PMS is honored to have Claudia Ford sharing her brilliance & guest facilitating a knowledge share with us !
Ethnobotany for Herbalists
Working as researchers and practitioners within the herbal legacy forces us to confront questions about the limitations of our historical information on medicine, health, and medicinal plants. We face the challenge of educating ourselves and our clients while studying the available archives that were created by authors who projected their bigoted and incomplete beliefs on to what they observed yet frequently did not fully comprehend. Our herbal legacy was too often created in ways that abused Indigenous peoples and silenced their traditional plant and medical knowledge.
This discussion explores ways to attend to the sources, silences, and challenges of our herbal legacies, so that we might be able to practice herbalism in a manner that discontinues harm to communities, repairs relationships between plants and people, and that privileges, without appropriation, the voices and expertise of the original plant knowledge holders.
About Claudia Ford (she/her)…
I am unhoused but right now on the traditional unneeded land of the Haudenosaunee.
Dr. Claudia J. Ford has had a career in international development and women’s health spanning four decades and all continents. Dr. Ford is professor and chair of the department of environmental studies at State University of New York, Potsdam. She has a BA in Biology from Columbia University, MFA in Creative Nonfiction Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts, MBA in Health Administration from Antioch University, and PhD in Environmental Studies from Antioch University. Dr. Ford is a midwife and ethnobotanist, who teaches, conducts research and writes about traditional ecological knowledge, spiritual ecology, entheogenic plant medicine, women’s reproductive health, and sustainable agriculture. Dr. Ford has served on the boards of the Soul Fire Farm Institute, and The Black Farmer Fund Pilot Community, both organizations committed to supporting Black farmers, and ending racism and injustice in the food system. Claudia is currently writing a book, Black Ecological Wisdom, revealing the environmental traditions of the Black diaspora for the purpose of planetary healing at this time of environmental crisis. Claudia is a writer, poet, and visual artist; and a single mother who has shared the delights and adventures of her global travel with her four children and two grandchildren.
A Virtual Event Series
Tuesday October 15th, 7-9 PM EST
*Please note that these events are for PMS students (enrolled or alumni), and other PMS guest facilitators ONLY!