Returning to Our Roots: Herbalism as a Liberatory Practice
When you’re feeling sick, what do you do? Go to the doctor? Maybe take a trip to your local CVS? Many of us have become accustomed to Western capitalist notions of health, and healing methods are distanced from the traditional healing practices that our ancestors engaged in. However, the current socio-economic conditions in the United States compel us to utilize herbal practices to maintain our autonomy and contribute to collective care. By reclaiming these traditions, we can resist the idea that profit-driven institutions must dictate wellness.
Herbalism, sometimes referred to as rootwork, plant medicine, or holistic medicine, is the practice of using plants and herbs to tend to one’s mental, physical, and spiritual health. Herbalism is more than just healing; it is a way for us to reclaim our bodily autonomy in a system that has long sought to deny it. In her book Working Cures, which explores the socio-historical context of holistic medicine, scholar Sharla Fett explains how enslaved Africans retained herbal traditions as a way to care for themselves and others amidst the brutality of chattel slavery. These herbal practices were not just used for physical health but to grow the spiritual, emotional, and mental wellness of those in enslaved communities.
Since the beginning of American chattel slavery in 1619, Black people were seen as property and not full, complex human beings. Due to this perception, enslaved Black people were only valued in terms of their productivity and, in turn, the profit they could generate for white slaveholders. They were not seen as humans but as mere tools and machines. In this case, a sick human was engaged as a broken machine hindering production and, thus, profit as opposed to someone deserving of care and compassion. Herbalism acted as a form of resistance against this form of “superexploitation,” which Fett describes as the nexus of social, political, economic, and reproductive exploitation that Black women face under capitalism and patriarchy.
One example of Black Americans’ use of herbalism as a liberatory practice was enslaved women’s use of cotton root. Although enslaved people were forced to pick cotton for hours on end, the small herb would allow enslaved women to reclaim their reproductive autonomy. Cotton root has abortifacient properties, meaning it can be used to induce abortions. This form of resistance was especially important during enslavement as slaveholders commodified the reproductive labor of Black women by using them to populate their plantations. By using cotton roots, enslaved women refused to allow slave masters to exploit their reproduction.
Despite the strong and intentional care embedded in these ancestral practices, a lot of this knowledge was systematically erased through the creation of the American healthcare system and “Big Pharma,” – large pharmaceutical companies whose financial privilege allows them to influence legislative processes through lobbying. In the early 19th century, as public consensus began backing Western medicine in lieu of ancestral practices, not only was Black American’s connection to herbalism severed, but quality health services also became more inaccessible, and, therefore, ineffective. We have been taught to view our health as something distant or out of reach, something that must be dictated by prescriptions and institutions when, in reality, we have all the resources we need literally beneath our feet.
As we face continued assaults on accessible, dignified healthcare, we must look back to our ancestral herbal practices. Similar to how our ancestors utilized herbalism to assert their autonomy and care for themselves and their community, we must do the same. Importantly, plant medicine is more than just a response to the failures of the American healthcare system, it challenges larger systems that perpetuate capitalist values, which reduce human bodies to tools and treat wellness as a prize reserved for those most privileged within society. By reclaiming these traditions, we can both honor our ancestors’ legacies and equip ourselves with alternative methods to resist state control over our bodies.
Bio: Angel W. is a trailblazing first-generation student at Spelman College, majoring in Comparative Women’s Studies with a unique concentration in Pleasure Activism and a minor …
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