Ocean State Libraries

"Reclaiming the Commons: In Defense of Biodiversity, Traditional Knowledge and the Rights of Mother Earth lays out the scientific, legal, political, and cultural struggle to defend the sovereignty of biodiversity and indigenous knowledge. Corporate war on nature and people through patents and corporate Intellectual Property Rights has unleashed an epidemic of biopiracy resulting in important legal battles fighting efforts to patent the rights to many...

The belief that all life-forms are interconnected and share the same breath-- known in the Rarámuri tribe as iwígara-- has resulted in a treasury of knowledge about the natural world, passed down for millennia by native cultures. Salmón, an ethnobotanist, builds on this concept of connection and highlights plants revered by North America's indigenous peoples. He teaches us the ways plants are used as food and medicine, the details of their identification...