The Academy of Natural Sciences (ANS) Botany Herbarium is opening its collection of more than 1 million dried and pressed plant specimens to collaboration with Indigenous scientists living on the tribal lands where many of the plants were originally collected.
The Academy’s partners in the effort are the American Philosophical Society (APS, a research institute, library and museum in Philadelphia), and Local Contexts (an Indigenous-led non-profit).
Local Contexts hosts a web portal that connects Indigenous communities with museums worldwide that have heritage collections and data whose origins lay in the lands and culture of these communities. Local Contexts and ANS are beginning their alliance by focusing on an iconic collection of plants gathered by the Lewis and Clark Corps of Discovery in 1804-06. The collection of these plants was commissioned by President Thomas Jefferson, who wanted the explorers to look for new and notable plants on their journey while searching for an inland water passage to the Pacific Ocean.
Lewis and Clark failed to find that water route, but they returned with a botanical trove of more than 220 specimens, many collected with the help of traditional knowledge keepers from the approximately 50 tribes they encountered on the journey. The fragile dried and pressed plant specimens were deposited for safekeeping at the American Philosophical Society (the Smithsonian Institution didn’t exist yet!), eventually finding a permanent home at the Academy of Natural Sciences.
A system of Notices and Labels developed by Local Contexts are posted on the Academy of Natural Sciences’ website and digital collection records as tools to help researchers and institutions interpret specimens in their collections with traditional knowledge befitting Indigenous cultural values, practices and protocols.
The Academy of Natural Sciences’ Notice, “Open to Collaborate,” announces that “The Academy is committed to the development of new modes of collaboration, engagement and partnership with Indigenous peoples for the care and stewardship of past and future heritage collections.” The Center for Native American and Indigenous Research at APS, the Academy and Local Contexts aim to expand partnership, collaboration and support of Indigenous cultural authority in the research done on the collections. The collaboration on the Lewis and Clark plant collection could expand in the future to involve many of the 19 million specimens in the ANS natural history collections.
featured image: Camas root herbarium sheet collected by Lewis and Clark
Authors: Rick McCourt and Chelsea Smith