Stories from the Botanical Underground

Medicinal Plants as More-than-Human Knowledge Keepers

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.25071/2292-4736/40463

Abstract

Plants are intelligent keepers and communicators of more-than-human knowledge. Their stories relate the agency of place and plants, showing us how to live where we are, what it means to contribute to the continuance of life, and how to collaborate with nonhuman others in resilient place-making. Botanical storytelling reaffirms people-plant relations, reimagines human relationships with the land, and intervenes in prevailing social and environmental narratives. Stories from the Botanical Underground, presented at the 2023 American Association of Geographers conference, relates the ecological-social lives of betony (Pedicularis), globemallow (Sphaeralcea), and vervain (Verbena) and the knowledge they hold for navigating socio-environmental challenges. This collection of stories intends to de-center human impositions of colonial power upon botanical landscapes and re-center the teachings of place and plants on a damaged planet. In this research, medicinal plants themselves are recognized as primary contributors of knowledge. [...]

Author Biography

Dara Saville, New Mexico State University

Dara Saville is a Geohumanities PhD student at New Mexico State University researching plant-people relationships in the context of environmental change. She is the author of the University of New Mexico Press book, The Ecology of Herbal Medicine, and has worked in community herbalism and land stewardship for 25 years. Dara is the director of Albuquerque Herbalism, a bioregional herbal studies program, and the director of the Yerba Mansa Project, a community participatory nonprofit organization offering ecological-botanical events.

References

Anderson, M. K. (2005). Tending the wild: Native American knowledge and the management of California’s natural resources. University of California Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/9780520933101

Boyd, C. (2023). Exhibiting creative geographies. Palgrave MacMillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-6752-8_1 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-6752-8

Cabnal, L. (2010). Acercamiento a la construcción de la pro-puesta de pensamiento epistémico de las mujeres indígenas feministas comunitarias de Abya Yala [On constructing a proposal of communitarian feminist Indigenous women’s epistemic thought in Abya Yala]. Feminismos Diversos: El Feminismo Comunitario, 11(25), 11–25.

Cajete, G. (1994). Look to the mountain: An ecology of Indigenous education. Kivaki Press.

Cameron, E. (2012). New geographies of story and storytelling. Progress in Human Geography, 35(5), 573–592. https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132511435000 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132511435000

Haraway, D. (1994). A game of cat’s cradle: Science studies, feminist theory, cultural studies. Configurations, 2(1), 59–71. https://doi.org/10.1353/con.1994.0009 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/con.1994.0009

Haraway, D. (2016). Staying with the trouble: Making kin in the Chthulucene. Duke University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv11cw25q

Hawkins, H. (2014). For creative geographies: Geography, visual arts, and the making of worlds. Routledge.

Johnson, J. T., & Murton, B. (2007). Re/placing Native science: Indigenous voices in contemporary constructions of nature. Geographical Research, 45(2), 121–129. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1745-5871.2007.00442.x DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1745-5871.2007.00442.x

Larsen, S. C., & Johnson, J. T. (2016). The agency of place: Toward a more-than-human geographical self. GeoHumanities, 2(1), 149–166. https://doi.org/10.1080/2373566x.2016.1157003 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/2373566X.2016.1157003

Million, D. (2013). Therapeutic nations: Healing in an age of Indigenous human rights. University of Arizona Press.

Salmon, E. (2010). Sharing breath: Some links between land, plants, and people. In A. H. Deming & L. E.

Savoy (Eds.), The colors of nature: Culture, identity, and the natural world (pp. i–x). Milkweed Editions.

Sundberg, J. (2014). Decolonizing posthumanist geographies. Cultural geographies, 21(1), 33–47. https://doi.org/10.1177/1474474013486067 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/1474474013486067

Tsing, A. (2010). Arts of inclusion, or, how to love mushroom. Australian Humanities Review, 50, 5–21. DOI: https://doi.org/10.22459/AHR.50.2011.01

Vasudevan, P., Ramírez, M. M., Mendoza, Y. G., & Daigle, M. (2022). Storytelling earth and body. Annals of the American Association of Geographers. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1080/24694452.2022.2139658 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/24694452.2022.2139658

Whatmore, S. (2006). Materialist returns: Practising cultural geography in and for a more-than-human world. cultural geographies, 13(4), 600–609. https://doi.org/10.1191/1474474006cgj377oa DOI: https://doi.org/10.1191/1474474006cgj377oa

Downloads

Published

2025-02-24

How to Cite

Saville, D. (2025). Stories from the Botanical Underground: Medicinal Plants as More-than-Human Knowledge Keepers. UnderCurrents: Journal of Critical Environmental Studies, 22, 111–115. https://doi.org/10.25071/2292-4736/40463

Issue

Vol. 22 (2025): Below

Section

Conference Transcripts

License

Copyright (c) 2025 Dara Saville

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Authors retain copyright over their work and license their work for publication in UnderCurrents under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0). This means that the work is available for commercial and non-commercial use, reproduction, and adaptation provided that the original authors are credited and the original publication in this journal is cited, following standard academic practice.