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In this hands-on workshop, participants will explore how preserving plant stories within Indigenous and diasporic intergenerational communities can restore relationships to land, lineage, and memory. Through listening and creative reflection, we’ll uncover how ancestral knowledge lives in the foods we grow and eat, and how tending these stories bridges generations and cultivates connection to the land. Participants will have a chance to learn what Oral History is and gain tips on sensiobiographical interviewing to collect plant stories.

“Our indigenous herbalists say to pay attention when plants come to you; they’re bringing you something you need to learn.”

― Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientfic Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants

Your Facilitator: Clarissa Shane

Clarissa Shane is an interdisciplinary creative and plant oral historian from Stockton, CA. Her research explores how plant stories connect communities to ancestry, land, and healing, including her project “Re-Rooting Orality” in Paredones, Michoacán, Mexico. She holds an M.A. in Oral History from Columbia University and a B.A. from Bard College Berlin, and continues to study Ayurvedic herbalism in her free time.

Header image courtesey of Clarissa Shane: Yerba del Sapo is a plant that helped remedy a treacherous migration to the United States.

Find more of Clarissa’s work at: https://clarissashane.sandbox.library.columbia.edu/about/

“Another thing we lost is culture. . . look at the word agriculture. We lost that connection. And so now it’s going back to the culture of agriculture. Why do we grow the food that we do?” – Karen Washington

Why do we grow the foods we do? How is culture tied to our local foodways and agricultural systems? What stories of nourishment are you hungry to tell? What creative acts are you being called to digest? In this weekly series, explore various techniques and practices introduced by visiting artists who will lead us in expressing our relationship to food, agriculture, and the histories and stories that shape how we connect with our foodways.

Through various artmaking techniques like bookmaking, printmaking, collage, sculpture, natural-pigment making and painting, alternative photography processes, participants will create artwork that begins to answer the question: Where is the culture in our agricultural system?

This is a free drop-in program. Come to every class to build on your skill or come to one or two that you are available for. Explore your relationship to food and agriculture and the ways our food systems can connect us more deeply to our local ecosystems and communities.

Workshops are rain or shine.

Accessibility: Our kitchen/classroom space is wheelchair accessible. With prior planning, we can add a few small mats onto the pebbled ground of greenhouse to make a small wheel-chair accessible path. Our learning garden has grass paths, and the entrance is through a gate with a small, raised entrance. Our tables can be lowered/raised, and we have several backless benches or stools. Our kitchen is in regular use, and while we try to cook without peanuts, much of our cookware is shared and we cannot guarantee a nut-free environment. We have a first aid kit, and the closest AED is in another building several yards away. Drinking water is made available in refillable pitchers.

When inside the greenhouse and kitchen we will open our double-doors and windows to vent the space and encourage masking and social distancing when in more closed-in spaces.

Our closest bathrooms are a building away, about a one-minute walk. A gender neutral bathroom is also available, and this is accessible by key which you can request from staff. We are not a scent-free zone, and because herbalism classes take place here, cannot guarantee that the site will be clear of any essential oil smells. If you have needs not addressed here, please reach out to Mallory Craig at mcraig@thehort.org.