A powerful case for the essential role of plants and environments in recognizing Indigenous Peoples’ land rights around the world.

For millennia, plants and their habitats have been fundamental to the lives of Indigenous Peoples – as sources of food and nutrition, medicines, and technological materials – and central to ceremonial traditions, spiritual beliefs, narratives, and language. While the First Peoples of Canada and other parts of the world have developed deep cultural understandings of plants and their environments, this knowledge is often underrecognized in debates about land rights and title, reconciliation, treaty negotiations, and traditional territories.