Amanda David: Herbalist Bringing Medicine to the People!
Amanda David: Herbalist Bringing Medicine to the People!
“Amanda David is a community herbalist, the mother of three amazing children, and the creator of Rootwork Herbals and the many initiatives that are a part of that container. She tends plants and people growing gardens, handcrafting remedies, offering consultations and teaching. Her approach to herbalism is based in the ways of her ancestors, building intimate relationships with the plants that grow nearby in order to bring herbal medicine and home healthcare to the people. In doing this, she sees herbalism as a means to support life and thus resist against oppressive systems, which undermine health. Above all, Amanda is a lover of plants and a lover of people and is passionate about bringing them together in a down to earth, joyful and accessible way that promotes personal and planetary healing.”
Rootwork Herbals includes various projects within herbalism that build mutually beneficial relationships between people, plants, and planet. The Rootwork Herbals community has grown in include an herbal product line, herbal health consultations, a BIPOC free clinic, educational offerings such as the People’s Medicine School and Woke Without the Work, a BIPOC community garden, and the facilitation of BIPOC sanctuaries’ at various herb/agriculture conferences. Funds are also raised through the People’s Medicine Reclamation Fund to ensure that BIPOC folks have access to opportunities to reclaim healing through herbalism.
The quality of Rootwork Herbals products is deeply rooted in the plants and their relationship to them. They devotedly grow and wildcraft herbs with true freshness and vitality, gathering at peak potency, closely following the plant’s life cycle, as well as seasonal rhythms. They focus on working with abundant, local plants over distant and/or rare plants. Most of the herbs they use are so common that most folks only recognize them as weeds. However, they cherish the plentiful offerings of healing and nourishment so freely given by these weeds.
The Jane Minor BIPOC Community Medicine Garden is a dream and a future brought to life in honor of the herbalist, healer and emancipator, Jane Minor and Amanda’s grandmother Jane Green who grew food and medicine. The garden is a sanctuary for BIPOC folks to come together to connect with the Earth, the Plants, the Community, and with themselves. The garden has communal beds for all to freely enjoy, tend and harvest, as well as individual beds for folks to steward as they like. The garden also has a community herb drying shed, as well as a lending library of herb books and tools. Classes, work parties, food and medicine mutual aid and garden events happen regularly throughout the growing season. The garden is made possible through the work of many hands and funds raised through the People’s Medicine Project: Reclamation fund.
Rootwork Herbals facilitates various courses, workshops and classes both online and in-person. All of their offerings cultivate joyful healing relationships and health justice. Explore their current course offerings here. The People’s Medicine School is a 6-month course designed to educate fellow BIPOC community members in the art of herbalism using the plants grown in their garden and foraged from nature. We are blessed to share the world with our incredible plant relatives, many of which can help reduce the presence or discomfort of minor illnesses/injuries, aid in the healing process, improve the functioning of our body, release toxins and even prevent disease! This class reconnects us with the lost relationships with the plants.
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This article was written with excerpts from the Rootwork Herbals website.
Thank you to Guerrilla Foundation for funding this video of solutions.