Perhaps the greatest blunder of the immigrants of the Old World was not learning and recording the relationships that native Americans had with the natural world. There are various reasons to this, but the few that stand out are the association of botanical knowledge with witchcraft, the lack of appreciation of native cultures, and the strong cultural connections to the Old World. In the post-apocalypse of pre-Columbian societies, the inhabitants of the Americas’ have become increasingly detached from the natural world and are oblivious to the consequences of their behaviors. This ignorance that has spread from place to place may have a more ancient source that predates the conquest of the Americas by European nations. Yet no nation has been so influential in forcing its perspective as the United States of America, the largest and most advanced of all the American nations.
From the northernmost land claimed by the United States of America, Canada, and Greenland to the southernmost land claimed by Chile and Argentina, the Americas are inhabited and led by a people who lost their connection to the land and its living beings. Cities are consuming the landscape, the air being polluted by the dust and exhaust created by automobiles, the ancient forests are being rapidly destroyed, the animals which inhabited another world are dying, the once massive grasslands filled with roaming animals is now transformed to a hodgepodge of farms being salted and sprayed with chemicals, and the rivers now carry evidence of our crimes to the ocean.
So pervasive is the ignorance that we walk unaware of the plants in our cities. Countless of plants are disregarded as “greenery” or “background”. Even amongst the botanically oriented, the knowledge of great healing herbs, aromatic plants, flowers, fruits, trees, and more are often skewed so that the majority of them are of European or Asian origin. The plants of the Americas are often seen as being obscure. They are very misunderstood by our American societies.
The American Quest is to ignite a light inside the minds of the inhabitants of the Americas and illuminate their perspectives so to make them aware of the remarkable world around them. How can we reconnect to the land? How can we build the bridges that were destroyed nearly half of a millennia ago? How can we do so in a way that is authentic to our society’s culture? How can we do so before its too late?
Our hope at Plant Research Organization is to foster an understanding of nature that is unimaginable to the current inhabitant of the Americas. This thinking will spread like a fire in the minds of the people and will race across every continent in the world. The day will come when we will acknowledge the harsh truths of our situation with a remorse so powerful that it will shift us swiftly like a boat heading towards the rocky shores of the lighthouse. Our mission will be to lift us from this justified sorrow and to look forward to a future of greater understanding, and harmony with all living beings. This is the American Quest.
PRO - Plant Research Organization 