This course of study is designed to acquaint the student with historic and contemporary herbal medicines, industrial materials, and foods of the Vermont/New Hampshire Abenakis and their Wabanaki neighbors.  Using the academic discipline of Ethnobotany, counterbalanced with a Native American perspective, we will explore many facets of the relations of our region’s Indigenous and plant communities.

We first introduce the inter-discipline of ethnobotany through both its history and academic paradigm as expressed through both field and lab work in Indigenous North America. We will then consider the nuts and bolts of the origin, development, and contemporary expression of Indigenous agriculture and wild plant use, but also focus on the cultural, ceremonial, and spiritual issues involved with Indigenous craft manufacture, foods, and healing.  Such a course as this cannot be taught simply as an academic or intellectual exercise.  The legacy of the continual transfer of Indigenous lands, resources, children, material goods, crops and ideas through 18th century conquest, early 20th century genocide and late 20th century appropriation of intellectual property, demands an Indigenous perspective and a balance.

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