Justine James grew up living off the Quinault land on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State. “When we’d leave the house in the morning, we’d go out and play in the forest, too far away to come home for lunch,” he says. “So we knew which plants were edible.”
As the cultural resources specialist at the Quinault Indian Nation, he wants to preserve such knowledge of the Quinault’s plants and make it available to others. “Whatever I know, I try to share,” he adds. James collaborated with a professor at Portland State University to publish a book incorporating his knowledge of the traditional uses of the Quinault Tribe’s plants—a dream twenty-five years in the making.
Like James, Valerie Segrest, a Native nutrition educator and member of the Muckleshoot Tribe, who also live in Washington State, has a meaningful personal relationship with local flora—especially nettle, a leafy green plant packed with vitamins and minerals. “I call nettle my first plant teacher,” she wrote in YES! magazine. “From the moment I drank [nettle juice], I became an advocate, passionate about the native foods of the Pacific Northwest.”
Segrest compares sharing knowledge about nettle to divulging information about a close friend.
Segrest compares sharing knowledge about nettle to divulging information about a close friend. “There are things about that plant that I wouldn’t share with anybody,” she says. “But then there are things about her that I can tell you and that I’m proud to tell you.”
Attitudes surrounding sharing Native American ethnobotany, or the medicinal, nutritional, and practical uses of the plants of Indigenous people, have been shaped by a tug-of-war between the desire to document and the need to protect this insight. Many of the plant species that Native peoples relied on for generations, such as the Pacific yew tree, have increasingly come under threat from bioprospecting, the search for medicinal and commercial chemical compounds in living species. Others, such as bear grass, have been the subject of biopiracy, the theft of natural resources or the Traditional Knowledge they hold.
Although traditional knowledge is sometimes perceived to be in conflict with modern science, the two can exist in harmony. Scientific research might prove that elderberries boost the immune system, for example, while traditional knowledge provides an understanding of the seasonality, environment, and history of the plant, all of which influence the potency of its medicinal compounds. “There’s a beautiful marriage that could happen by integrating both Western scientific and traditional ecological knowledge,” says Deniela Shebitz, an ethnobotanist and plant and restoration ecologist at Kean University, “and that’s what I tried to do in my work.”
Shebitz incorporated traditional knowledge into her research on bear grass restoration on the Olympic Peninsula. This tall, white-flowered plant is used for weaving baskets, but has struggled to thrive since prescribed fires—which are critical to managing shrubbery that chokes the forest canopy—slowed in the mid-1800s when many Native people were forced onto reservations, Shebitz says.
Shebitz collaborated with the Quinault tribe and the nearby Skokomish tribe to understand how and where these historical burns were performed and to learn about other traditional land management practices that could help restore bear grass growth.
There is another major threat to the bear grass, however, that can’t be combated with fire: the floral industry. Bear grass, a low-elevation plant that’s easily accessible to both basket weavers and floral poachers, is being collected for bouquets that are then shipped around the world. And while basket makers snip the individual leaves they need, commercial harvesters tend to chop off the entire plant, hindering regeneration of this culturally vital plant.
The Indigenous people of the Olympic Peninsula have long been subjected to the overharvesting of their natural resources. The chemotherapy drug Taxol, for instance, is derived from the bark of the Pacific yew tree, which Native people use to make sticks to dig up camas bulbs for food, to craft durable canoe paddles, and to treat various ailments. And yet, so far, they have not received a share of the over $1 billion Taxol generates annually as a top-selling cancer drug.
This history has, understandably, made some Native people hesitant to show off the ethnobotanical value of plants in their region. “It just reinforces the trauma of ‘don’t share because it’s not safe and we live in a capitalistic society,’” Segrest says.
There is another major threat to the bear grass, however, that can’t be combated with fire: the floral industry.
The book sharing James’ knowledge went through a screening process in which the specific locations of the various plants were omitted to protect them from bioprospecting and biopiracy. The fear is not unfounded—James shares a story about salicin, an anti-inflammatory compound found in alder and willow trees used by Indigenous people, including the Aleut. “They specifically asked the pharmaceutical companies to refrain from synthesizing it,” James says. “And then a couple years later, they’re synthesizing it and mass-marketing it. So that’s why tribal people have a reluctance to share knowledge.”
One potential solution is to compensate Native people for pharmaceutical compounds derived from their plants, but there isn’t a solid legal framework in place to support this practice. “We don’t have a lot of strong laws, either internationally or nationally, on bioprospecting issues,” says Preston Hardison, a retired policy analyst for the Tulalip Tribe’s Natural Resources Treaty Rights Office.
And with the rise in genetic engineering, questions surrounding ownership of genetic resources have become especially complex. While intellectual property rights do not apply to naturally occurring genes, they can protect DNA manipulated in a lab. This legal discrepancy can lead to the increased privatization of plants and wildlife, as when the company AquaBounty developed a genetically modified, fast-growing hybrid of Chinook salmon, Atlantic salmon, and ocean pout (dubbed “Frankenfish” by opponents).
“Someone can own the genetics, so if there was cross-pollination, the idea would be that they can own the salmon in our rivers,” says Romajean Thomas, the executive director of FEED Seven Generations and member of the Muckleshoot Tribe. “[That is] super scary for us as people. It is who we are. It is our identity.”
Hardison would like to see renewed progress toward putting more official compensation systems in place. “I’m happy to support tribes to start lobbying to get some action in Congress on the protection of traditional knowledge and plants and animals on the intellectual property side,” he says.
At the same time, he says, the policies must address not only the financial but spiritual significance of the resources.
“We’re being very strongly pushed toward just a benefit sharing regime,” Hardison adds. “And we're trying to figure out how we can find a compromise where the spiritual practices and beliefs are protected, but also where we can get tribal benefit sharing in a big way.”