Category: Indigenous knowledge systems

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Browsing Princeton’s image library

A short note in Global Voices sent me to the Princeton Digital Library of Islamic Manuscripts in search of anything vaguely botanical or agricultural. I found a treatise on botany with charming watercolours of many different plants, some cultivated. Perhaps someone out there who can read classical Arabic can tell us the gist.

Roaming a little further around the Princeton Digital Collections I also came across the Western Americana Photographs Collection, which has some really fascinating stuff. I had no idea that Indians stored acorns in specially constructed caches, for example. But it seems to have been a common practice in the Yosemite Valley.

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How to get high legally in Portland, Ore.

Ayahuasca is the ethnomedicinal case study. First described scientifically in the 1950s by the pioneering ethnobotanist Richard Evans Schultes of Harvard, it is a complex phychoactive decoction used in shamanistic ritual, whose preparation epitomizes the sophisticated botanical knowledge of Amazonian Amerindians. Schultes disciple and ethnobotanical pin-up boy Wade Davis has a great TED talk about it. I bring all this up because of a short article in Portland’s Mail Tribune, of all places, “Southern Oregon’s News Source.” It seems the local chapter of the Brazil-based Church of the Holy Light of the Queen has just been allowed by the federal court to go ahead and brew up some “Daime tea,” which is another name for ayahuasca. Strictly for sacramental purposes, you understand. But I like the cut of that judge’s jib.

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Rock salt and pond scum

A fascinating post over at Rancho Gordo discusses tequesquite. That’s a natural salt that has been used in Mexican cooking since pre-Columbian times, including for nixtamalization, a process that makes maize easier to process, tastier and more nutritious.

The post also mentions the alga known as tecuilayl (Spirulina geitleri). This was apparently an important food for the Aztecs. 1 Our resident expert on Mexico says it’s the perfect complement to a succulent steamed axolotl in chile sauce. Yummie.

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(Some) Indian women ready for climate change

In Zaheerabad, dalit (broken) women forming the lowest rung of India’s stratified society, now demonstrate adaptatation to climate change by following a system of interspersing crops that do not need extra water, chemical inputs or pesticides for production.

The women grow as many as 19 types of indigenous crops to an acre, on arid, degraded lands that they have been regenerated with help from an organisation called the Deccan Development Society (DDS).

Good news alert, from InterPress Service.