Plants & Poetry: medicine is medicine.

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

Oaxaca is home to an abundance of medicinal plants and people who have kept knowledge of their traditional uses alive. Many tourists are drawn to Oaxaca due to its history with hallucinogenic plant medicines. Psilocybin containing mushrooms were popularized in the US after Gordon R. Wasson, a 1960s American ethnobotanist, repeatedly asked for a mushroom ceremony from Maria Sabina, a renowned shamaness in Oaxaca’s Sierra Mazateca. After promising to keep the ceremony confidential, Wasson gave an interview to Time Magazine, only thinly veiling Sabina’s name and location. An enormous influx of tourists followed, commodifying the locals’ indigeneity and complicating their relationship with the medicine. Understanding the sociopolitical and spiritual ecologies you enter into when partaking in these medicines as a Westerner is the bare minimum in my opinion. 

I wasn’t planning on entangling myself in this web. My first grant proposal was for a trip to Cuba to write about traditional (and) agro-ecological methods of farming post-dissolution of the Soviet Union. The proposal was denied due to logistical inconveniences American tourists face there... everything but the location was approved. I felt drawn to Oaxaca, the colorful country with the complicated ethnopharmacological history I had just learned about in a really wonderful block. However, even visiting solely for poetry after promising myself that I wouldn't get involved in mycotourism in any way shape or form, I felt like I was following in the footsteps of our friend Gordon more closely than I would like. There’s a deep sadness in knowing the vast amount of traditional knowledge present in Oaxaca today is a fraction of what it once was due to multiple layers of colonialism.

I thought my poetry would be more about the harm perpetuated by a Western presence than the exuberance of living in such a rich cultural and biological ecology. Knowing of the former enabled me to experience the latter. 

DESCRIPTION OF METHODOLOGY

This will happen in two parts.

1. I usually write poems like this:
   1. Perpetually have the notes app open, or small notebook around.
   2. Use aforementioned blank pages to collect images, sounds that sound soundy together, beautiful, nuanced or funny words, etc.
   3. Once you’ve discovered what kinds of collectibles you tend to accumulate, throw yourself into situations or settings where you’ll find those things. (I find spontaneity, long walks, and an outgoing nature to be very helpful in this pursuit.)
   4. Write the poems. This can be in the moment, or a long time afterward. Pull the music from your life and stick it on the page. Fill in the gaps with hindsight, foresight, grief, ecstasy, hope, joy, cleverness, jokes, anger or annoyance.
2. I tried to follow a rule for reciprocity proposed by Robin Wall Kimmerer at her talk at CC earlier this year:

"Take only what's given."

I’m continuously shocked at the abundance living by this principle brought. I put all the money I could into local businesses, and chose places that were specifically open to ecotourism to visit (i.e. the Pueblos Mancomunados. I won’t explain them here, but a google search will bring up plenty). I only asked tough questions when it felt right. When I communicated that I study botany, or that I was a poet, or understood a smidge of Oaxacan history directly or indirectly in my broken Spanish, most folks I encountered were not only willing but excited to share their stories and knowledge with me. I let the the place tangle me up in it. I inhaled amazing bits of the most colorful city I’ve ever seen: drank passion fruit pulque, stomped the beat of live fandango into a wooden pallet, walked barefoot through epiphyte-filled forests, explored caves held an increasingly tight limestone embrace, had conversations about the dynamics of tourism in the city, what poetry means, the accessibility of entheogens to tourists, hiked at least 30 miles through the forests in the Sierra, enjoyed gifts of late night chocolate de agua and mezcal, was invited to participate in a Limpia and an Equinox ceremony in a small mountain town, and made a couple friendships I’ll cherish for a long time. 

'ACADEMIC' FINDINGS: How do we heal the world?

Curanderismo can be defined as a set of traditional beliefs, rituals, and practices that address the physical, spiritual, psychological, and social needs of the people who use it.  _{-Encyclopedia.com} 

While the source of this definition is funny, I found it to encompass more of the aspects of Curanderismo explained to me than others on the internet. A curadero/a/e will use traditional means to better the relationship between an individual and their body, their family, their community, their ecology, their past, and/or the natural world at large. This mission includes many kinds of work. A healer performs traditional ceremonies to many ends, and has an intimate knowledge of their local ecosystem and how to employ herbal medicines within it. Often, a curadero/a/e is familiar with the individuals they treat, and employs knowledge of someone's past to inform healing of physical or non-physical trauma. The multifaceted nature of curanderismo and its dynamism may provide valuable insight into "treating" global crises that arise as symptoms of Western "diseases".

Before we go there, though, we have to talk about appropriation.

A large part of curanderismo is rooted in ancestral knowledge passed down in an unbroken chain through generations. For many tribes throughout North America, this chain has been stretched thin through the bottleneck of colonization, forced conversion to Christianity, and at times, genocide. In more rural areas, where there were less schools akin to a Spanish equivalent of American Indian Boarding Schools, the Zapotec language is spoken by most. Spiritual traditions were kept alive in these areas more easily than around large population centers like Oaxaca City. What surprised me most about my time in Oaxaca was the willingness of people to share those traditions with me, despite all of this. I was careful only to ask for plant identification, and when I indicated that I was interested in medicinal uses for those plants, people often erupted explanations of certain remedies so quickly I'd have to ask them to repeat themselves. A friend assured me that it was his deep joy to share his knowledge when I gave him the most heartfelt "thank you" I could muster after a very educational walk in a pine/oak forest. I asked him later how he felt about tourists partaking in mushroom ceremonies, and the industrialization of that practice in towns to our North in the same mountain range. "Medicine is medicine," he told me. We need all the healing we can get. We have to reconnect to each other and our ecologies; to reweave ourselves into cloth we've been cut from by a few sharp, pointy, Western -isms. I believe the way to a better planet is in healing its parts, ourselves, one by one.

Some Zapotec traditions were shared with me- the abuelos' knowledge, my friend called it. These traditions have evolved and adapted to the landscape just like living beings do- over millennia. Like DNA whispering instructions through cellular cascades to a flower to open precisely at spring's beginning, the proper pattern for its petals to entice the pollinator for whom it's shaped, a treasure map marked with the root's best way to water, these traditions bear important information about how to be a human in relation to the Oaxacan landscape. Each piece of wisdom is like a tumbled stone, brilliant and unique. There is no equivalent for White folks. The last ancestor I had who related to the natural world like the abuelos was likely buried somewhere in Europe before 600AD. Connecting to the latest European ecologically-based ancestral traditions seems like a bit of a stretch. Though they did exist, their evolution halted with the extinction of those who would pass that knowledge down through generations. I find it a little funny, but potentially valuable for some.

I'm not saying we should completely re-invent the wheel. Any knowledge of this nature is integral to the way forward, and can teach us so much about living in harmonious relation with the world. However, when possible, all of us should use our own intuition to answer the question: How do you experience connection to your ecology? What if us Westerners recognized ourselves as ancestors of generations to come (a way of thinking that isn't original by any means), (re)building ecologically-based spiritual traditions for our children? Co-opting practices suited to ecologies that aren't ours doesn't make sense, especially without knowledge of ones positionally relative to an area's social history. Can we respect and acknowledge traditions that already exist, and set to work growing our own roots in concert with them? Perhaps something new and beautiful will arise. In time, perhaps we'll know how to care for our respective corners of the world a little better.

PERSONAL IMPACT: What do I got to give?

To be brief, and not overwhelmingly sappy... I learned so much, but most of it can be distilled to one sentence. I know what work I want to do with my life, and a bit more about how I would like it to happen. What more can you ask for as a person?

NEXT STEPS:

• learn more Spanish
• continue studying herbal remedies in whatever ecology I call home
• I’ve got the tail end of an essay to write, and around 4 more poems in the tank
• publish?

My poems are usually looong- This is probably the shortest I've ever written. It's bite-sized, and I hope it serves someone.