Drawing on conversations with a Brazilian shaman about biopiracy and weaving together literature from the ontological and botanical turns, the author argues that plant healers and practitioners—especially indigenous ones—are largely uncited in plant-centered discussions, a gap with both disciplinary and political consequences. In Brazil, indigenous claims for territory and sovereignty gain legitimacy when tied to cultural patrimony. Using ayahuasca as an example of collaborative survival between plants and people, the analysis shows how the botanical turn is entangled with semiotic-material stakes in traditional knowledge and territory claims. The author proposes possible ethnobotanies and methodologies of refusal that respect plant(ed)-human resistance.
This article examines how humans communicate with and about two seemingly disparate plants—ayahuasca, a psychedelic Amazonian vine, and Arabidopsis, a common laboratory model organism. Ayahuasca is portrayed as a 'Philosopher Plant' that enables self-knowledge and cross-species embodiment, while also supporting Amazonian indigenous claims to land and sovereignty. Arabidopsis, known as the 'Botanical Drosophila,' serves as a standardized experimental organism in scientific research. The author uses a 'rhizomatic' approach to argue that these different modes of human-plant interaction reveal varied conceptions of 'the human' and suggest that cross-pollinating ideas from both contexts can foster collaborative survival between humans and plants.