X. Ethnomedicine

Throughout history, an array of plants have been documented for treating various ailments. Among which, species of the genus Datura stand out for their infamous use in both medicinal and cultural contexts, as analgesics, hallucinogens, and poisons. Alkaloids, a prominent class of specialized metabolites, are celebrated for their medicinal properties, and Datura species produce a diverse range of tropane alkaloids, making them a significant resource for natural products discovery. Despite their medicinal potential, tropane alkaloids present contamination risks in numerous food sources, including teas, spices, grains, honey, and herbal supplements. Consequently, the development of new analytical techniques for identifying novel tropane alkaloids and detecting known ones has great importance. Employing analytical approaches using LC-MS/MS, we have found previously unidentified alkaloids in Datura. These findings not only broaden our comprehension of Datura’s metabolic diversity, but also offer insights into its traditional uses and evolutionary adaptations.

The indigenous communities of Bangladesh traditionally consume fruits and vegetables, which are unknown in other parts of the country. This study aims to record these lesser-known indigenous fruits and vegetables. In addition, the nutritional values and bioactivity of some selected species were investigated in order to introduce them as alternative foods and medicines on a larger platform. A total of 134 plants using information were documented. Considering their frequent uses, some plant species were selected to analyse their nutrient and medicinal values. Results showed that some species contain more fibre, carbohydrate, and fat than commonly used species, while some species exhibit good bioactivity, which was corroborated by the molecular docking analysis of identified compounds. The analysed fruits and vegetables proved to be praiseworthy as they contain substantial amounts of nutrients and medicinal values, which can be introduced as alternative sources of food and medicine in other parts of Bangladesh.

Appeasing gods, witches and ancestral spirits constitute an integral part of the traditional healing practices of Yorubas. Ten classes of sacrifice were identified, some with proven efficacy. Response from astral realm could signify acceptance, when presentation is “consumed” within a stipulated time, or it could be “ignored” to indicate rejection. Most sacrifices have time and presentation-spot specificity. A wide variety of wild animals were utilized in preparing these sacrifices without consideration for conservation interests. Preparations involved animals under varying degrees of threats and age grades. In addition to depleting populations, such requirements eat deep into the procreation base of populations, denying members the opportunity to participate in reproductive activities. There is an urgent need to improve the yield of these animals, in-situ, and ex-situ. There is also a need to reduce demand for, and utilization of, these resources through massive conservation education, extension services and capacity building for indigenous people.

Across contemporary psychedelic counterculture, ‘plant medicine’ is celebrated as healing and spiritual in association with indigenous ritual use, yet also imagined to be optimized in Silicon Valley—by splicing ayahuasca and psilocybin, for example.  In the 1990s Ketamine was a ‘horse tranquilizer’ or ‘designer drug’, yet is now also celebrated as a ‘psychedelic’—and semantically continuous with indigenous healing as a consequence.  My ethnography explores New Age youth culture at massive psytrance parties across Europe, where I am positioned as a popular educator and interact with psychonauts, “chaos magicians” and other techno-utopian “digital nomads” who smoke synthetic DMT sprayed on plants and tell of “machine elves”.  I explore primitive accumulation in relation to the legalization and medicalization of mind-altering plants, and how participants in the neoliberal “psychedelic renaissance” shift between celebrating nature and its improvement, wherein indigenous knowledge is referenced and displaced in the marketing of psychedelics for workplace use. 

The Philippines as one of the species-rich country is also a culturally megadiverse in ethnicity around the globe. Plants have been utilized in the country in many ways by various cultural communities generally for medicinal uses. But apart from these, plants are also utilized in rituals or magical purposes. The ritual beliefs of the Indigenous Peoples (IPs) use different plants or plant parts for ceremonies. However, ethnobotanical studies in the country are finite and no ethnobiological documentation in the province despite having several Ethnic groups in the Northern part of the archipelago. Hence, this situation calls to save traditional knowledge and culture to increase awareness of the conservation of ritual plants. This study aimed to determine the ritual plants of the Isneg community with the notes of; its conservation status and endemicity. Also, to document the different rituals indigenous knowledge of the Isneg community in Dumalneg, Ilocos Norte.