The Plant Initiative
Building a movement to increase respect for plants
Revered Roots: Ancestral Teachings and Plant Wisdom
A conversation with LoriAnn Bird
Revered Roots: Ancestral Teachings and Plant Wisdom, a conversation with LoriAnn Bird
Tuesday, December 2, 2025
12:00 - 1:00 pm Central US Time
Join us for this free online program from The Plant Initiative!
Learn more about Indigenous ingenuity and the lessons, nourishment, healing, and history of our plant teachers in this conversation with Indigenous Métis herbalist and author LoriAnn Bird about her new book Revered Roots: Ancestral Teachings and Wisdom of Wild, Edible, and Medicinal Plants. The conversation will be moderated by Keith Williams, a Plant Initiative board member.
Whether the plants have existed from time immemorial in North America or arrived in recent generations, these members of the Rooted Nation are intrinsic to our health and well-being, as individuals and as a community. From plantain, juniper, and ginseng to sweetgrass, strawberries and calendula, appreciating and respecting these plant gifts enriches us with an honorable harvest and the sharing of knowledge.
Revered Roots: Ancestral Teachings and Wisdom of Wild, Edible, and Medicinal Plants, is an insightful reference that narrates the reciprocal relationship with all that exists. This book is an invitation to explore gather, and reclaim this knowledge. The journey begins with remembering our collaboration and responsibility to Mother Earth. It continues with a pilgrimage into Indigenous folklore, practices and identification of medicinal trees, shrubs, herbs, wildflowers, and edible "weeds."
Join us for this free interactive program!
There will be time for questions from the audience following the discussion. This free program will be livestreamed with a link to be sent to participants before the event and will also be recorded and available for viewing online afterwards.
About LoriAnn Bird
LoriAnn Bird is an Indigenous Métis herbalist, educator, and author with a deep knowledge of wild, medicinal and edible plants that grow in everyday spaces. Through LoriAnn's eyes, our immediate surroundings take on a new life and offer a wealth of untapped nutritional and ecological resources.
LoriAnn’s vision is to continually co-create insightful dialogues, to remediate and reconcile with our Indigenous plants as we reintroduce them into our urban landscapes. By sharing and growing these practices, communities can access our true local foods and medicines, which support collective resilience and deep ecological healing for all species.
As a refugee of the Red River Métis Nation, born and raised on the Coast Salish lands of British Columbia, LoriAnn is deeply grateful to live, play and create primarily on the unceded & traditional territories of the Coast Salish Peoples – xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) peoples.
You can access LoriAnn's web site at https://loriannbird.ca/
October 2025 Monthly e-mail newsletter
Each month, The Plant Initiative sends out an e-mail newsletter to provide timely information and resources about improving the plant-human connection as well as to keep you up to date on our work.
Here's the link to the October 2025 e-newsletter which was sent on October 15, 2025.
To subscribe to the e-newsletter, just visit our home page and enter your e-mail address on the form on that page. If you have a suggestion for a resource, event, or other item that may be of interest to subscribers, please consider sharing it with us at info@plantinitiative.org.
Thank you for your interest!
The Plant Initiative Podcast - New Episode
The Plant Initiative is posting podcast episodes on our YouTube channel.
Our sixth episode, recorded on August 19, 2025, features a rich conversation between plant advocate and author Kollibri terre Sonnenblume and Plant Initiative board member Sue Fager. Topics include plant advocacy, plant sentience and communication, plant blindness, and invasive plants!
the Plant Initiative's 2024 annual report
Check out The Plant Initiative's 2024 annual report to learn more about our work in the past year!
2024 was another year of growth for The Plant Initiative! As described in this report, we hosted 7 free online events, 2 podcasts, awarded 13 grants totaling $6,500, sent out our monthly e-newsletter to over 3.400 subscribers, and further built our presence on social media.
A big thanks to Plant Initiative board member Mya Hummel for donating the design for the report and to Betsey Crawford of The Soul of the Earth and photo-based artist Sara Angelucci for allowing us to include their beautiful photos of plants. Also, thanks to Vegan Printer for their generous discount once again on the printed version of the report.
As an all-volunteer organization with no paid staff, we have done a lot with a modest budget. Thank you for all of the support and interest you have shown over the past year!
Learn more about our work by reading or downloading the report here or by clicking on the report cover or the button below.
13 grants awarded by the Plant Initiative in 2024!
We are pleased to let you know that 13 grants were recently awarded by The Plant Initiative!
These grants totaling $6,500 were provided in October 2024 to organizations working to increase respect for plants, encourage ethical behavior toward plants, and/or to support development of an effective movement toward these goals.
Grants of $500 each were provided to:
Center for Biological Diversity (Tucson, AZ) to support the Center's legal and other efforts to protect the Alaskan glacier buttercup, found only in the Kigluaik Mountains on the Seward Peninsula in Western Alaska, which is imperiled by climate change and rapidly warming Arctic climate as well as by potential mining activities and other threats.
Center for Democratic and Environmental Rights (Spokane, WA) to support the Center’s staff time and travel to advance and enforce the rights of manoomin (wild rice), which has been recognized in tribal law by the White Earth Band of Chippewa in Minnesota.
The Cultural Conservancy (San Francisco, CA) to support the Conservancy's Native Foodways Program, in partnership with Intertribal community, including purchasing California ethnobotanical seeds and plant starts for ecological restoration in their land base, as well as to purchase additional heirloom seeds, fruit tree starts, and seeds for winter crop planting.
Dogwood Alliance (Asheville, NC) to support the Alliance's forest advocacy activities, which seek to protect the forests of the US South and to work in partnership with frontline communities to develop economic alternatives that work with and for the Southern forests.
Earth Law Center (Durango, CO) to support the Center in developing a policy report and blog on the concept of plants as kin and family members, as well as other innovative and ecocentric protections, and exploring legal and cultural frameworks worldwide, with the grant supporting staff time and design costs for this work.
Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature (San Francisco, CA) to support GARN's work to advance the "Declaration of the Rights of the Amazon", including developing and distributing educational materials to be shared with GARN's members and allies that highlight the importance of recognizing the Amazon as a subject of rights.
Institute of Relational Being (Los Angeles, CA) to support initiatives that are focused on enhancing appreciation for plant life through community engagement events and materials for educational workshops in the Los Angeles, CA area, to help cultivate a deeper respect for plants within that community.
The Land Institute (Salina, KS) to support the Institute's sustainable agriculture work, including expanding and accelerating perennial grain research, building network,s and helping to develop perennial grain supply chains and markets.
Native Seeds/SEARCH (Tucson, AZ) to support their mission of conserving and sharing the seeds of the people of the desert Southwest and Mexico by establishing a new dedicated rainwater harvesting basin for dry-farm crop seed production on their Conservation Farm that will also serve as a crucial habitat for beneficial insects and pollinators.
Old-Growth Forest Network (Easton, MD) to help support the purchase of an ArcGIS Online subscription to help the organization to increase its mapping capabilities in order to fill a gap in the nationwide accounting of remaining old-growth forests and lands that are set aside for protection as well as to help create educational materials for visitors to their website.
Re:wild (Austin, TX) to advance the recovery of Ekman's Magnolia, a Critically Endangered tree endemic to the biodiversity-rich Tiburon Peninsula of Southwest Haiti, through working to conserve its habitat and propagating these rare trees in field nurseries for reforestation, in collaboration with the Haiti National Trust.
Seacology (Berkeley, CA) in support of Seacology's seagrass project in Las Calderas, Dominican Republic, where seagrass faces threats such as sedimentation, runoff, and coastal development, with the project supporting community patrols, educational workshops, signage, stakeholder engagement, and strengthening ecotourism in collaboration with local partners.
WildEarth Guardians (Santa Fe, NM) to support implementation of a communications and outreach plan to highlight the need to protect the Joshua Tree which is facing threats from climate change, including a digital communications campaign which will help to build extensive support in Southern California around this issue.
With your support, The Plant Initiative plans to continue to provide grants in 2025 to organizations working on behalf of plants!
New online plant networking site!
Join the new Plant Networking site on Hylo!
This new free Hylo networking tool is a special interactive web site set up for those interested in the human-plant connection supported by The Plant Initiative and Networking with Plants in the Anthropocene. It's a space for sharing active research, collaborations, art, and any forms of humans and plant relations. Use this page to collaborate, share, and to connect with others interested in thoughtful ways of relating to plants.
Visitors to The Plant Initiative's web site are especially invited to join this online community!
