granted, not knowing that it was becoming a rarity among most young people in our modern society.

Even as I was learning the practicalities of collecting, preparing, and administering plants, I was being exposed to a worldview that perceives plants as relatives. I was raised to respect all things, especially plants, as living beings. Now, as a native ethnobotanical scholar, I have struggled with how to translate this worldview into terms that can be understood by non-indigenous people. I am often asked, what is ethnobotany? My usual answer is to quote Richard I. Ford; he was one of my mentors, and he defined ethnobotany thus: the study of direct interrelationships between people and plants. Normally that response elicits blank looks. Perhaps it is better to tell how I followed my path into this field.

During my university years, whenever I was given the opportunity to choose a topic for a research paper, I invariably wrote about American Indians and plants. My masters degree thesis focused on medical plant knowledge and shamanism among three native cultures of the Southwest. It was at this point that my graduate advisor informed me that I was clearly on track to becoming an ethnobotanist.

Ever since that conversation I, like hundreds of ethnobotanists around the world, have devoted my life to studying how all people, not just indigenous peoples, interact with the plants in their local environments. It is painstaking and rewarding work that requires years of observing and participating with people in their local environments as they talk about plants, as they gather and use plants, as they make decisions about where to harvest plants, and as they sometimes battle with local authorities in order to protect plant-gathering areas and access to plants. I have participated in applied ethnobotanical work in Ethiopia, Australia, and North America, from Alaska to Mexico. I go, gladly, wherever native peoples are demanding their rights to sustainably manage their landscapes as their ancestors have done for thousands of years. In other words, ethnobotanists have become advocates for environmental justice, applied conservationism, and indigenous rights.

In 2000, I wrote an article for Ecological Applications, Kincentric Ecology: Indigenous Perceptions of the Human-Nature Relationship. In it, I drew upon ideas and concepts from my own tribal worldview of our relationship with and responsibility to place, in an effort to explain how American Indians see themselves as part of an extended ecological family. I focused on the Rarmuri concept of iwgara, writing, Iwgara channels the idea that all life, spiritual and physical, is interconnected in a continual cycle [and] expresses the belief that all life shares the same breath. We are all related to, and play a role in, the complexity of life.

In a worldview based on iwgara, humans are no more important to the natural world than any other form of life. This notion influences how I lead my own life and guides many of my decisions. Knowing that I am related to everything around me and share breath with all living things helps me to focus on my responsibility to honor all forms of life. I carefully consider all living and non-living things when making choices or weighing actions I might take. In short, I see myself as one of many stewards of the land and natural world. I share breath with it, so I endeavor to minister to it with appropriate ritual, thought, and ceremony.

Before writing this book, I conferred with native plant practitioners, my professional ethnobotanical network, and with close friends. I asked these knowledge holders and wisdom keepers to help me compile a list of plants that are the most culturally relevant to North American native peoples. Instead of trying to create a comprehensive list of every plant known to be used by one populace or another and all their potential uses, my goal was to focus on the plants that, overall, hold the most significance for indigenous peoples of the contiguous United States and Canada. In other words, what plants are the most important in the minds of native North American peoples? The answer is the following volume, consisting of 80 plant entries.

Ethnobotany is an area of study that interests both academics and laypeople. Unfortunately, most ethnobotanical texts are written by and for academics. The layperson, even one who is keenly interested in ethnobotanical knowledge, may not wish to decipher the esoteric jargon and not-so-engaging writing styles of professional ethnobotanists. Numerous books and other sources of information about American Indian plant knowledge focus on the same plants over and over, or read more like medicinal plant dictionaries. I tried to do something different here: to present a selection of American Indian ethnobotanical knowledge that is scientific in scope but written in an accessible style andmost important of allto blend basic scientific and medicinal information with culturally specific knowledge and culturally relevant applications. I note, therefore, how some food plants, more than merely being sources of calories, play important cultural and ceremonial rolesfor example, that wapato is not only an edible tuber but also a currency in gambling games, or that an elderberrys branches make good stems for smoking pipes. Although much of this knowledge is centuries old, I have, as much as possible, augmented it with updated contemporary information.