Abstract
Constitutions of plant medicine emerge differently in cross-cultural encounters around healing, enlivened, stilled, and reconfigured in ways that deploy different medicinal profiles and approaches to conservation. This chapter presents the narratives of several Bribri, Afro Caribbean, and Tican healers in Talamanca, Costa Rica, as they reflect on medicinal encounters with seekers from North America, to elucidate the ways notions of people and plant relationships interpolate encounters and often participate in a broader colonial narrative by upholding a nature and society dualism. Ethnographic research in Talamanca is juxtaposed to discussions on plant medicine use in health contexts in British Columbia, Canada, providing a backdrop for considering emplacement in biotic context as elemental to plant becoming medicine. Emergent medicinal meanings and their relationship to broader economic, political, environmental, and social processes nuance some of the ways socioecological contexts are affected by the trajectories of seekers, and the consequences of a plant-centric and standardized perspective of plant medicine.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
Seekers and healers are not exclusive categories and do not necessarily represent encounters between different worlds. Seekers can become healers and vice versa.
- 3.
“Plant medicines ” refer to all botanical medicines, including tree barks, lianas, and roots, emplaced in biotic relationships that are always shifting, in dynamic interaction, and in processes of “becoming” (Deleuze and Guattari 2000). Plant medicinal knowledge and practices are influenced by climate change, changing ecosystems, endangered species, new botanical or animal species, and new ways of thinking (Anderson 2011: 2).
- 4.
Tim Ingold writes that the conception of the organism in mainstream theory in biology (evolutionary and environmental) is as a “discrete, bounded entity, a ‘living thing’,” one of a group of such things that relates to other organisms “along lines of external contact”; these things do not shape one another, and their inner natures remain unaffected by contact (2000: 3).
- 5.
Healer in this context espouses Osseo-Asare’s description, referring to a variety of health practitioners with training in folk medicine and healing plants, gained through family lineages and apprenticeships (2014: 13). My research similarly recognizes traditional knowledge and practices as dynamic, innovative, interactive, and adaptive, with the understanding that localities are linked with the wider world in countless ways at various levels, and not simply products of the modern world (Osseo-Asare 2014: 73, in references to Massey 1993).
- 6.
Nolan and Turner (2011) note that in 2008 there were 669,000 Google hits for ethnobotany , 33,000 more than a similar search in March 2005 (134).
- 7.
Kohn (2013) posits that a vital part of finding a way to practice an anthropology that does not drastically separate humans from nonhumans lies in grasping the relationships between distinctive forms of representation (9). We partially share “semiotic propensities ” that enable multispecies relations, and analysis (ibid.). He furthers that improving the ways we attend to our relationships with nonhuman life forms demands that we “make ontological claims—claims about the nature of reality” (ibid.).
- 8.
Hugo De Burgos (2014) analyzes contemporary transformations of indigenous medicine in Nicaragua, and discusses how in the past two decades several indigenous leaders in Nicaragua have sought to instrumentalize traditional medicine as a political tool for signaling and asserting cultural boundaries and revitalizing ethnic identity (399). De Burgos analyzes circumstances under which medical understandings and practices become political tools, and markers of cultural resistance and cultural identity (ibid.).
- 9.
I refer to traditional knowledge instead of indigenous knowledge to include Afro Caribbean knowledge of bush medicine in my designation. Afro Caribbean and indigenous communities face similar challenges relating to land rights, agrochemical pollution, discrimination, and poverty.
- 10.
Büscher defines “liquid nature” as “nature made fit to circulate in capitalist commodity markets” (2014: 185).
- 11.
This relates to Ingold’s critique of descriptive accuracy in ethnography versus the open-ended character of engagement in the arts. Ingold (2013: 6) refers to the “way of the craftsman,” an “art of inquiry” whereby knowledge grows from practical and observational engagements with life forms and things (in reference to Dormer 1994; Adamson 2007).
- 12.
I refer to Costa Rica as a biodiversity “hot spot” because Costa Rica’s ecology has drawn the attention of European and North American researchers since the mid-nineteenth century (Blum 2008: 37, in reference to Janzen 1983), and the country has a long history of using ecotourism as a tool for conservation, and social as well as economic benefit (Seales and Stein 2012: 20). Since the 1970s and 1980s the national park system has supported a highly successful ecotourism industry that in 1994 became the country’s biggest source of foreign capital, making both education and environment very politicized areas of economic and national life in the country (Blum 2008: 36–7).
- 13.
Tsing (1993) looks at marginality as a source of both constraint and creativity, and focuses on the space created by this tension, and on the creative ways that individuals interact with and within structures. Social actors have influence within circumstances of domination (Williams 1977; Ortner 2006) and it is important to recognize that adapting medicines to Western notions of legitimacy occurs alongside innovative practices in the marketing of medicines.
- 14.
Talamanca has the largest indigenous population in the country, the majority of whom are Bribri, and to a lesser extent Cabécar.
- 15.
Participants included an Anishinaabe shaman, a woman from British Columbia who conducts ayahuasca ceremonies, a man apprenticing with a West African Shaman in Costa Rica , and several herbalists and Naturopaths. These conversations took place primarily in homes, and also in apothecaries, on herb walks, and over the phone and Internet.
- 16.
Several individuals from Vancouver and roughly ten Americans from all over the United States attended the course, which focused on deepening awareness of people and plant relationships, genealogically (by tracing ancestral connections), and socially (by finding plant allies and communicating with plants in a variety of ways and on different levels, such as dreaming with a particular plant under your pillow). At conferences and public events ethnobotany intensive courses are publicized, as well as “meditation retreats” and ceremonies (in effect strongly linked to cultivating people’s relationships with ayahuasca ).
- 17.
Semi-structured interviews with local academics and forest specialists working with the Bribri, Cabécar and Afro Caribbean people enlarged my perspective on institutional and academic collaborations with locals to stimulate forest production in these communities.
- 18.
Research also involved spending time in people’s kitchens and talking while peeling mangoes or doing garden work, volunteering at a Bribri soup kitchen , preparing for market day by processing medicine and cacao, packaging, loading trucks, going to markets, and interacting regularly with vendors selling plant medicines.
- 19.
- 20.
Seekers might also be driven by less serious illnesses, curiosity, an interest in learning more about plant medicines, and a variety of other motivations.
- 21.
Dian Million points out the way indigenous “self-determination” is so interpolated in state-imposed biopolitical programs for emotional and psychological care grounded in a carefully constructed “trauma,” a strategy of channeling attention away from self-determination and land rights in Canada (2013: 6, 12).
- 22.
The term biodiversity prospecting refers to the pursuit of biotechnological, pharmaceutical, and agricultural industries for biochemical and genetic resources that have commercial value, to develop new products (Posey 1996: 9). Michael Balick (1996) identifies the agreement between Costa Rica ’s National Biodiversity Institute (InBio), a nonprofit organization, and pharmaceutical giant Merck, Sharp, and Dohme, as an exemplary model for future policy-making, an agreement negotiated with conservation requirements and policies for sustainable production, with profits said to go towards developing conservation infrastructure. Posey (1996) argues that the indigenous groups in the areas where plant samples were extracted were not consulted, nor benefitted.
- 23.
Langwick (2011) alludes to a Tanzanian artist’s cartoon drawing of a “mganga” selling medicine to a Western client. The artist depicts the client’s concern over whether “it is true” that the medicine works, revealing his perception of what the client means by it, based on his imagination of formal education and science, the World Health Organization, and pharmaceutical bioprospecting (13).
- 24.
The burgeoning herbal industry has generated much interest in countries with rich biodiversity. Hayden (2003) points out that after roughly half a century of pharmaceutical companies showing relative disinterest in plant remedies due to the prioritizing of synthetic chemistry, the “hype” around the drug industry’s “return to nature” in the late 1980s reflected a renewed interest in nature in the USA and Europe, a fast track for finding new medicinal innovations (359). During this period several well-publicized bioprospecting arrangements took place, whereby multinational companies partnered with indigenous organizations and young research institutes in biodiversity rich areas (ibid.).
- 25.
Basso (1996) points out that while the self-conscious experience of place might be fundamentally a private experience, tangible representations of places are often publically consumed, and places are sensed together (57).
- 26.
Other reformulations include linguistic adaptations to the sacred songs (icaros) of shamans, in multilingual ayahuasca ceremonies.
- 27.
According to Maria Bozzoli’s interpretation of Bribri/Cabécar oral history and cosmology, all things found on Earth have supernatural “owners,” or “guardians” referred to as “wak” (Palmer et al. 1991: 15). It is difficult to translate wak as there is no English word that really encompasses its meaning.
- 28.
The multiple colors of corn he brought, black, purple, yellow, and white, account for the variety of skin colors and tones (Palmer et al. 1991: 31). The seeds were transported to this world at night, which is why indigenous people are born at night, and why the awapa chant and conduct curing ceremonies at night (ibid.).
- 29.
The tapir is a very respected animal to the Bribri. The tapir’s sacrifice is acknowledged in food taboos, and many indigenous people today do not consume its flesh, and if they do, it is done with great respect according to protocols established in the laws Sibö bestowed upon the people (Palmer et al. 1991: 32–3).
- 30.
As narrated by Juan Vargas (in Palmer et al. 1991: 33–4).
- 31.
- 32.
Participants in this research, in particular Afro Caribbean people, declare that monilia was intentionally introduced to cripple the thriving Afro Caribbean cacao businesses.
- 33.
The women formed a group after coming together in response to a massive earthquake in the early 1990s that left many isolated villages in need of emergency supplies, orchestrating provisions for many communities on the reserve. Their leadership at this time of crisis was so successful in uniting communities that they continue to go to different villages to help women and families, encourage cultural practices, and address climate change concerns. Several indigenous women’s groups have formed associations to support and affirm women’s participation economically, socially, and politically in their communities, by getting involved in business and production (Dubois 2002: 11).
- 34.
An awá has an acute knowledge of the manifestations of the dueños (owners or guardians) of each illness, and the skills necessary to return them to their places of origin, below where the sun rises (Murillo and Segura 2008: 4). A song can last two, four, or eight nights, depending on the gravity of the illness, but most often takes place over four nights (ibid.). Any mistakes can have lethal consequences.
- 35.
Kohn (2013) enlarges understandings of representation beyond language to include nonhuman life forms’ representations of the world.
- 36.
Translated by the author from Spanish.
- 37.
Participants also pointed out that there is less regulation of indigenous healers selling plant medicine than Afro Caribbean bush doctors, attributed to greater attention to indigenous rights in the country.
- 38.
Many are being forced off their homesteads on the coast from Cahuita to Manzanillo, particularly Afro Caribbean people. Ancestral lands and small restaurants, sodas, and businesses that are located within fifty meters of the sea are in violation of the new beachfront law that now declares it public area. The law is based on a static perception of the sea. The sea has been growing, hurling its waves farther and farther inland, today hiding beaches, docks, and dwellings of the settlers (Palmer 2005: 73).
- 39.
See for example Osseo-Asare (2014: 33).
- 40.
Stacey Langwick similarly observes the way the African healers she conducted research among recast their medicine owing to biomedical concerns (2011: 6).
- 41.
Latour describes anthropocene as a useful term that integrates the historicity of the Earth, linking “sediment and sentiment.”
- 42.
Büscher et al. (2014: 12) show how the commoditization of nature has intensified in the neoliberal age. Büscher (2012: 29) characterizes neoliberal conservation as “the paradoxical idea that capitalist markets are the answer to their own ecological contradictions” (cited in Büscher et al. 2014: 14).
- 43.
Büscher et al. (2014: 15) discuss the paradoxical way neoliberal conservation “grabs green” locally in the name of environmental sustainability (citing Fairhead et al. 2012b: 237). Neoliberalism here refers to Foucault’s (2008: 260–71) way of perceiving, thinking and imagining, and a type of governmentality that intervenes on the level of the environment rather than through the more explicit internal subjugation of people (cited in Büscher et al. 2014: 8), as well as a smokescreen of benevolence that actuates with reliance on free market policies that encourage privatization and commoditization (Büscher et al. 2014: 6–7, in reference to Harvey 2005).
- 44.
“Kincentric,” meaning that nonhuman creatures are considered relatives (Anderson 2005: 57).
- 45.
Ingold (2011), in reference to Heidegger’s (1995: 263) theses on the differences between an inanimate object, like a stone, an animal, and a human being, paraphrases, “the stone is worldless; the animal is poor in world; man is world-forming” (81). Ingold cites Deleuze and Guattari’s (2000: 224–25) “lines of becoming,” alternately termed “lines of flight.”
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Acknowledgements
Thank you to all those who participated in this research, in particular those healers in Talamanca whom I have highlighted here. Your hospitality and enlightening perspectives are deeply appreciated. I am also grateful to Simon Fraser University and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council for providing support to make this research possible, to Julie Laplante for her instructive feedback, and most of all to my husband Sebastien Ouellette for his continued support and help filming several interviews.
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Ferenczi, NK. (2016). What If There Is a Cure Somewhere in the Jungle? States of Emergence in Medicinal Plant Becomings. In: Olson, E., Stepp, J. (eds) Plants and Health. Ethnobiology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-48088-6_6
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