Plant Kin: A Multispecies Ethnography in Indigenous Brazil

The Indigenous Canela inhabit a vibrant multispecies community of nearly 3,000 people and over 300 types of cultivated and wild plants living together in Maranhão State in the Brazilian Cerrado (savannah) a biome threatened with deforestation and climate change. In the face of these environmental threats, Canela women and men work to maintain riverbank and forest gardens and care for their growing crops who they consider to be, literally, children. This nurturing, loving relationship between people and plants—which offers a thought-provoking model for supporting multispecies survival and well-being throughout the world—is the focus of Plant Kin. Theresa L. Miller shows how kinship develops between Canela people and plants through intimate, multi-sensory, and embodied relationships. Using an approach she calls “sensory ethnobotany,” Miller explores the Canela bio-sociocultural life-world, including Canela landscape aesthetics, ethnobotanical classification, mythical storytelling, historical and modern-day gardening practices, transmission of ecological knowledge through an education of affection for plant kin, shamanic engagements with plant friends and lovers, and myriad other human-nonhuman experiences. This multispecies ethnography reveals the transformations of Canela human-environment and human-plant engagements over the past two centuries and envisions possible futures for this Indigenous multispecies community as they reckon with the rapid environmental and climatic changes facing the Brazilian Cerrado as the Anthropocene epoch unfolds. Review "A well-crafted, thoroughly researched account that speaks to a wide set of topics linked to global climate change. In the Canela, Miller sees an example of 'the work of caring for multispecies kin' that both fleshes out earlier theorizing and anticipates a fulsome recognition of biosocial engagements as constitutive of culture, in the broadest sense. By focusing on the 'sensory ethnobotany' practiced by the Canela, and letting this lifeway and worldview permeate her account, she develops a distinctive ethnographic approach that should have the book circulating in classrooms and seminars where ethnographic methods and theories are evaluated and inculcated." (John Hartigan, University of Texas, author of Care of the Species: Races of Corn and the Science of Plant Biodiversity) "A fascinating study that breaks new ground in the study of non-Western relations between plants and people. Miller’s extensive field research and the indigenous narratives she presents offer an unparalleled view of women’s relations with plants, and she shows the implication of a uniquely Canela conception of kinship that is not limited to humanity. This is powerful material, well researched and well supported. The writing is superb. A brilliant book that deserves to be widely read." (Beth Conklin, Vanderbilt University, author of Consuming Grief: Compassionate Cannibalism in an Amazonian Society) About the Author Theresa L. Miller is an anthropologist and Environmental Social Scientist at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, Illinois, where she researches bio-cultural diversity and community-led conservation in South America.