Ethnobotanists travel the world working with indigenous peoples to find useful plants. But that’s just a part of their mission. I’m Jim Metzner, and this is the Pulse of the Planet, presented by the American Museum of Natural History.
“I used to think of ethnobotany as the race to collect knowledge from the Indians, to get it to the lab, to test it and see if this stuff works and find more medicine. I knew that the information was disappearing as these cultures come into contact with the western world, and as these forests disappear. But to me, there’s a more important mission these days which is helping these people seize control of their environmental and cultural destiny to protect both the forest and the culture and thereby protect the knowledge of how to use these plants which are so important to them and potentially, so important to us.”
Mark Plotkin is executive director of the Ethnobiology and Conservation team.
“In many ways, helping these people realize the need to protect ecosystems and cultures is in a sense a re-dignification of the culture. To point out to them that the Quinine pills that treated their kids’ malaria is not the white man’s medicine. It is extracted from a tree that their ancestors taught to the white man. It is pointing out to them that by virtue of the fact that they know more about these plants than we do, that this is something potentially valuable to them and they shouldn’t discard it. Now they may never want to share this information with us. That’s their decision to make. But if they loose the information, that option- of collaborating of sharing, of teaching of selling is foreclosed- it’s gone.”
Plotkin has made it part of his mission as an ethnobotanist to give something back to the Indians with a project that he calls the Shaman’s apprentice, a program which helps the traditional knowledge of elders to be passed on to future generations.
Additional funding for Pulse of the Planet has been provided by the National Science Foundation. I’m Jim Metzner.