Breathing in the joy and lessons of the plant life surrounding us, Ayana and guest Antonia Estela Pérez share an enriching conversation on the power and magic of coming to know the world around us. Antonia dives into the tension that exists in living in and caring for lands that have been violently colonized, calling listeners to understand plants both in the ways that colonization has affected their legacies and within anti-colonial structures that suggest there are other ways to engage with the plants around us. The multiple uses and life forms of plants like coffee and cacao (from traditional use to exploitative cash-crop farming) remind us of the multiplicity of life and land. Resistance and acquiescence to colonizing systems can take place within the same landscapes and can use the same plants. Antonia navigates the complexity of this reality with care and awareness.

The natural world is, in fact, not separated from any one of us, and in detailing her work with Herban Cura, Antonia brings her insight on connections to plants and land within urban settings expanding the horizons of intimacy between humans and plants across human-imposed boundaries. As Antonia shares more about her New York City and familial Chilean roots, she reminds us of the value of connection to places for spiritual, ancestral, and medicinal means. Cultural and ancestral knowledge are vital to everyone’s survival in a world marred by colonial violence. What healing can be found within our own backyards, our own lineages? Perhaps the plants will lead us home once again – as they always have.

Antonia Estela Pérez is a Chilean-American clinical herbalist, gardener, educator, community organizer, co-founder, and artist born and raised in New York City. Growing up in a first generation household existing at the intersections of land stewardship, education, and social justice, their passion for herbs and plant medicine bridges the relationships between rural and urban spaces. With over 10 years of education including environmental and urban studies at Bard College, Clinical Herbalism at Arborvitae School of Traditional Herbal Medicine, and learning with herbalists and elders throughout Mexico, Chile, Peru, Colombia, Ecuador, Brazil, and Thailand, Pérez facilitates workshops and produces events as the co-founder of NY based collective, Brujas, and Herban Cura: A space centering Indigenous, Black, Queer and Trans communities in the education of land connection. Perez’s work is rooted in their passion for sharing knowledge that interrupts notions of individualism and separatism from nature to grow towards collaborative and symbiotic communities.

♫ The music featured in this episode is “PUMA” and “Destellos” by Julio Kintu and “All My Relations” by The Ulali Project with Pura Fé.

Reading Recommendations

Antonia’s teachers and their publications–

Iwígara: American Indian Ethnobotanical Traditions and Science by Enrique Salmon

In the Shadow of Slavery: Africa's Botanical Legacy in the Atlantic World by Judith Ann Carney

Indigenous Food Sovereignty in the United States: Restoring Cultural Knowledge, Protecting Environments, and Regaining Health

Recovering the Sacred: The Power of Naming and Claiming by Winona LaDuke

Antonia Estela Pérez Rojas of Herban Cura on Reconnecting to the Power of Plants, Deem Journal

Take Action

Please support these organizations–

Herban Cura

A Growing Culture

Black indigenous Liberation Movement

Afro caracolas

Border Kindness

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