A Collective Call for Accountability in Plant Medicine Experiences

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.