Indigenous People Recognition
November is Native American Heritage Month
The Indigenous People have an intimate knowledge of native plants and utilize them for healing, shelter, communion, and sustenance. Often native plants are regarded as possessing spirits and harvested with ceremony then thanked for what they offered.
"becoming indigenous to a place means living as if your children's future mattered, to take care of the land as if our lives, both material and spiritual, depended on it."
--Robin Wall Kimmerer
The fires burned by Indigenous People had an immense effect on the plants and landscape of the northern hemisphere.
Fire and Prairie Ecosystems
"WILDLAND BURNING BY AMERICAN INDIANS IN VIRGINIA"
Many native plants contain the word Indian in their common names. Europeans and their descendants tended to name native plants with the term Indian to segregate them from the plants they resembled in the Old World. In this context, Indian meant false. The genuine plant was Old World; the mock plant, New World.
Europeans also renamed native plants for objects they believed Indigenous People may have used in their daily lives, for example, Indian paintbrush.
Ten Native Plants With Indian in The Common Name
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