Living Lists: How the Indigenous Canela Come to Know Plants through Ethnobotanical Classification

Abstract

This paper explores how members of the indigenous Canela community of northeast Brazil value and make meaningful their engagements with cultivated plants in their local Cerrado (“savannah”) environment through the recent creation of written ethnobotanical lists and through more traditional multi-sensory, embodied approaches. It compares the traditional approach of Canela gardeners coming to know and “becoming with” growing plants through caring, affectionate activities such as garden visits, ritual singing, food sharing, and shamanic communication, with that of the recent written documentation of ethnobotanical knowledge that is associated with people and things coming from a world “outside” the community. Through the creation of fluid and dynamic living lists, Canela gardener parents are seeking new and innovative ways to engage with and know the plant children growing in their gardens. Both the traditional and newer approaches to plant knowledge can and do co-exist in the community. Moreover, Canela gardeners are embracing and working through the “ontological frictions” that emerge between disparate ways of knowing about and of becoming alongside cultivated plants. The Canela case can contribute to a broader understanding of biodiversity management as “childcare” and encourage a deeper engagement with both humans’ and plants’ perspectives in future ethnobotanical studies.