Amazonian Ethnobotany

Instructor:  Tod Swanson, Monserrat Rios, Janis Nuckolls, and Michael Severino Patterson

M,TU,W,TH,F: 9:00-12:00

Contact Hours: 45  Credits: 3


Course Description


This course examines the cultural understanding and uses of plants in the Ecuadorian Amazon. How do Amazonian people understand what plants are?  How did they originate? How are they classified?  How are they similar or different from humans?  How are plant foods and medicines believed to work on the human body?  How should they be harvested and prepared?  What sorts of human moods or attitudes are necessary to work with plants?  What ritual techniques are used to achieve empathy required to work successfully with plants?


Course Objectives:

·     Learn how to carry out field research in ethnobotany.

·     Gain a sense of the importance of indigenous knowledge of Amazonian plants  a sense of the magnitude of the challenge involved in preserving that knowledge. 

·     Gain a comparative understanding of indigenous and western plant taxonomy.

·     Understand some of the underlying South American Indian religious assumptions about plants and human relation to plants.

·     Understand the patterns behind plant origin stories.

·     Understand how ritual songs to plants are believed to work. 

·     Learn how Amazonian people believe plants interact with the human body.

·     Learn to make plant medicines such as tinctures, tonics and poultices. 

·     Explore and come to some conclusions about the forces of change confronting Amazonian religious life.


Method of Instruction:


This course is a field course which teaches students how to elicit and analyze indigenous knowledge of nature.   Framed by carefully selected readings, lectures and discussion students spend time in the forest or gardens learning about plants from traditional elders.  A key skill we wish to teach is how to analyze previous interviews with informants in order to generate appropriate new questions.  Sessions typically begin with a carefully selected short sub-titled video from a previous interview with a native informant talking about some aspect of the meaning of nature in Amazonian society.  The instructor analyzes the material in the video teasing out underlying assumptions.    Discussion then centers on the formulation of appropriate questions for eliciting further information.  The next 2 hours are then spent with a native informant eliciting further information on the topic of the video.  Group discussion with the native informant is videotaped.   Native elders speak in Kichwa.  Their discourse is translated into English for students by the instructor.   Student questions are similarly translated.  Students then write about what they have learned in daily journal entries.   On Fridays students pool their journal entries to construct collaborative summaries of the research.

Grading and Evaluation:

Field test of ability to recognize plants to family level in 10 plant families.     10%

Weekly tests over reading and lectures       30%

Daily entries in an academic journal.            40%

Participation in collaborative group projects      20%.

Required Reading:

Brent Berlin.  Ethnobiological Classification:  Principles of Categorization of Plants and Animals in Traditional Societies.  Princeton University Press, 1992.

Alwyn Gentry.  A Field Guide to the Families of Woody Plants of Northwest South America. (Colombia, Ecuador, Peru).  University of Chicago Press, 1993.

“The Garden’s Children,” and “A Technology of Sentiment.”  In Michael Brown.  Tsewa’s Gift:  Magic and Meaning in an Amazonian Society.  Smithsonian Institution Press.  1986

“The World of the Garden.”   In Descola, Phillipe.  In the Society of Nature:  A Native Ecology in Amazonia.  Cambridge University Press, 1996 [1986].

Regina Harrison.   "The Metaphysics of Sex: Quichua Songs from the Tropical Forest."    In Signs, Songs, and Memory in the Andes:  Translating Quechua Language and Culture.  Austin:  University of Texas Press. Pp. 144-171.

Swanson, Tod.  Singing to Estranged Relatives:  Quichua Relations to Plants in the Ecuadorian Amazon.  Journal of Religion and Culture, Vol 3.1 (2009) 36-65.

Schedule:

 

TH June 6   Travel to Field School.   As the chartered bus descends from high mountain tundra through cloud forest to Amazonian lowland forest it stops periodically so that faculty and students can examine the changing plant environments.

Fri June 7   Introduction to the Field of Ethnobotany “The Importance of Ethnobotanical Knowledge and the Challenge of Preserving It.”

Sat June 8

Sun June 9

Mon June 10: Western and Amazonian plant taxonomy

TU June 11    9:00-10:00 AM  Lecture: 

10:30-12:00 

Wed June 12     9-10 AM

10:15-12:00  Forest walk field study with native plant specialist focussed on the identification of Rubiaceae and Euphorbiaceae species and their uses.

TH  June 13 Forest walk field study with native plant specialist focussed on the identification of Lecythidaceae, Menispermaceae, Moraceae species and their uses.

Fri  June 14 Forest walk field study with native plant specialist focussed on the identification of Gesneriaceae, Solinaceae, Lauraceae species and their uses.

Sat June 15 Forest walk field study with native plant specialist focussed on the identification of Apocynaceae, Araceae, Cyclanthaceae species and their uses.    Test

Readings:

Brent Berlin.  Ethnobiological Classification:  Principles of Categorization of Plants and Animals in Traditional Societies.  Princeton University Press, 1992.

Alwyn Gentry.  A Field Guide to the Families of Woody Plants of Northwest South America. (Colombia, Ecuador, Peru).  University of Chicago Press, 1993.

Unit 2:    Manioc Gardens and Wild Foods

Sun June 16


Mon June 17  9:00-10:00 Lecture:  “Manioc Gardens, Manioc Songs, and the Female Body.”   Lecture analyzes videotaped interviews with native Amazonian women on ritual aspects of gardening recorded during previous field school sessions.


TU June 18  10:15-12:00  Students visit the manioc gardens and interview native women in their gardens.

June   9:-12:00 Students work with native women in their manioc gardens and observe a manioc planting ceremony.

June    9:00-12:00  Students work with native women to prepare indigenous wild plant foods and make manioc chicha, the principle native beverage.

Readings:

“The Garden’s Children.”   In Michael Brown, Tsewa’s Gift.

Unit 3:    Plant Medicines

This unit introduces students to basic principles of Amazonian herbal medicine,   A popular misconception is that native herbal medicine is simply a rustic form of scientific bio-medicine in which less concentrated or refined chemical compounds in plants take the place of synthetic pharmaceutical compounds to do the same thing.


Wed. June 19  9:00-10:00 Lecture.   Bioprospecting and intellectual property.  How does ethnobotany improve the efficiency of the search for new drugs?

10:15-12:00  “Principles of Indigenous Herbal Medicine.”  Lecture and analysis based on video taped interviews with native Amazonian women on the harvesting and preparation of plant medicines recorded during previous field school sessions.


TH  June 20  9:00-12:00  Students hike into the forest with a shaman to observe and film ritual harvesting of plant medicines.


Fri. June 21  

Unit 4:    Ethnogens: The Use of Pschedelic Plants in Amazonian Culture

This unit explores the chemistry and cultural use of Banisteriopsis caapi

and Brugmansia insignis

Activities:   


Sat June 22 9:00-10:00 Lecture on the chemistry of psychedelic plants and cultural practices surrounding the uses of Banisteriopsis caapi and Brugmansia insignis.

10:15-12:00  Students carry out structured interviews of ayahuasca shamans and write up their results.


Sun. June 23   9:00-12:00  Students participate in the preparation of ayahuasca.

Evening  8:00-10:00 PM  Observation of an ayahuasca curing session  (students do not ingest ayahuasca).

Unit 5:   Plants for love and Beauty:  Love Medicine

This unit examines how plants are used by to enhance human sensuality. Amazonian people believe that hidden inside plants with beautiful flowers and aroma are attractive human beings whose sensuality can be acquired by men and women.   

Activities:


M. June 24   9:00-10:00  Lecture and analysis using video taped interviews and ritual songs by native women on the subject of plant love medicines recorded during previous field school sessions.

10:15-12:00  Structured interviews with traditional Amazonian women.   Field sessions in which students learn to identify plants used in love medicines.

Readings:

Michael Brown.  “A technology of sentiment.”   In Tsewa’s Gift 

Regina Harrison.   "The Metaphysics of Sex: Quichua Songs from the Tropical Forest."    In Signs, Songs, and Memory in the Andes:  Translating Quechua Language and Culture.  Austin:  University of Texas Press. Pp. 144-171.

Kichwa song texts:


Pasu Man


Introductory

Sickness and healing

Plants as people

Llaquichina-- the emotions in relations to plants




Plants as visual analogies and memory:  Problems with the so-called “doctrine of signature”.

ambi and sasina

mangu sisa, red plants, pasu, munditi mandi, sicuanga callu, challua caspi.


“Manioc Gardens, Manioc Songs, and the Female Body.”   Lecture analyzes videotaped interviews with native Amazonian women on ritual aspects of gardening recorded during previous field school sessions.


Make videos of the ladies in the chagra-


Resources:

Song of Delicia singing in Shuar linking herself to the armadillo who cleans the chacra.

Video on the gardening stones that eat people and are found surrounded by hair.

Video of calling deceased grandmothers to protect the garden.  Learn to sing “Lumu sisa mama with carmen.”


Activities: 

Students visit the manioc gardens and interview native women in their gardens.

Students work in manioc gardens and observe a planting ceremony.

Students make manioc chicha.



T   June 25 Chocolate-- Kallari   What would it take for runa growers to gain more of the profits from cacao?

9:00-10:30 History of Cacao and related sterculaceae.  Students work with cacao cleaning brush around the trees.   Harvest cacao dry cacao.  Learn about the cacao market, make chocolate.   2 days-  gain a sense of the work involved.  Do a write up on Kallari.


Wed. June 26-- Wayusa Project

  

TH    June 27    Ayawaska.  Chemistry of ayawaska and psychotria viridis. 


Luisa Cadena, “Flowers are the clothes of plant men: Tobacco, Ayawaska, Wayusa, Psychotria Viridis.” 

Students discuss the video among themselves and formulate questions.


Break:

Video tape follow up discussion with Luisa.


Day 2:

Chemistry and commercialization of these plants.  Prepare ayahuasca and wayusa. Attend ayahuasca ceremony.


Wituk (Genipa americana) and manduru.   Die the hair or paint the faces of students.

The story of wituk warmi and manduru warmi.  Song sisu wituk warmi.

Interview the ladies with carefully formulated questions.  Follow up discussion with students about the effectiveness of the questions.


Fri.   June 28  Wrap up session.

Sat.  June 29  Students travel to Quito


Amarun caspi--video  Students harvest the bark and produce the medicine


Academic Policies, University of Pittsburgh

If you have a disability for which you are or may be requesting an accommodation, you are encouraged to contact both your instructor and the Office of Disability Resources and Services, 216 William Pitt Union, 412-648-7890/412-383-7355 (TTY), as early as possible in the term. Disability Resources and Services will verify your disability and determine reasonable accommodations for this course.

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Case studies: Jungle Peanuts

Copal, Cacao