What Is a Weed?
A discussion with Ethnobotanist Enrique Salmón on the kinship of plants and people.
Welcome back to The Link, a bi-weekly circularity newsletter making the connection between regenerative farming and you, every other Sunday.
Following winter’s rhythm, my roots have gone deep underground to restore and turn anew. If you are also slowly waking from winter’s slumber, I would like to provide you with a tonic about this newsletter and its intentions: It will continue to be dedicated to speaking with different voices from a wide variety of viewpoints to stay curious in bridging Western and non-Western perspectives on a path forward around our farming system in the fight against climate change. Many of the topics are circular while some are more focused on “regenerative farming,” however, this is not a term, but a worldview, for Indigenous communities, and as a Western person in North America, I will continue to approach this topic with respect, a humble, open heart, care, and curiosity.
Last week, I was standing in my yard, listening to different birds—grackles, crows, gold finches, red-tailed hawks, and blue jays—communicating with one another in their own languages until something caught my eye. A few doors down, my neighbor pulled a large plastic bottle of weed killer from the garage and doused it all over their front lawn, as if it were as mindless a task as sorting the mail. It was all very painful to watch—the communities of microorganisms and baby insects incubating underneath the leaves that would die from the poison, the plants that would suffer, the watershed that had just been further contaminated below, or the poison’s longterm harm to my neighbor’s health, all because they wanted to get rid of the “weeds.” But what is considered a weed, and who determines what a weed is, anyway?
Ever since I first read Iwígara: The Kinship of Plants and People, I return to it almost constantly, always learning something new. Written by ethnobotanist Enrique Salmón, the book highlights 80 plants revered by North America’s Indigenous peoples as Salmón teaches the ways that plants are used as food and medicine, their identification and harvest, health benefits, and the plants' roles in traditional stories and myths. According to the Rarámuri tribe, iwígara is “the belief that all life-forms are interconnected and share the same breath.” As a Rarámuri, author Salmón writes in the introduction, “In a worldview based on iwígara, humans are no more important to the natural world than any other forms of life…Knowing that I am related to everything around me and share breath with all living things helps me focus on my responsibility to honor all forms of life.”
Salmón is head of the American Indian Studies Program at Cal State University East Bay in Hayward, California and has been a Scholar in Residence at the Heard Museum and a program officer for the Greater Southwest and Northern Mexico regions for the Christensen Fund. He has published many articles on Indigenous ethnobotany, agriculture, nutrition, and traditional ecological knowledge. In his other book, Eating the Landscape, he writes about small-scale Native farmers of the Greater Southwest and their role in maintaining biodiversity. I had the opportunity to speak with Enrique Salmón a few months ago about why he wrote the book, some of the plants and stories that are featured in it, and more.
I always begin interviews by asking: what does the term ‘regenerative’ mean to you?
Enrique Salmón: Within the context of this conversation, I do not like this term. It reminds me of the concept of regenerative agriculture, which is a Western ideology and framework that has been appropriated from sustainable Indigenous land management practices. “Regenerative” agriculturalists have been attempting to apply their models and practices onto those of American Indian land management systems. Regenerative agriculture is a product of Western packaging of Indigenous knowledge that does not represent Indigenous knowledge systems in their entirety and that is not wholly grounded in Indigenous philosophical and spiritual relationships with the Creator and the land. For centuries, American Indian communities have served as convenient and stereotypical stand-ins for western derived notions of wildness, and a western playground where native characters have been reduced to a powerfully simple, yet paradoxical dichotomy of the innocent “noble savage” versus the brutality of the “bloodthirsty savage.” It is often the case that when Indigenous knowledge and practices are included within conversations of “inclusion” often only selected parts of the knowledge and practices become part of the newly branded process. It is normally the Indigenous knowledge that most conveniently fits into western frameworks. The result is a decontextualization of the original native knowledge and practice.
Can you explain the meaning behind the title of the book?
The word Iwígara, comes from my Rarámuri language. It has several meanings, but most simply, it alludes to the idea of interconnected and overlapping cycles of shared breath, life, and energy. My people, like so many other Indigenous peoples, believe that we are directly related to everything around us. We share life energy such as breath with all the animals, insects, rocks, and plants. They are our kin, our relatives. When one makes choices with a landscape based on the concept that everything around you is a relative, then the land management practices that emerge from that realization tend to be sustainable.
Practices connected to managing the land become more of stewardship and ministering to the land. This is the central concept of kincentric ecology. When people read about or hear me explain kincentric ecology, they often assume that I am speaking about reciprocity. However, reciprocity assumes an exchange that resembles commodification. This is very much a western concept. Kincentricity is not an exchange. It is a responsibility to our human and non-human relatives, to the ancestors or those relatives, as well as to our descendants. As I mentioned earlier, I am often bothered by non-native people and organizations who so easily misappropriate Indigenous land management practices. I am bothered by their imperative to identify "models" for everything. It demands that there is a single "Indigenous" agricultural model. It's as if 10,000 years ago, all our ancestors from across the continent sat down one day in order to decide how they were going to go about farming. The larger implication is that interested individuals can pick and choose which agricultural model they want to follow. Or they can mix and match all of them. It reminds me of what Wintu leader, Colleen Sisk-Franco, once said about how non-native peoples approach religion and spirituality. She said that to them, religion is like the cereal aisle of a grocery store. Everyone can pick and choose their favorite one, but there is only one box of Wintu. Indigenous ways of interacting and relating to our local lands are not something that we choose one day and then change our minds about the next. We are our lands, we are the rain that nourishes the land, we are the rocks, we are the salmon that spawn in the rivers, and the eagles and bears that feed on those fish. We are the pollinators. What we do to them, we do to ourselves.
What inspired you to write the book?
I actually did not come up with the idea to write the book. It was an editor at Timber Press who reached out to me. Years ago, they had published a book by Daniel E. Moreman, Native American Medicinal Plants. I have a copy of the book in my personal library. It is a great book if you are looking for how certain plants are used by various Indigenous tribes and what the native names are of the plants. It is very extensive, but reads more like a dictionary. Timber Press was wanting something more than just the names and uses of plants. They had seen my previous book, Eating the Landscape. In that book, I presented American Indian agriculture using lots of stories and Indigenous perspectives. Timber Press was hoping that I could approach Indigenous plant knowledge more from that perspective, so I suggested that I focus on a smaller number of plants and from an Indigenous perspective through story.
You focused on 80 plant entries for the book that reflect knowledge from native tribes across North America. Can you talk a bit about your approach to putting this knowledge together? Instead of attempting to compile a comprehensive list of plants known and used by Indigenous peoples across North America, I wanted to focus on only the most culturally relevant plants from each region of the country. I contacted the network of ethnobotanists and native knowledge holders that I have nourished for several decades and asked them a simple question: give me a list of the ten most culturally relevant plants representative of the region and people in which you work and/or live. From the lists that my friends and colleagues returned to me, I compiled the 80 plants that are in the book. I also select plants that I felt I could best tell stories about. It is through story and narrative that Indigenous knowledge is transferred and reproduced. Each plant is unique, and each plant entry, I hope, reflects the spirit and soul of the plant.
You also include stories, myths, and narratives about plants that provide readers with more than just the way to wildcraft or use these plants. With that in mind, can you explain a little bit about some of the trickster stories that are included and incorporated into some of the entries?
I embrace Trickster consciousness. It is a recognition of the gray space inherent in everything. Polar opposites exist only because of the gray space that binds them. Our society largely admits to the existence of two genders, but there are at least four other kinds of genders that exist between male and female. There is yin and yang, but there is also the wu chi of the universe that holds the yin and yang in their space. There is dark and light, but if all we could see was dark, how would we recognize light? It is that gray area in-between that is more important. Unfortunately, our society fears the gray. We are taught to gravitate to only the light, to see only two genders, and to maneuver away from the unknown and unexplainable areas of the universe. Trickster occupies the in-between space because that is where most of the universe resides. Therefore, to embrace the gray is not a balancing act. It is an acceptance of security and steadiness. It is through trickster that Indigenous peoples understand these profane and transformational capacities of everything in the natural world, especially plants.
I imagine it is difficult to choose, but is there a certain plant or series of plants in the book that you gravitate to the most, and if so, would you be open to sharing why?
It would be too easy to focus on peyote with this question or maybe even tobacco. They are both very important to my Indigenous culture, but the plant that I feel best addresses your question would have to be Cattail, Typha latifolia, T. augstifolia, or T. domingensis. Many people reading this recognize that cattails are water plants; they sprout, germinate, and live in water, or at least, very wet soils. They can be used for food, for medicine, and even for weaving clothing, baskets, sleeping mats, and roof thatching. But most people do not realize that cattails occupy space that exist between this and other spiritual dimensions. The Western Apache spread a mixture of cattail and corn pollen onto the forehead of young women who are engaging in puberty ceremonies. I do not want to go into too many culturally sensitive details, but for four days, the young women are imbued with the energy of the Apache legendary figure Changing Woman. In short, it was Changing Woman who played an important role in the emergence of Apache people and culture. Therefore, for a few days, these young Apache women occupy Changing Woman’s as well as their own dimensions.
What would you like people to take away from reading the book?
Primarily a recognition of the sophistication and complexity of American Indian plant knowledge. The other aim is for readers to begin to approach plants as relatives with unique personalities and gifts.
Thank you for taking the time to speak with me!
You can order Iwígara: The Kinship of Plants and People via your favorite bookseller, and Eating the Landscape via The University of Arizona Press.
If you have future topics, interesting people, or concepts you’d like to see featured, leave a message in the comments below or drop me a line: Helen@HelenHollyman.com.