Plant/People is an oral history project examining the relationship between human beings and the natural world. Conducted in collaboration with the Institute on the Environment at the University of Minnesota, these herbalists are deeply passionate about solidarity driven storytelling.
Transcript
Opening: This is Minnesota's Legacy: A look at the organizations and people who have benefitted from Minnesota's unique Clean Water, Land and Legacy Amendment.
BRITT AAMODT: Plants are all around us. In our gardens, along our nature hikes, in pots by windows. They season food and form the backbone of traditional medicine going back millennia.
Emily Beck, a Minnesota herbalist, wanted to understand the relationship between humans and plants or nature in general.
EMILY BECK: Things in the natural world, whether that's plants, whether that's mushrooms, whether that's water, whether that's mud, whether that's gardening, trees.
AAMODT: So she and fellow herbalist Macey Flood came up with a plan. Working with the University of Minnesota and a grant from the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund, they set out to interview people about plants from a variety of disciplines—foragers, gardeners, herbal medicine growers, researchers, activists, artists.
BECK: The stories are wildly different, but also have a lot of common threads about just being really close to plants and land and how critical that is for personal health, community health, and how people see that as being really important for cultural health as well.
AAMODT: They called their project "Plant/People: Oral histories of herbalists in contemporary Minnesota."
Closing: Minnesota's Legacy is a production of AMPERS, with support from the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund, more at ampers dot org.