Cash Ahenakew, Rene Suša and Vanessa Andreotti
Plant medicine practices in the West have mostly been used for personal healing, empowerment or self-actualization. However, in Indigenous settings, these practices have been ancestrally used for mobilizing forms of responsibility and accountability towards the wider metabolism of the planet that we are all a part of. In this text, we draw on the work of the network “Teia das 5 Curas” to put forward an invitation to take seriously the call for maturity, sobriety, humility, and accountability issued by Indigenous communities. This invitation starts with a proposal that we need a type of plant medicine education that can help us confront and compost the collective traumas created by historical, systemic, and ongoing violence and the unsustainability of modernity-coloniality. We emphasize that this process is especially important for those who have benefited and still benefit from this violence and unsustainability... continue reading.