Climate Change and Other Effects to Aboriginal Medicine

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Cultivating Food, Land, and Communities" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

America’s first people have been extremely knowledgeable about animals, plants, and fungi they ingest and/or breathe in for medicinal purposes. Medicine, from a Native perspective, is something honored, taken in for healing and well-being, to be used with respect and knowledge, with spiritual reverence and recognition of cultural continuity. Recent changes in climate have affected medicine pollinators, habitat, cross-species interaction, and traditional access while medicinal species degradation and eradication of species considered “pests” or “invasive” has affected the health and even survival of Native American communities. A decrease in the natural quantity of the species due to climate change is further exacerbated by cultural appropriation and poaching of species glorified through social media. Medicine locales often go unnoticed by the archaeological surveyor and thus become even more threatened.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)   •
• Cultivating Food, Land, and Communities

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Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38867.0