Exposure to one's ancestral language fosters specific perspectives on the ecosystems that have sustained the speakers of that language. Ethnobotany highlights the ways in which groups understand their environment and their place within it. This article considers the Tunica-Biloxi Tribe of Louisiana, who have been reclaiming and revitalizing one of their community's ancestral languages for over a decade. Concurrently, a group of tribal members and collaborators has been steadily developing a bilingual Tunica 1 -English ethnobotany guidebook for the past five years. This guidebook complements ecosystem restoration efforts currently underway on the tribe's reservation, including projects promoting the management and harvest of resources according to Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK). This knowledge reflects familiarity with a range of habitats including river bottoms, prairies, foothills, and the Gulf Coastal Plain. Furthermore, it displays legacies of ongoing contact with other Indigenous groups along with European colonizers. Political pressure, land encroachment, and language shift have undermined a core basis for Tunica-Biloxi ethnobotanical practice. As a result, our knowledge is fragmented. In this article, we showcase the ethnobotany working group's methodology, which asserts historical uses of plant resources while encouraging the creativity necessary to fill gaps left in the documentary record. Recognizing the synergies between language revitalization and ethnobotany—and leveraging them in theory and practice—provides a powerful tool for negotiating and navigating borderlands in order to imagine more vibrant futures.
Lopez et al. (Fri,) studied this question.