Clarissa Shane

The oral transmission of plant knowledge particularly their medicinal usages enriches relations to the land. How can plants/nonhuman be recognized for their ‘personhood’? Respect for the nonhuman is demonstrated by the customary use of plants as medicine, cooking, and in ritual by Paredones residents. By caring and protecting the nonhuman in Paredones, the nonhuman is cared for and the human can partake in a network of reciprocity where humans are gifted through nonhuman nourishment. The oral histories are situated within the larger frameworks such as migration in order to address the impacts of colonialism, capitalism, and neoliberalism on traditional ways of living and the environmental injustices that come with those systems.

cshane-ohma-thesis-final-draft

Clarissa Shane is an interdisciplinary creative and oral historian from Stockton, CA. She graduated with a BA in Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought from Bard College Berlin where she did multimedia research in her maternal ancestral land: Paredones, Michoacán, Mexico on human/nonhuman entanglements – how wild plant usage in ceremony, medicine, and cuisine impacts cultural traditions and environmental conservation. Clarissa continued working with these themes as she created a Paredones Plant Oral History repository for her Oral History Master’s thesis. During her time in NYC, she also collected plant knowledge from community Gardeners for the New York Botanical Garden’s Bronx Foodways Oral History Project. In her free time, she studies Ayurvedic herbalism and is committed to Land Justice initiatives. clarissa.shane.edu@gmail.com