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/
16 grants awarded by the Plant Initiative in 2025!
We are pleased to let you know that 16 grants were recently awarded by The Plant Initiative!
These grants totaling $8,000 were provided in October 2025 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:
Aldo Leopold Foundation (Baraboo, WI) to purchase and plant an Eastern Redbud tree to be planted in a special ceremony in April 2026 as part of the Leopold Memorial Garden in Baraboo, Wisconsin, marking the spot where noted conservationist Aldo Leopold died fighting an escaped grass fire in 1948.
Center for Democratic and Environmental Rights (Spokane, WA) to support CDER's work in advancing the rights of small farmers to seeds and to recognize the right of the seeds themselves to be protected (and not corporatized, genetically engineered, or driven to extinction by being deemed illegal), with the grant focused on supporting CDER staff time and travel.
Center for Plant Conservation (Escondido, CA) to support the Center's work as part of Florida Plant Rescue which is seeking to preserve approximately 240 globally rare plants of Florida in genetically representative collections, with the grant used towards purchase of materials for ongoing curation research for rare and exceptional species that require special storage methods such as liquid nitrogen or tissue culture.
Dogwood Alliance (Asheville, NC) to expand the Alliance's grassroots advocacy efforts to protect the forests of the US South by strengthening volunteer and community outreach, including purchasing needed tabling supplies to help to more effectively engage the public at community fairs, educational events, and outreach opportunities.
Earth Law Center (Durango, CO) to support the Center's work on the rights of plants and plant personhood, with the grant specifically helping to cover travel expenses for Center staff to engage with communities in the Peruvian Amazon to advance the interconnected rights of stingless bees and pollinated plants as an ecological unit.
Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature (San Francisco, CA) to support plant-centered storytelling and education in GARN's participation at the COP30 UN Climate Change Conference in Belém, Brazil in November 2025, including designing and printing educational materials, supporting translation and dissemination costs, and contributing toward GARN's Indigenous Council programming.
Kerulos Center for Nonviolence (Jacksonville, OR) to create a free 10 - 12 minute overview video and marketing/outreach which describes the Center's online course Waking to the Tree: Science and Practices to Deepen Understanding and Connection with Plants which aims to introduce learners to plant sentience and consciousness through science and mindfulness meditation and to help participants to develop a personal ethos and connection with plants.
LYRA (Liberty, SC) to print and mail 30 gift copies of the book Entosophy: The Wisdom of Trees to selected individuals, schools, and organizations, and to purchase sound equipment such as an amplifier and microphone to facilitate clear communication at workshops, festivals, classes and other venues where the stories, songs, and medicine of Tulip Poplar and its fellow Green Beings are shared.
Mandaamin Institute (Elkhorn, WI) to support the Institute's work to re-find a more collaborative and productive kinship with maize based on working together in partnership, with the grant helping to cover costs associated with the Institute's field day held in September 2025 near Elkhorn, Wisconsin showing farmers and others how the Institute works with, lives with, and thinks about corn.
Native Seeds/SEARCH (Tucson, AZ) to seed Native Seeds/SEARCH's Conservation Farm's rainwater harvesting basins with a mix of native grasses and wildflowers which will help to transform the basins into vibrant, self-sustaining ecosystems to support NS/S's dry-farmed seed crops and the broader desert environment.
Old-Growth Forest Network (Easton, MD) to help offset the cost of the Network's ArcGIS Online subscription which allows for layering internal forest data with public forest maturity data to create maps that guide fieldwork and highlight where old growth is most likely to be found, as well as to help with the development of the Network's first interactive StoryMap being launched in late 2025.
Organization of Nature Evolutionaries (Danby, VT) to support the production and outreach of ONE's free annual webinar, "Can Plants Save the Planet?", a live public program held each December which brings together visionary herbalists, plant lovers, and Earth advocates to explore the question: what role do plants pay in healing our planet - and ourselves?
Seacology (Berkeley, CA) in support of a project to help protect seagrass in Croatia from increasing threats of destruction, with project activities including increasing public awareness through workshops, teaching children, informative signage, mapping seagrass meadows, developing educational materials, and other public outreach.
TreeSpirit Project (Petaluma, CA) to produce a music video about the problem of destruction of wild forests being conducted under the guise of forest management and wildfire reduction by public agencies and others.
United Plant Savers (Rutland, OH) to support UPS's work to protect native medicinal plants, fungi, and their habitats while ensuring renewable populations for future generations, with the grant used to purchase a 12' x 60' shade cloth to expand United Plant Savers' nursey and propagation capacity for shade loving woodland medicinal species and to help complete a new agroforestry site currently in development.
WildEarth Guardians (Santa Fe, NM) to support efforts to encourage public participation in decision-making regarding protecting the increasingly threatened Joshua Tree in California's Mojave Desert, with the grant supporting educational materials, outreach, and communications.
With your support, The Plant Initiative plans to continue to provide grants in 2026 to organizations working on behalf of plants!
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.
The plant initiative is a friend of the journal
The Plant initiative is pleased to be included as a Friend of the Journal by The Ecological Citizen, a peer-reviewed free-access online journal that is working for an ecological civilization. Issues are published twice a year and are full of articles promoting respectful relationship with all of Earth's diverse beings.