Poster Winner Simone Whitecloud
Congratulations to Simone Whitecloud, PhD candidate in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, who was one of four winners of the Graduate Poster Session held recently at the Top of the Hop! Enjoy your winnings, Simone! (Read on for a summary of Whitecloud’s poster.)
“Arctic Migrations, Plants, and People”
Although there are many peoples in the Arctic, the plants and animals of the region are the same across these cultures and languages. We are documenting how plant knowledge changes across the region.
My collaborator, a linguist, investigates how names differ across languages and I study how medicinal and culinary uses of plants change across the region. We use a combination of archived resources and interviews to gather information.
Our findings indicate that there may be contradictory uses of plants across the region. For example, West Greenlanders make a strong drink of Labrador tea (Ledum palustre) while speakers of Inuktitut in Canada feel a tea of this plant alone is too strong and other herbs must be included. However, both cultures agree that this plant is useful to fight off infection. We will visit southern Greenland this summer to continue this ongoing work.
poster summary by Simone Whitecloud
photo by Erin O’Flaherty