Natasha Myhal | Ohio State University (original) (raw)
Book Reviews by Natasha Myhal
American Indian Quarterly , 2022
The Prairie Naturalist , 2016
Plants Have So Much to Give Us, All We Have to Do Is Ask offers a new look at Anishinaabe (Ojibwe... more Plants Have So Much to Give Us, All We Have to Do Is Ask offers a new look at Anishinaabe (Ojibwe) ethnobotany as told through traditional stories. Botanical teachings through stories are a way to pass down traditional knowledge from generation to generation. For example, Anishinaabe knowledge on plants was written and recorded in communities willing to share their knowledge with early scholars, such as Albert B. Reagan (1928), Huron H. Smith (1932), and Melvin R. Gilmore (1933). Each of these scholars spent time with an Anishinaabe community to learn about plants and primarily to provide written descriptions of plants as food and medicine. Ethnobotany by Mary Siisip Geniusz and her daughter, Wendy Makoons Geniusz, is different than those early efforts because they both rely heavily on stories, language, and culture in describing plants from an Anishinaabe (Ojibwe) perspective. The traditional knowledge in this book was obtained over a long period of time (actually generations beyond the author and her teacher, Keewaydinoquay) and was written to be shared with others so that they also could learn. The type of learning that this text portrays is a Master-Teacher apprenticeship, whereby knowledge of plant teachings was exchanged during the time that Mary Geniusz and the late Keewaydinoquay spent together. Keewaydinoquay was a well-known Anishinaabe medicine woman from the Leelanau Peninsula in Michigan; she was a teacher to many, including Mary Geniusz, and she was known by many more, including K. Kindscher, the second author of this review. This text provides ethnobotany from an Indigenous perspective and the book is appropriately subtitled as Anishinaabe Botanical Teachings. University of Minnesota Press
Thesis Chapters by Natasha Myhal
Oshá (Ligusticum porteri), found in high elevation sites in the southwestern United States and no... more Oshá (Ligusticum porteri), found in high elevation sites in the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico, is a medicinal plant whose roots are being sold by herbal product companies to treat influenza, bronchitis, and sore throat. Oshá and other medicinal plants have a long history of use within Indigenous communities, fifteen tribes are documented using oshá and those uses are practiced today and more tribes likely use oshá, especially in and near the range of the plant. Historically and today, tribes such as the Apache, Pueblo, Navajo, Zuni, White Mountain Apache, Southern Ute, Lakota, and the Tarahumara in Mexico used oshá to treat ailments such as to treat colds, flu, upper respiratory infection, and diarrhea and gastrointestinal problems. Another use of root is to repel snakes if one carries the root with them. Oshá is commonly referred to as bear root by Native American tribes because bears have been observed using and interacting with the root. Oshá is also considered sacred to some tribes and it is used outside its native range by hundreds of miles by the Comanche, Plains, Apache, and Lakota tribes. Interviews conducted with tribal elders, a Hispanic elder, U.S. Forest Service officials, and an herbal product company owner help to make suggestions for U.S. Forest Service policies, such as co-management strategies for medicinal plants like oshá. This paper also examines the potential areas of collaboration between Native tribes and current U.S. Forest Service policies to create future Native American focused policies and strengthen future relationships.
Papers by Natasha Myhal
GeoForum, 2025
This Forum brings together river restoration researchers and practitioners to stimulate debate ab... more This Forum brings together river restoration researchers and practitioners to stimulate debate about the recent explosion of interest in North American beaver (Castor canadensis) and beaver-related practices in North American river restoration science and management. While the beaver is described in recent literature as a lowcost, high-impact ecosystem engineer capable of minimizing the impacts of wildfire, drought, flood, and disturbance across the continent, we consider the importance of shifting from a focus on prescriptive results-on what beaver get humans-and towards engaging with beaver in relational process. Through a set of provocations that highlight the potential damage beaver fixes pose for stream restoration, for beaver, and for the lands and waters they inhabit with humans and other beings, we invite settler river scientists, river restorationists, and river thinkers to question the increasingly taken-for-granted logic of beaver as isolated creature, ecosystem engineer, and river savior; defer to the millennia of theory about beaver and their relations on this continent, partnering with beaver and with the Native peoples who have known them longest; and reconnect beaver back to people, place, and time in support of lively, dynamic, diverse, flourishing river systems across the continent.
Anthropological Optimism: Engaging the Power of What Could Go Right, edited by Anna Willow. New York: Routledge., Feb 13, 2023
This chapter discusses optimism in the context of our ongoing projects and fieldwork on Indigenou... more This chapter discusses optimism in the context of our ongoing projects and fieldwork on Indigenous land education and resource access in the Cherokee Nation (Carroll), and on the maintenance of reciprocal relationships with nmé/lake sturgeon through ecosystem restoration with the Little River Band of Ottawa Indians (Myhal). We view optimism through a lens of Indigenous futurity that emerges out of already-lived apocalypses that have impacted our communities since the dawn of colonialism (Whyte 2017). Thus, the Colonialcene—rather than the Anthropocene—more accurately describes Indigenous experiences with human-induced change on a geological scale, considering the impacts colonial policies, practices, and mindsets have had on our communities and the land (Davis and Todd 2017). Despite these negative impacts, Indigenous communities have sustained their relationships to the land and in some cases have formed distinct relationships with new lands after forced removals. We thus consider climate action through tribally specific acts of regenerating and perpetuating land-based knowledge and practices, framed within our respective languages and belief systems. We discuss this work—and our role as community-based researchers within it—as reversing the destruction of Indigenous worlds and building futures of hope for all people that enact Indigenous relationality with a living land.
History of Pharmacy and Pharmaceuticals, 2022
In recent years, Western herbalists, often of settler descent, have contended with a lineage of ... more In recent years, Western herbalists, often of settler descent, have contended
with a lineage of appropriation and their ongoing relationships with Native plants,
communities, and land. Critical—and hard to find—are stories of botanical circulations
that foreground the dynamics of circulation, pluralism, and colonialism in which appropriation can be understood and its lessons applied. This article offers one such story. White pine was—and is—an important medicine within Indigenous Ojibwe medical
traditions. As such, it was studied and written about by ethnobotanists working in close
relation to Ojibwe communities in the early twentieth century. Such circulations took
place amid land allotment, industrialized logging, the devastation of pine forests, and the
marginalization of botanic practices. Situating stories of white pine in Indigenous, settler
colonial, and herbal studies, this article argues that long histories of Western herbalism
illuminate botanical appropriation as a settler logic with important consequences for
present-day herbal practices.
Oshá (Ligusticum porteri), found in high elevation sites in the southwestern United States and no... more Oshá (Ligusticum porteri), found in high elevation sites in the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico, is a medicinal plant whose roots are being sold by herbal product companies to treat influenza, bronchitis, and sore throat. Oshá and other medicinal plants have a long history of use within Indigenous communities, fifteen tribes are documented using oshá and those uses are practiced today and more tribes likely use oshá, especially in and near the range of the plant. Historically and today, tribes such as the Apache, Pueblo, Navajo, Zuni, White Mountain Apache, Southern Ute, Lakota, and the Tarahumara in Mexico used oshá to treat ailments such as to treat colds, flu, upper respiratory infection, and diarrhea and gastrointestinal problems. Another use of root is to repel snakes if one carries the root with them. Oshá is commonly referred to as bear root by Native American tribes because bears have been observed using and interacting with the root. Oshá is also consider...
Plants Have So Much to Give Us, All We Have to Do Is Ask offers a new look at Anishinaabe (Ojibwe... more Plants Have So Much to Give Us, All We Have to Do Is Ask offers a new look at Anishinaabe (Ojibwe) ethnobotany as told through traditional stories. Botanical teachings through stories are a way to pass down traditional knowledge from generation to generation. For example, Anishinaabe knowledge on plants was written and recorded in communities willing to share their knowledge with early scholars, such as Albert B. Reagan (1928), Huron H. Smith (1932), and Melvin R. Gilmore (1933). Each of these scholars spent time with an Anishinaabe community to learn about plants and primarily to provide written descriptions of plants as food and medicine. Ethnobotany by Mary Siisip Geniusz and her daughter, Wendy Makoons Geniusz, is different than those early efforts because they both rely heavily on stories, language, and culture in describing plants from an Anishinaabe (Ojibwe) perspective. The traditional knowledge in this book was obtained over a long period of time (actually generations beyond the author and her teacher, Keewaydinoquay) and was written to be shared with others so that they also could learn. The type of learning that this text portrays is a Master-Teacher apprenticeship, whereby knowledge of plant teachings was exchanged during the time that Mary Geniusz and the late Keewaydinoquay spent together. Keewaydinoquay was a well-known Anishinaabe medicine woman from the Leelanau Peninsula in Michigan; she was a teacher to many, including Mary Geniusz, and she was known by many more, including K. Kindscher, the second author of this review. This text provides ethnobotany from an Indigenous perspective and the book is appropriately subtitled as Anishinaabe Botanical Teachings. University of Minnesota Press
Latino Studies
Issues of indigeneity, along with mestizaje—racial and cultural mixtures of African, indigenous, ... more Issues of indigeneity, along with mestizaje—racial and cultural mixtures of African, indigenous, and Spanish ancestries and cultures that came as a result of the European colonization of the Americas—are core aspects of Chicana and Chicano and Latina and Latino identities, histories, and cultures. For Chicanas and Chicanos, understandings of indigeneity have shifted significantly since the early 1960s. During that time, tropes of cultural nationalism argued that all Mexican-origin people were descendants of the Aztecs, and that Aztlán—what many believed to be the conquered homelands of their Aztec ancestors encompassing the Four Corners region of the United States (Utah, New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona)—should be reclaimed. Today, a more nuanced understanding of Latinx/Chicanx indigeneity considers, for example, the complex politics of indigenous subjects migrating to settler colonial nation-states such as the United States, and the resulting negotiations of language and identity in t...
American Indian Quarterly , 2022
The Prairie Naturalist , 2016
Plants Have So Much to Give Us, All We Have to Do Is Ask offers a new look at Anishinaabe (Ojibwe... more Plants Have So Much to Give Us, All We Have to Do Is Ask offers a new look at Anishinaabe (Ojibwe) ethnobotany as told through traditional stories. Botanical teachings through stories are a way to pass down traditional knowledge from generation to generation. For example, Anishinaabe knowledge on plants was written and recorded in communities willing to share their knowledge with early scholars, such as Albert B. Reagan (1928), Huron H. Smith (1932), and Melvin R. Gilmore (1933). Each of these scholars spent time with an Anishinaabe community to learn about plants and primarily to provide written descriptions of plants as food and medicine. Ethnobotany by Mary Siisip Geniusz and her daughter, Wendy Makoons Geniusz, is different than those early efforts because they both rely heavily on stories, language, and culture in describing plants from an Anishinaabe (Ojibwe) perspective. The traditional knowledge in this book was obtained over a long period of time (actually generations beyond the author and her teacher, Keewaydinoquay) and was written to be shared with others so that they also could learn. The type of learning that this text portrays is a Master-Teacher apprenticeship, whereby knowledge of plant teachings was exchanged during the time that Mary Geniusz and the late Keewaydinoquay spent together. Keewaydinoquay was a well-known Anishinaabe medicine woman from the Leelanau Peninsula in Michigan; she was a teacher to many, including Mary Geniusz, and she was known by many more, including K. Kindscher, the second author of this review. This text provides ethnobotany from an Indigenous perspective and the book is appropriately subtitled as Anishinaabe Botanical Teachings. University of Minnesota Press
Oshá (Ligusticum porteri), found in high elevation sites in the southwestern United States and no... more Oshá (Ligusticum porteri), found in high elevation sites in the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico, is a medicinal plant whose roots are being sold by herbal product companies to treat influenza, bronchitis, and sore throat. Oshá and other medicinal plants have a long history of use within Indigenous communities, fifteen tribes are documented using oshá and those uses are practiced today and more tribes likely use oshá, especially in and near the range of the plant. Historically and today, tribes such as the Apache, Pueblo, Navajo, Zuni, White Mountain Apache, Southern Ute, Lakota, and the Tarahumara in Mexico used oshá to treat ailments such as to treat colds, flu, upper respiratory infection, and diarrhea and gastrointestinal problems. Another use of root is to repel snakes if one carries the root with them. Oshá is commonly referred to as bear root by Native American tribes because bears have been observed using and interacting with the root. Oshá is also considered sacred to some tribes and it is used outside its native range by hundreds of miles by the Comanche, Plains, Apache, and Lakota tribes. Interviews conducted with tribal elders, a Hispanic elder, U.S. Forest Service officials, and an herbal product company owner help to make suggestions for U.S. Forest Service policies, such as co-management strategies for medicinal plants like oshá. This paper also examines the potential areas of collaboration between Native tribes and current U.S. Forest Service policies to create future Native American focused policies and strengthen future relationships.
GeoForum, 2025
This Forum brings together river restoration researchers and practitioners to stimulate debate ab... more This Forum brings together river restoration researchers and practitioners to stimulate debate about the recent explosion of interest in North American beaver (Castor canadensis) and beaver-related practices in North American river restoration science and management. While the beaver is described in recent literature as a lowcost, high-impact ecosystem engineer capable of minimizing the impacts of wildfire, drought, flood, and disturbance across the continent, we consider the importance of shifting from a focus on prescriptive results-on what beaver get humans-and towards engaging with beaver in relational process. Through a set of provocations that highlight the potential damage beaver fixes pose for stream restoration, for beaver, and for the lands and waters they inhabit with humans and other beings, we invite settler river scientists, river restorationists, and river thinkers to question the increasingly taken-for-granted logic of beaver as isolated creature, ecosystem engineer, and river savior; defer to the millennia of theory about beaver and their relations on this continent, partnering with beaver and with the Native peoples who have known them longest; and reconnect beaver back to people, place, and time in support of lively, dynamic, diverse, flourishing river systems across the continent.
Anthropological Optimism: Engaging the Power of What Could Go Right, edited by Anna Willow. New York: Routledge., Feb 13, 2023
This chapter discusses optimism in the context of our ongoing projects and fieldwork on Indigenou... more This chapter discusses optimism in the context of our ongoing projects and fieldwork on Indigenous land education and resource access in the Cherokee Nation (Carroll), and on the maintenance of reciprocal relationships with nmé/lake sturgeon through ecosystem restoration with the Little River Band of Ottawa Indians (Myhal). We view optimism through a lens of Indigenous futurity that emerges out of already-lived apocalypses that have impacted our communities since the dawn of colonialism (Whyte 2017). Thus, the Colonialcene—rather than the Anthropocene—more accurately describes Indigenous experiences with human-induced change on a geological scale, considering the impacts colonial policies, practices, and mindsets have had on our communities and the land (Davis and Todd 2017). Despite these negative impacts, Indigenous communities have sustained their relationships to the land and in some cases have formed distinct relationships with new lands after forced removals. We thus consider climate action through tribally specific acts of regenerating and perpetuating land-based knowledge and practices, framed within our respective languages and belief systems. We discuss this work—and our role as community-based researchers within it—as reversing the destruction of Indigenous worlds and building futures of hope for all people that enact Indigenous relationality with a living land.
History of Pharmacy and Pharmaceuticals, 2022
In recent years, Western herbalists, often of settler descent, have contended with a lineage of ... more In recent years, Western herbalists, often of settler descent, have contended
with a lineage of appropriation and their ongoing relationships with Native plants,
communities, and land. Critical—and hard to find—are stories of botanical circulations
that foreground the dynamics of circulation, pluralism, and colonialism in which appropriation can be understood and its lessons applied. This article offers one such story. White pine was—and is—an important medicine within Indigenous Ojibwe medical
traditions. As such, it was studied and written about by ethnobotanists working in close
relation to Ojibwe communities in the early twentieth century. Such circulations took
place amid land allotment, industrialized logging, the devastation of pine forests, and the
marginalization of botanic practices. Situating stories of white pine in Indigenous, settler
colonial, and herbal studies, this article argues that long histories of Western herbalism
illuminate botanical appropriation as a settler logic with important consequences for
present-day herbal practices.
Oshá (Ligusticum porteri), found in high elevation sites in the southwestern United States and no... more Oshá (Ligusticum porteri), found in high elevation sites in the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico, is a medicinal plant whose roots are being sold by herbal product companies to treat influenza, bronchitis, and sore throat. Oshá and other medicinal plants have a long history of use within Indigenous communities, fifteen tribes are documented using oshá and those uses are practiced today and more tribes likely use oshá, especially in and near the range of the plant. Historically and today, tribes such as the Apache, Pueblo, Navajo, Zuni, White Mountain Apache, Southern Ute, Lakota, and the Tarahumara in Mexico used oshá to treat ailments such as to treat colds, flu, upper respiratory infection, and diarrhea and gastrointestinal problems. Another use of root is to repel snakes if one carries the root with them. Oshá is commonly referred to as bear root by Native American tribes because bears have been observed using and interacting with the root. Oshá is also consider...
Plants Have So Much to Give Us, All We Have to Do Is Ask offers a new look at Anishinaabe (Ojibwe... more Plants Have So Much to Give Us, All We Have to Do Is Ask offers a new look at Anishinaabe (Ojibwe) ethnobotany as told through traditional stories. Botanical teachings through stories are a way to pass down traditional knowledge from generation to generation. For example, Anishinaabe knowledge on plants was written and recorded in communities willing to share their knowledge with early scholars, such as Albert B. Reagan (1928), Huron H. Smith (1932), and Melvin R. Gilmore (1933). Each of these scholars spent time with an Anishinaabe community to learn about plants and primarily to provide written descriptions of plants as food and medicine. Ethnobotany by Mary Siisip Geniusz and her daughter, Wendy Makoons Geniusz, is different than those early efforts because they both rely heavily on stories, language, and culture in describing plants from an Anishinaabe (Ojibwe) perspective. The traditional knowledge in this book was obtained over a long period of time (actually generations beyond the author and her teacher, Keewaydinoquay) and was written to be shared with others so that they also could learn. The type of learning that this text portrays is a Master-Teacher apprenticeship, whereby knowledge of plant teachings was exchanged during the time that Mary Geniusz and the late Keewaydinoquay spent together. Keewaydinoquay was a well-known Anishinaabe medicine woman from the Leelanau Peninsula in Michigan; she was a teacher to many, including Mary Geniusz, and she was known by many more, including K. Kindscher, the second author of this review. This text provides ethnobotany from an Indigenous perspective and the book is appropriately subtitled as Anishinaabe Botanical Teachings. University of Minnesota Press
Latino Studies
Issues of indigeneity, along with mestizaje—racial and cultural mixtures of African, indigenous, ... more Issues of indigeneity, along with mestizaje—racial and cultural mixtures of African, indigenous, and Spanish ancestries and cultures that came as a result of the European colonization of the Americas—are core aspects of Chicana and Chicano and Latina and Latino identities, histories, and cultures. For Chicanas and Chicanos, understandings of indigeneity have shifted significantly since the early 1960s. During that time, tropes of cultural nationalism argued that all Mexican-origin people were descendants of the Aztecs, and that Aztlán—what many believed to be the conquered homelands of their Aztec ancestors encompassing the Four Corners region of the United States (Utah, New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona)—should be reclaimed. Today, a more nuanced understanding of Latinx/Chicanx indigeneity considers, for example, the complex politics of indigenous subjects migrating to settler colonial nation-states such as the United States, and the resulting negotiations of language and identity in t...