Colonization, empire and white supremacy has severed many peoples from their healing traditions. This has contributed to the disruption of ancestral lineages, both from the lands settler peoples originated from, as well as from here on Turtle Island/N America through the present day. 

Many of us are called toward care & healing work. We know personal healing is one important thread in the tapestry that is total liberation. But for those of us who are settlers in diaspora, we are often practicing the lineages of others or the cobbled together fields shaped by settler colonialism and empire. ’Traditional western herbalism’ is just one example of empire medicine; allopathic medicine in the so-called US is another. 

Herbalism is ancestral. That is true. It is in all of our lineages, all of our cultures, found in all of our ancestry. But whose herbalism are we practicing? 

What does it mean to be practitioners of lineages steeped in blood? As practitioners we have a responsibility to reflect on what we are doing. what are reifying when we practice these lineages? Does this align with our values? What is the impact of this on us, on our clients, on the entire field? 

If we aren’t willing to sit with these questions, we lose the opportunity to find ways to undercut empire, attempt to mitigate some of the harm being caused, and continue to dream into the possibilities of radical healing sans empire. 

And there are so many more interlocking questions that flow out of these. 

What would ancestrally rooted lineages of healing look like? What about herbalisms that attributed, respected and honored all the sources of its waters? What possibility is here for foundational change? What potent transformative power might reconnecting to ancestral herbalism hold for personal and collective healing? 

Let’s gather together to be in these questions, and see what new shapes we might create together.

THERE IS NO END TO THIS WORK 

What to expect from our session 

There will be many questions without easy answers. 

There will be frank conversation about how to take up our responsibility as white settler practitioners to unpick the threads of TWH and reweave culturally connected herbalisms. We will be firm and fierce and compassionate and committed. 

There will be visioning about what more might be possible, for us as herbalists as well as our clients and students, if we move forward differently. 

Each of us will be invited to participate, to reflect, to share.

Participants will leave having been challenged to dream into how they are practicing, encouraged to take on necessary work, and supported by their community to play their part in redressing the ongoing harms that modern TWH perpetuates. 

Please come if you are ready to be honest with yourself and others, and converse with compassion & thoughtfulness, grounded firmly in your integrity.

This workshop is intended for: 

• Herbalists trained in ‘traditional western herbalism’ 
• Herbalists and plant lovers who have strive to embody their values 
• Herbalists and plant lovers who want to have frank conversations about whiteness, empire, colonialism, and ancestral lineage connection 
• Herbalists and plant lovers interested in cultivating ancestrally & culturally rooted herbalisms 
• People who aren’t afraid to face the truth in themselves with compassion and firmness 
• People who are ready to show up to this community work, and lay the ego & defensiveness to rest. 

This is for you if you have been dreaming of having these conversations with fellow herbalists!