Identify: Ann Armbrecht
Occupation: Author/Anthropologist
Place of Residence: Vermont
Background and Private Historical past: Ann is a author, anthropologist (PhD, Harvard 1995) and mom residing in central Vermont. She was born and raised in West Virginia and, after faculty, went like so many earlier than her to the Himalayas looking out elsewhere for what she failed to seek out at dwelling, believing that indigenous individuals should maintain some knowledge which we had misplaced about learn how to dwell on the earth.
What she discovered, after all, was extra sophisticated than what she had imagined from afar (she has written about it in her ethnographic memoir, Thin Places: A Pilgrimage Home, Gold Nautilus Award for books that can change the world), however what she skilled within the higher Arun Valley, Nepal, led her to Sage Mountain to review natural drugs with Rosemary Gladstar. On the coronary heart of natural drugs as taught by Rosemary, Ann discovered one thing much like what she encountered in Hedangna: a way of the sacredness of the earth, a top quality of respect and restraint in interactions with the surroundings, a concentrate on relationship moderately than possession, and an understanding of the non secular and cultural dimensions of therapeutic. To Ann, learning conventional natural drugs was a method to follow these qualities in her personal cultural custom, a manner of discovering that far off, enchanted place at dwelling.
And but, as she discovered extra about herbalism, particularly in regards to the enterprise aspect of issues, Ann got here to see that this custom, like each different, is fraught with contradictions and complexities. And so with filmmaker Terrence Youk, she co-produced the award-winning documentary Numen: the Nature of Plants to have a good time the values of wholeness on the coronary heart of natural drugs, so customers can see that there’s extra to plant drugs than little brown bottles on a shelf.
Present Tasks: Ann’s outreach for Numen led to her present challenge, The Sustainable Herbs Project, a web-based interactive web site/documentary following crops via the availability chain. She nonetheless believes that herbalism holds the seeds to a distinct relationship with the earth, one which respects limits and sees the world as greater than a playground for human destruction. However this promise solely has that means if crops are handled with respect during the availability chain, if the values of natural drugs lengthen into the enterprise of natural drugs.
And so her objective is to launch a extra educated and accountable shopper motion supporting top quality natural treatments and sustainable and moral sourcing. Ann is gathering tales from collectors, processors, merchants and completed product producers, with women and men concerned in all points of the business. She’s additionally researching challenges and finest practices within the business and accumulating sources for practitioners and customers to assist present and discover top quality, sustainably sourced treatments.
She and her collaborators need this interactive, multimedia web site to be accessible without cost and they also launched a Kickstarter Campaign to cowl their prices up entrance. Proceeds will go to the design and improvement of the web site/interactive documentary and to birthing a company to hold on this work.
Please make a contribution! Ann has a incredible assortment of books, herb lessons and extra as rewards. The marketing campaign ends February 25, 2015, so make your donation now!
Different Enjoyable Info: Issues Ann loves most: her youngsters, the woods, dancing, gardening, particularly medicinal crops as a result of they’re so weedy and ample in her backyard and take so little of her consideration.
