On the visit to MOBOT, we got to take a little more information about African American knowledge but it still felt a little lackluster. The only African American specimens we got to look at were George Washington Carver’s. This truly shows that there is still potential and opportunity for improvement for more information in the garden. While talking to the staff they seemed to also have a lack of knowledge of some of the African specimens and lack thereof, which was very disappointing especially when this is part of what they are trained to do research on. It was nice to hear about some of the plants having medicinal properties and other great uses. It truly shows that learning about the plants from other cultures can help us in modern medicine and other great uses. The worker also shared how rare some of these specimens were which shows how important they are. Imagine if we had more African and African American knowledge about these plants. In a lot of the African cultures, we were told that these plants had a lot of spiritual meaning as well. A major thing to note is that a lot of the specimens didn’t have their common name or usages which definitely shows the lack of knowledge the staff has on these specimens.
Native Americans have the most powerfully resonant quiet. Ashley gave our group an explanation of how these Native Americans would have concealed villages inside the Florida swap. To keep people out of their town, they would place these prickly bushes outside. As a result, nobody who tried to find these secret settlements ran the risk of getting wounded because only the locals knew how to get around these plans. We learned from Native Americans that they constantly adapt to their environment and devise new means of doing so. One method we might educate people about how amazing Native Americans are would be to write a book or create a website detailing how they used inventive strategies to combat white people.