Less Like Kudzu, More Like Plantain: Walking with White Man’s Footsteps

In Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants, environmental biologist Robin Wall Kimmerer offers a beautiful meditation on the interconnection of human experience and the natural world. I found there were important messages here for me about my role as the descendant of settler colonialists, as a 21st century Pagan, and as a student of herbalism.

Plantain Beginnings

When Martha Ballard's niece was ill in 1794, she made her a syrup that contained plantain. Two hundred and twenty-three years later, I learned that this useful herb was growing wild in my backyard.