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Medicine patch. Photo courtesy of Linda Black Elk. Moderator’s Note: It is our joy to present this reflective decolonial essay on Earth Day 2018. It was shared on Facebook by Linda Black Elk (Catawba Nation) and she granted us permission to repost here. Black Elk is a highly respected ethnobotanist with deep ties to family, community, the land and water, environmental justice, and indigenous food autonomy movements. Her research, writing, lecturing and most important, mentoring of native youth and young adults, inspires many activists to integrate food sovereignty, traditional plant knowledge, and the protection and restoration of the land and water of our sacred homeland commons. Black Elk was a major positive presence at the 2016-17 Standing Rock #NoDAPL resistance where she played a vital role supporting elders and mentoring youth. She continues the good work there and serves as Director of Traditional Medicine at the Mni Wiconi Clinic, which is a fully integrative clinic focusing...

Cartoon sketch courtesy of  People and Nature . Racism; blindness to capitalism in science communities allows continued exposure and risk disparities A FAILURE TO CONFRONT RACISM and CAPITALIST CONTROL OF SCIENCE UNDERMINES TIES TO OTHER MOVEMENTS The quest for gold brought to light many useful inventions and advanced society in innumerable ways. -Sir Francis Bacon I consider myself an “ethno-scientist.” The methods and practices I follow in the fields of agroecology, ethnoecology, and related areas reflect my grounding in millennia of indigenous knowledge and study of ecological processes in the human-nature interrelationship. The two cultures divide that C. P. Snow lamented because it separates the humanities from the natural sciences remains a central concern for me as a practitioner of community-based collaborative and interdisciplinary research. Yet, I am not marching today. And it is not because I am anti-science. I am against continued widespread reductionism of and in scien...