FormalPara دور النباتات البریه‌ فی احیاء الممارسات الثقافية، تعاون المجتمع وعلم النباتات الشعبي في سهل نينوى- شمال العراق.

ملخص:

منطقة سهل نينوى في شمال العراق يعد موقعا لتنوع بيئي وثقافي هام. بين عامي ٢٠١٤- ٢٠١٧  أحدث (تنظيم الدولة الإسلامية في العراق وسوريا (داعش اضطرابًا شديدًا في المنطقة، مما أدى إلى نزوح لمجتمعاتها المحلية، وخاصة لأفراد الأقليات العرقية. تسلط هذه المقالة الضوء على تعاون مستمر متعدد الجنسيات ومتعدد التخصصات بين علماء للنبات، وعلماء للبيئة، وخبراء في الصحة العقلية والصحة العامة، وعلماء في الاجتماع، وعلماء في الانسانيات (الأنثروبولوجيين)، لتعزيز استعادة الثقافة التقليدية والبيئة بين مجاميع الأقليات المسيحية واليزيدية والشبكية والتركمانية والكاكائية في سهل نينوى. شخّص أعضاء هذه الفئات أهمية جمع النباتات البرية كممارسة ثقافية واقتصادية مهمة، وأعربوا عن قلق مشترك بسبب انخفاض إمكانية الوصول إلى موارد النباتات البرية. يتعاون الباحثون مع المجتمعات المحلية باستخدام منهجيات مشاركة مشتركة ومنهجيات مستنيرة بعيدة عن التأثيرات الاستعمارية، لجمع المجتمعات حول هذا الاهتمام المشترك بالنباتات البرية. تشمل أساليب المشروع إنشاء حدائق نباتية تضم نباتية برية مختلفة تستخدم من قبل المجتمعات المحلية ، وإنتاج فيديوهات تسلط الضوء على المعرفة المحلية للنباتات، واستضافة ورش عمل وفعاليات مجتمعية حول أهمية النباتات البرية كتراث اجتماعي وثقافي، وزيادة الوعي بالاستخدام المستدام للنباتات البرية. من خلال الاهتمام بإنتاج المعرفة التعاونية، فإن هذه الشراكة لديها القدرة على جمع أصحاب المصلحة المتنوعين معًا حول الاهتمام بالنباتات البرية، مما يساعد على تعزيز التفاهم والتبادل الثقافي.الكلمات المفتاحية:استعادة الارث الثقافي، الصيانة المعتمدة على المجتمع، النباتات البرية، علم النبات الشعبي، العراق.

الكلمات المفتاحية:استعادة الارث الثقافي، الصيانة المعتمدة على المجتمع، النباتات البرية، علم النبات الشعبي،سهل

نينوى، العراق.

FormalPara رولێ گياين سروشتى د دووباره زڤراندنا كه لتورێ دا،  هه فكاريا جڤاكى و زانستێ گژوکيايێن ملى لدةشتا نينوى، باكورێ عيراقێ.

پوخته:

ده ڤه را ده شتا نينوێ ل باكورێ عيراقێ دهێته هژمارتن ژ ناوچه يێن گرنگ دهه مه جوريا ژينگه هى وره وشه نبيرى دا. دناڤبه را سالێن ٢٠١٤- ٢٠١٧ (رێكخراوا ده وله تا ئيسلامى ل عيراقێ و سوريا) داعش گه له ك زوردارى ل ده شتا نينوى كرن، و بو ئه گه رێ هندێ خه لكێ خو جهێ ده ڤه رێ كوچ بكه تن، و ب تايبه تى تاكێن گروپێن كه مينه نه ته وه ى و ئولى. ئه ف ڤه كولينه دى رونكرنێ لسه ر هه فكاريا به رده وام دناڤبه را فره بسپوريا ژلايێ زانايێن گژو گيايان، ژينگه ه‍ ناساڤه، شارازايێ ساخله ميا ده روونى و گشتى، جڤاكى ناساڤه، وزانايێن زانستێن مروڤايه تى، ژ بو بهيزكرنا دوباره زڤراندنا ره وشه نبيريا كه لتورێ و ژينگه هى دناڤبه را كه مينه يێن كريستيان، ئيزيدى، شه به ك، توركمان، و كاكه يى ل ده شتا نينوى. كه سێن كو ئه ندام دناڤا ڤان گروپادا دياركر كو كومكرنا گژوگيايێن سروشتى گه له ك يا گرنگه ژ لايێ كه لتورى و ئابورى ڤه، و هه ميان نيگه رانيا خو دياركر ل سه ر كێمبونا گه هشتنا گروپێن كه مينه يێن ده ڤه رى بو ژێده رێن گژوگيايێن سروشتى. ڤه كوله ر ب هه فكارى دگه ل جڤاكێ ده ڤه رێ را دبن ب ئه نجامدانا رێكێن ديكولونياليزمى ژبو پيكڤه گريدانا ڤان جڤاكێن ده ڤه رێ د رێيا گرنگيدان ب گژو گيايێن سروشتى. رێكێن پروژه ى پێك دێن ژ ئاڤاكرنا باخچێن رووه كى يێن رووكێن سروشتى يێن جورا وجور كو تێنه ب كار ئينان ژلايى خه لكێ ده ڤه رێ ڤه، به رهه م ئينانا چه ند ڤيديويان كو رونكرنێ به رده نه لسه ر پێزانينێن خه لكێ ده ڤه رێ لسه ر ڤان گژو گيايان، ئه نجامدانا چه ند ورك شوپان و چالاكيێن جڤاكى ل دور گرنگيا گژوگيايان وه ك كه لتوره ك جڤاكى و روشه نبيرى، و هه روه سا زێدكرنا هشيارى لدور بكارئينانا به رده واما گژوگيايێن سروشتى. د رێيا گرنگيدان ب ه‍ه فكاريا به رهمئينانا بيزانينان، ئه ف هه فكارييه دشێتن هه مى كه سێن خودان به رژه وه نديێن جودا جودا كو حه ز ل سه ر كومكرنا گژو گيايێن سروشتى هه ى كومبكه تن، وئه ڤه دێ بيته ئه گه ر بو بهێزكرنا لێك تێكه هشتنێ وئالوگوريكرنا كه لتورى.

په يڤێن ده ستپيكى: دووباره زڤراندنا كه لتورى، پاراستنا جڤاكى، گژوگيايێن سروشتى، زانستێ گژوگيايێن ملى، ده شتا نينوى، عيراق.

Introduction

The field of ethnobotany, along with the allied disciplines of environmental anthropology and cultural ecology, has long noted the varied and vital relationships that people develop with plants. More recently, scholars and practitioners within these fields have critically examined the methodologies used to gather ethnobotanical and ethnographic data (Joseph et al. 2022; McAlvay et al. 2021). Such discussions address, for example, the dynamics between researchers and their “informants” — often individuals with deep environmental knowledge who may not be commensurately acknowledged for their contributions to scholarly products (Bruchac 2018; Smith 2013). Relatedly, Indigenous scholars note how the knowledge frameworks of Northern scientific traditions tend to overlook or appropriate alternative frameworks for knowing and valuing the natural world, including plants (Fujikane 2021). At the same time, historians of science point to ways that botanical knowledge and herbarium spaces were often tightly linked to the harmful projects of economic exploitation (Osseo-Asare 2014) and the expansion of colonial power (Middleton 1999). These legacies continue to be reflected in the narrow ways plant knowledge tends to be collected, codified, and circulated (Koch 2023; Neimark and Wilson 2015).

Even while raising such critiques, many scholars from the humanities, social sciences, and botanical sciences remain optimistic that exploring the relationships between people and plants offers generative contributions to both academic theory and environmental practice (Fujikane 2021). Indeed, some have noted that plants seem to be experiencing a renaissance of sorts across academia, with the rise of subdisciplines such as Critical Plant Studies (Ryan 2012) and the Plant Humanities (Myers 2015). These interdisciplinary communities, often informed by work in ethnobotany, bring together community members, traditional knowledge holders, artists, authors, poets, landscape designers, philosophers, anthropologists, geographers, activists, and other engaged individuals to center plants in their work. Some of these collaborations reimagine herbaria, gardens, and other plant-centered spaces to be more participatory and transparent. Collectively, such work illustrates how attention to people-plant relationships is key to cultivating meaningful, connective, and thriving human and non-human landscapes (Lange 2022; Osterhoudt 2017).

Below, we highlight an interdisciplinary, international collaboration of botanists, anthropologists, public health researchers, mental health specialists, and ecologists aimed at better understanding the cultural uses of wild plants in the Nineveh Plain region of Northern Iraq, with a focus on the districts of Hamdaniya and Tal Kayf and the sub-district of Bashiqa (Fig. 1). This research was part of a broader effort funded by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) to help foster cultural and environmental restoration in Northern Iraq for ethno-religious minority groups targeted by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), also known as Daesh. This initiative brought together individuals from the University of Duhok, Purdue University, Indiana University, Notre Dame University, and the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

This project was divided into two phases. The objective of the first phase was to better understand the connections between agricultural activities and cultural practices in the Nineveh Plain region, including how agrarian landscapes foster economic security, cultural identity, and a sense of community. Agrarian activities were construed broadly and included the collection and use of wild plant resources. This first phase also documented the challenges that communities faced regarding their agricultural and cultural practices in the wake of the disruptions caused by Daesh. For Phase One, the project team based at the University of Duhok surveyed 892 farmers and villagers from the five ethnoreligious minority groups included in the project: Christians, Yezidis, Shabaks, Turkmen, and Kaka’I (O’Driscoll et al. 2021). They also conducted key informant interviews with 97 community leaders, 107 farmers and villagers, and 15 internally displaced persons.

As outlined in the Phase One report (O’Driscoll et al. 2021), the results of this research showed some key areas of consensus between the five groups. For example, 86% of respondents indicated that the ability to continue their cultural practices was very important to feeling a sense of community and belonging in Iraq. People from all groups noted that agricultural activities, such as raising livestock, collecting wild plants, cultivating home gardens, tending olive groves, and producing market crops, helped support important cultural, religious, economic, and ceremonial practices. Many of these activities, however, were increasingly difficult to pursue in the wake of the destruction of agrarian landscapes perpetuated by Daesh (O’Driscoll et al. 2021). The second phase of the project used the information gathered from Phase One to identify priority areas to help restore and strengthen the connections between agriculture, culture, and community. These areas included enhancing advocacy networks, diversifying agricultural markets, strengthening agricultural extension activities, and understanding wild plant collection, knowledge, and conservation. The authors of this paper were part of the wild plant activities of Phase Two, which are still ongoing.

The following discussion presents the activities of the wild plant research team, highlighting the methodologies, outreach activities, and lessons learned throughout the process of engaged ethnobotanical research and community collaboration. During the Phase One stage of the project, wild plants emerged as a shared subject of interest between Christians, Yezidis, Shabaks, Turkmen, and Kaka’i (O’Driscoll et al. 2021). For example, 77% of respondents indicated that they used wild plants, most often for cooking and for medicinal purposes. People also identified the collection and sale of wild plants as a source of supplemental household income. Wild plant collection and use was also an activity that both men and women participated in.

Given this point of connection, the second phase of the project explored possible ways that a shared interest in wild plants among diverse community members in the region could foster processes of social, cultural, and ecological restoration. In bringing together ecological and cultural restoration, we draw from frameworks that note the importance of incorporating the “cultural use of natural resources in ecological restoration” (Wehi and Lord 2017, 1109). In designing our ethnobotanical research and outreach activities, we integrated participatory, decolonial methodologies such as art, story-telling, cooking, and walking interviews, to be inclusive of multiple viewpoints on the roles of plants on individuals’ experiences and worldviews (Lassiter 2008; Richard and Ratsirarson 2013). We also prioritized sharing information in ways that reached across multiple audiences. These activities included producing videos highlighting local plant knowledge, hosting workshops on using plants in textile design and art, offering trainings on herbal medicine, collecting recipes for a wild plant cookbook, supporting community-based gardens, and increasing awareness of the sustainable use of wild plants.

The following discussion has two main objectives in reflecting on our ethnobotanical research experience: (1) to consider how a shared interest in wild plants became the foundation for developing a range of community partnerships and collaborations; and, (2) to note how the subject of wild plants fostered interdisciplinary connections between different members of the research team, influencing how we plan to approach our research and teaching in the future. Together, these analyses focus on the processes of ethnobotanical research. Towards these objectives, we draw from conversations and observations from our field research, including participating in a team workshop at the University of Duhok where we shared our experiences of being part of the project.

Below, we first provide a brief overview of the cultural, ecological, and political landscapes of the Nineveh Plains and outline our interdisciplinary approach to ethnobotanical research and community participation. We then note how the research collaboration fostered connections between the research team and community members, between individuals within and between different communities participating in the project, and between the members of the research team themselves (many of whom were new to both interdisciplinary and community-based research). In our discussion, we draw from the project’s accomplishments, challenges, and lessons learned to present actionable approaches to conducting engaged and collaborative ethnobotanical research. While we encountered various challenges in implementing the project, a shared interest in wild plants across participants proved a positive entry point for broader conversations on memory, loss, healing, and reconciliation (Lange 2022). To conclude, we consider if and how this project may offer a model for future work in engaged, participatory ethnobotanical research within post-conflict landscapes. As seen in this case study, talking about plants — whether by sharing wild plant recipes, making art from wild plants, or showcasing cultural ceremonies that incorporate wild plants — represented a way to bring different people together after a difficult period of mistrust and violence, to help foster a renewed sense of shared community and belonging.

Materials and Methods

The Nineveh Plains of Northern Iraq

The Nineveh Plains is a semi-arid region located in Northern Iraq, to the northeast of the city of Mosul (Fig. 1). This region, and the adjoining Kurdistan region, is a site of significant ecological diversity of flora, including rare and endemic species of flowering plants and trees (Fig. 2; Ghazanfar and McDaniel 2016; Lahony et al. 2013). There is also much bird, reptile, and amphibian diversity recorded in the region (Lahony et al. 2013). To date, there have been over 3300 species of plants recorded within the flora of Iraq, representing 136 families of flowering plants (Ghazanfar and McDaniel 2016). Encompassing a range of climatic zones and altitudes, it is likely the biodiversity of Iraq, and specifically of the Nineveh Plains, is greater than has been reported within the scientific literature, as the area remains understudied. There is also a lack of updated conservation data on the endemic plant species to the area, although residents we spoke with report an increasingly difficult time finding many wild plant species as compared to 10 years previously.

Fig. 1
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Map of the Nineveh Plains Study Area, Northern Iraq

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Fig. 2
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Wildflowers in bloom in the Nineveh Plains. Source: University of Duhok

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The Nineveh Plains is an important center for agricultural production in Iraq, especially for wheat, as well as for melons, grapes, beans, olives, and sunflowers (O’Driscoll et al. 2021). In addition to its ecological and agricultural importance, the Nineveh Plain region is home to a diversity of ethno-religious communities, including Christians, Yezidis, Shabaks, Turkmen, and Kaka’i communities. Although these groups have historically co-existed within Northern Iraq (Pieroni et al. 2018), uncertain land ownership rights, unclear administrative authority between the Government of Iraq and the Kurdistan Regional Government, and periods of political upheaval have led to increased tensions among minority communities (O’Driscoll et al. 2020).

Between 2014 and 2017, the Nineveh Plains experienced heightened conflict and violence with the rise of the Daesh, which targeted religious minority groups including Christians, Yezidis, Shabaks, Turkmen, and Kaka’i. These activities, as well as the subsequent military campaigns against Daesh, resulted in thousands of Iraqi deaths and millions of individuals displaced from their homes. In Northern Iraq, members of minority communities particularly suffered, as many individuals were executed, enslaved, or forcibly converted to a radical form of Sunni Islam (O’Driscoll et al. 2021). To escape such violence, hundreds of thousands of individuals belonging to ethnic and religious minority groups were forced to leave their homes to relocate to Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps — many people remain in these camps to this day (Romenzi and Tasso 2022). Many other families left Iraq to seek asylum; it is estimated that during this time, for example, the Iraqi Christian population fell dramatically due to emigration (Gardner 2019; Omer 2021). Such political upheaval occurred even as the region was recovering from earlier devastating conflicts, including the US-led military operations in Iraq during the early 2000s (Copson and Affairs 2003).

The recent political violence targeted not only people, but the local environment. Referred to as “agricide” by some international development groups (Amnesty International 2018), such actions included burning fruit orchards, destroying olive groves, poisoning water sources, killing livestock, and sabotaging farming equipment (O’Driscoll et al. 2021). Daesh operations also deliberately destroyed many historical, cultural, and religious sites in the Plains (Buffenstein 2017; Curry 2015). Collectively, such activities not only severely disrupted material wealth and economic livelihoods for households in the Nineveh Plains, but also shared feelings of community, trust, and belonging among residents.

While an in-depth analysis of the extremely complex social, religious, and political histories of this region is well beyond the scope of this paper, we present this overview primarily to underscore that presently, many people in the Nineveh Plains are facing the intersecting challenges of economic hardship, environmental destruction, political instability, and cultural dislocation. It is this nexus of economic, cultural, and ecological factors that this project aims to address, by taking an integrated research-based approach to questions of recovery, identity, and resilience in post-conflict landscapes.

Research Methodologies and Activities

For the Phase Two activities on wild plants, which are still ongoing, we formed a team of faculty and graduate students from the University of Duhok and Indiana University, across the disciplines of botany, wildlife biology, anthropology, sociology, psychology, and public health. Before beginning research, the University of Duhok team established key contacts in the site villages, making initial courtesy visits to community representatives to explain the project and to answer any questions. We also reached out to communities directly, hosting meetings where we invited people to ask us questions about the project. During the early months of the project, team members developed relationships with the individuals who worked at the many security checkpoints lining the region, which included describing to security personnel the University’s mission and research activities. All fieldwork activities were reviewed and approved by the Humans Subjects Review Board at Notre Dame University and included statements of informed consent and safeguards to ensure the anonymity of data.

To investigate the cultural roles of wild plants in communities in the Nineveh Plains, we adopted a mixed-methodological approach of surveys, interviews, and participant observation. We focused on five main ethnoreligious minority groups in the region: Christians, Yezidis, Shabaks, Turkmen, and Kaka’is. The household survey focused on people’s knowledge about and use of wild plants, including any changes in wild plant uses or access over time. Between September 2022 and January 2023, we conducted 422 surveys across 40 villages, using convenience sampling. Surveys were conducted in-person, using tablets programmed with the KoboToolbox Mobile Application, with Arabic, Syriac, and Kurdish language options. Our survey sample mirrored the overall ethnoreligious, gender, and age-class demographics of the study region (Table 1). A total of 215 respondents self-identified as men (approximately 51% percent) and 207 as women (approximately 49%). The age ranges of respondents were recorded, and among those individuals reporting their age, there were 134 people between the ages of 18 and 35, 144 people between the ages of 36 and 55, and 142 people 56 years and older. As survey results are currently in the process of being analyzed, we do not include this data in our results, but rather draw from the process of designing and implementing the survey in communities as part of the research process.

Table 1 Number and percentage of survey and semi-structured interview respondents by gender and ethno-religious affiliation
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We also conducted 30 semi-structured key informant interviews with men and women knowledgeable about wild plants, using these conversations to invite people to share more details about wild plant use, as well as reflect on the changes in wild plant availability over time (Table 1). We selected interviewees for our sample in several ways. First, after completing the surveys, people were asked if they would be open to being contacted for a follow-up interview, and individuals who replied yes were noted. We also used snowball sampling to identify the individuals knowledgeable about wild plants and wild plant collecting among the five ethno-religious groups. These two methods mostly identified older interview respondents, and as a result, individuals under the age of 30 were underrepresented. Including additional younger men and women in semi-structured interviews is the goal for the project moving forward.

Interviews were from 30 minutes to 1 hour long, were conducted in the language preferred by the research participants, and were recorded with permission. In some cases, more than one person participated in an interview at a time, for example, if members of the same family joined in an interview together. In these situations, only the primary person being interviewed was counted in the sample numbers. Interviews were transcribed and translated into English. Interview data are being analyzed using MaxQDA software. We draw from the interview transcripts in the following results, as well as reflect on the processes of interviewing people in communities.

Cognizant that surveys and interviews, while valuable, do not provide complete information on the more embodied, personal, or autobiographical relationships between people and landscapes, we integrated other elements of ethnographic research into our project design, including going out with people to visit their gardens and fields, speaking with them in their homes and kitchens, and spending time getting to know individuals over repeated visits and conversations. Such observations provided more intimate knowledge of connections between meaning, knowledge, and ethnobotanical practices. We also used survey, interview, and participant observation data to identify, design, and implement community-based workshops and activities centered around wild plants that aligned with local priorities, as described further in the following section.

Finally, regarding the specific objectives of this discussion to reflect upon the process of research and how it affected the participants and the researchers through the collaboration, we consider the dynamics of the research experience. These observations include attention to what participants told us about their experiences as a part of the project, as well as the dynamics we observed throughout the course of the research activities. The research team also shared with one another our personal experiences of the ways that participation in this collaboration influenced our own approaches to research and teaching moving forward.

Results

We consider the results of this ethnobotanical research to go beyond data collection and analysis, to encompass the relationships, collaborations, and activities fostered through our ongoing fieldwork. Below, we highlight how a shared interest in wild plants helped establish community partnerships and collaborations and how the subject of wild plants fostered academic exchange between members of the research team, as we shared research methodologies and community-based approaches. Overall, the project generated new social and disciplinary connections, as the subject of wild plants was used as a catalyst to address complex themes of healing, reconciliation, and restoration in a post-conflict landscape.

Wild Plants and Community Connections

As reflected in the initial stages of the project, there is widespread interest in wild plants among the diverse ethnoreligious groups in the Nineveh Plains, with over 75% of people reporting that they use wild plants in some capacity, most commonly for food and medicine (O’Driscoll et al. 2021). Given this shared use of local wild plant resources, as well as the relatively apolitical nature of talking about plants, we found that speaking with people about wild plants was a generative way to begin conversations — conversations that often shifted from plants to cover the topics of cultural memory, connections to home, and aspirations for future social and environmental landscapes.

For example, speaking about wild plants often led to reflections on community cohesion, including changes to social interactions after the violence brought by Daesh. Often, people made such before and after comparisons when describing how they collected wild plants, which many remembered as a practice that brought people together within and among families, especially for women. One elder Yezedi man told us:

“[Before], acquaintance and coexistence took place between families. For example, when there was no karang [Gundelia tournefortii L.] in our region, we used to go to Christian villages and get to know them. And we became friends after that, and we used to visit them and they visit us, and we became friends even if we lived in areas far from each other. And one more thing, we don’t eat kelakh [Eminium spiculatum (Blume) Schott]. but it is found in our area. We would tell someone in Duhok to come and take it because they ate it. He would come and drink tea with me and we would go with him to collect kelakh”.

In contrast to such examples from the past, people noted that today, they saw much less social activity organized around wild plant collection, in part because of the diminished populations of wild plants in the area, and in part because of the heightened security risks of leaving the village. Older residents often remarked that younger generations were no longer interested in learning about wild plants. One elder Kaka’i woman expressed frustration with younger members of the community in this regard, telling us:

“The problem of young people is that they don’t care about old things and believe in modern things. People are educated and say that we don’t eat old food. They say earlier that people were forced to eat wild plants, but now the economic situation is better and they eat other good foods, and they say that wild plants are the food of the poor”.

The worry that wild plants’ knowledge and traditions were being lost was a shared concern across the five ethno-religious groups interviewed.

Recognizing the shared interest in wild plants as a point of connection, especially for women, we worked to design project activities to build from this cultural tradition. One example was a workshop conducted in a small town outside of Duhok that brought together Yezidi and Christian women to learn about using wild plants in textile printing and other artistic practices. All participants were themselves artists or art teachers, providing a point of connection between participants. In the workshop, two local artists led the women through textile printing, egg dying, and plant mounting activities, with time for talking in between (Fig. 3). As the day continued, people used wild plants to talk about their own religious and cultural traditions, including using plants for cosmetics and tattooing. By the end of the workshop, people exchanged contact information with one another and invited the facilitators to their villages to conduct additional trainings. All art teachers in the group said they would bring wild plant activities to their own classrooms — teachers discussed ways they could use the activity to discuss with students the importance of wild plants more generally to the ecologies and cultures of the Nineveh Plains. Through such activities, the knowledge gained through wild plant research was applied in a hands-on way to facilitate relationship building, creative engagement, and cultural exchange.

Fig. 3
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A participant in an eco-printing workshop displays her art print made with local wild plants. Source: Sarah Osterhoudt

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Relationships Between Communities and the University of Duhok

One goal of the project was to foster closer relationships between communities and the University of Duhok in order to strengthen community-based research engagement and collaboration (Kassam and Tettey 2003). Collaborating with local communities was largely a new approach for members of the University of Duhok team, and we first focused on developing positive relationships of trust and reciprocity with community members. Establishing contact and trust in a community in a short period of time — only 1 year — is challenging for any project. For this project, we faced additional complexities, including understanding territorial disputes, navigating checkpoints between areas protected by various regional security forces, and adapting plans when there were security threats. Our project’s affiliation with USAID was also a potential point of tension, given the highly controversial and militarized history of the US government in the region.

In balancing these challenges, we adopted a slow and steady approach to relationship building focused on clear communication, active listening, following through on our commitments, safeguarding the confidentiality of data, and adopting an openness to change. Indeed, one key result of the project was to strengthen the ties between people in the Nineveh region and the University of Duhok. We prioritized including a wide variety of voices in the project, making efforts to include those who might feel marginalized from traditional academic forums. For example, the research team specifically asked to talk with women in the home, as well as older adults. One interviewer noted that women who were at first reluctant to speak became more comfortable speaking with faculty from the university as the project progressed. One elder participant told a university administrator that this act of inclusion was deeply important to her; it made her feel validated, important, and appreciated and made the younger generation in her home realize that she had something important to say.

As with the workshop on using wild plants for art, the research team drew from interview findings to develop collaborative projects of interest to people across socio-religious groups. In our interviews, many people described the importance of wild plants as ingredients in traditional dishes, especially during holidays or celebrations (Fig. 4). Sharing food and exchanging recipes proved a point of connection, and people were often curious to hear how different religious or cultural traditions prepared local wild plants in similar or different ways. Seeing the connective potential of wild plant cuisine, we are collaborating with each of the five socio-religious groups to create a shared wild plant cookbook, which will bring people together to exchange stories and recipes connected to food, and to foreground the forms of environmental, cultural, and culinary expertise held by members of the community.

Fig. 4
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Traditional dishes prepared with wild plants. Source: University of Duhok

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A further result of the project was a change of perspective of the members of the research team themselves, who noted that conducting community-based research was a transformative experience. Many had not had much prior contact with the minority groups included in the research and had not previously visited the rural areas surrounding the city of Duhok. At the start of the research, there were concerns that individuals from the surrounding towns and villages may be unwelcoming to their field visits. Quite the opposite occurred; communities were overall welcoming, sharing meals and inviting team members to return for additional visits. These invitations were reciprocated by the research team, who invited members of the community to visit them and the university in Duhok. This change in mindset among participating researchers illustrates that having honest conversations about perceived biases and expectations — as well being open to change — are important parts of decolonizing research. Many of the faculty and graduate students plan to continue to incorporate community-based methods in their research moving forward, looking for ways to apply their research to questions of broader concerns to Nineveh residents.

Strengthening Interdisciplinary Approaches to Research and Teaching

The research team represents a strong interdisciplinary foundation rooted in the natural and social sciences, although many of us had not specifically worked on ethnobotanical research before this collaboration. Our team thus had social scientists without expertise in plants, and botanists with little expertise in social sciences, yet everyone had an appreciation of the potential linkages between plants, culture, health, and restoration.

Through wild plants, we brought together theories and methods from multiple disciplines to develop new applications for research and teaching. As a team, we each took away new knowledge, skills, and techniques. The public health and social scientists on the team had a newfound appreciation for wild plants, sharing plant knowledge with family members, tasting plants in the field, and noticing wild plants where they had not before. From the perspective of the botanists and ecologists, working with local communities, and being trained in ethnographic methods of interviews and participant observation, inspired future research ideas within their own work. Natural scientists on the team noted that they learned new skills during the course of the project, such as traditional ways of handling and storing specimens. Just as thinking about wild plants connected members of different socio-religious groups in the region, a focus on plants also bridged our various academic disciplines.

Discussion

In designing the wild plant collaboration, we aimed to incorporate decolonial frameworks for research that emphasize the shared production of diverse forms of wild plant knowledge by informing an iterative process for research questions, design, and methods. This process emphasized different forms of environmental knowledge, experiences, and narratives. For example, we looked for ways people referenced plants, meaning, and memories through sharing life histories, cooking meals, referencing proverbs, and speaking about their artistic ideas and practices connected with the landscape. These narratives included our own stories of collaboration — of talking, meeting, sharing, negotiating, and, at times, disagreeing. In this section, we reflect upon the project and identify lessons learned, the limitations of the project, and areas for improvement. Even with its challenges and limitations, the project illustrates the potential of ethnobotanical research to engage in processes of cultural memory, ecological restoration, and community building in post-conflict landscapes through close attention to local plant knowledge and meaning. This localized, everyday approach resonates with the framework of “everyday peace,” which recognizes the healing potential in seemingly mundane gestures and interactions (Mac Ginty 2014). Below, we discuss six overall observations from the collaboration and reflect on goals moving forward.

Encouraging Iterative Processes of Research and Application

An overarching goal of the project was to draw from empirical research in ethnobotany to design meaningful and culturally grounded restoration programs for the communities of the Nineveh Plains. In practice, rather than the original two-phased approach of first a research period and then an application period, the process between the two spheres emerged as ongoing, iterative, and fluid. Conversations during “applied” portions of the project shaped subsequent research questions, and the research process itself furthered the goals of cultural restoration. Given this productive relationship, we will look for ways to bring together research and applied work as ongoing, mutually supportive facets of ethnobotanical collaborations, following the framework of “participatory-action research” as developed in fields such as education and community health (Zuber-Skerritt 2015).

Broadening Representation

One goal of the project is to broaden community representation, to better represent the political, cultural, generational, and economic diversity within communities. Local politics create power dynamics that can affect who participates in the project activities — we saw this dynamic by going through official village leaders who tended to suggest people within their own networks as project participants. Moving forward, we will apply our better understanding of local social dynamics to help inform recruitment activities. Another goal is to better engage local youth in interviews and discussions on wild plants and topics of cultural restoration and knowledge transmission more generally. Finally, given the widespread interest in the region in storytelling, visual arts, and filmmaking, we will look to include more faculty and community partners with specializations in the humanities.

Maximizing Hands-On Engagement with Plants

Throughout the project, a hands-on, participatory engagement with plants generated a deeper appreciation for multiple ways of experiencing, knowing, and being in landscapes for both researchers and community participants (Ingold 2021). Hands-on interactions with wild plants — sharing food, planting seeds, making art with flowers — brought people together in more spontaneous and informal settings (Kassam 2021). As one person on our team noted, talking about plants often did not get people as interested as actually using plants together. Walking with people through their fields, visiting their gardens, and spending time in their kitchens all contributed to gaining more decolonial and dynamic understandings of people and plant engagements. Being in landscapes in such ways also sparked memories, stories, and personal conversations that led to relationship building and more complex understandings of the connections between people and plants.

Communicating Challenges

Both interdisciplinary and community-based research present significant complexities, especially in navigating the power dynamics that result when different groups come together in collaboration. Throughout the course of any such collaboration, there are likely to be both individual and systematic tensions connected with perceived bias, institutional power relationships, gender dynamics, cultural and disciplinary norms, and differing levels of seniority and status between participants. In the case of our collaboration, for example, there was the tension of receiving US funding for an Iraq-based project, both from an ideological level and a practical level of negotiating funding and decision-making. While most of the fieldwork was led by faculty from the University of Duhok, program meetings were conducted in English, as most of the US-based scientists and program administrators did not speak Arabic or Kurdish. Within the research team, there was a mix of senior faculty, junior faculty, and graduate students. There were also complex power dynamics within the communities where we worked, which (as with all communities) had differentiated systems of cultural, economic, and political networks.

We found that rather than ignore such power dynamics, or wait until a serious conflict emerged, we attempted to proactively address potential tensions, speaking together about our worries and expectations of the project. Checking in periodically allowed us to evaluate and adjust our methods of working together. It also facilitated more open and nuanced conversations on power dynamics in research more generally — a key component for decolonizing research. Moving forward, we would incorporate more deliberate strategies for self-evaluations and reflections over the course of the project.

Emphasizing “Bright Spots”

Especially in conflict areas, it is often natural to focus on the challenges, hardships, and barriers to reconciliation — all important topics to explore. Yet, we also wanted to connect with people around the rich forms of knowledge, healing, hope, and creativity in the region (Willow 2023) and to move beyond what Eve Tuck has referred to as “damaged-center research” (2009). Speaking about wild plants allowed us to incorporate such “bright spot” aspects into our ethnographic research (Osterhoudt 2021). Wild plants bring up themes both of loss and of celebration — foregrounding relationships between people and plants emphasizes the rich forms of environmental knowledge and cultural heritage that are strengths to build from in restoration efforts.

Connecting to Bio-cultural Heritage and Memory

As our fieldwork progressed, talking with people about wild plants opened avenues for conversations around the broader themes of meaning, memory, and community (Dove 1999; Nazarea 2006). For example, wild plants are connected with celebrating cultural and community events (see also Galalaey et al. 2021), as well as practices promoting traditional medicine and practices of well-being (Kawarty et al. 2020; Mati and de Boer 2011). The fact that wild plants served as a gateway to such a range of cultural and environmental topics is not surprising. Wild plants not only contribute to the diverse ecologies of the Nineveh Plains, but also form an integral part of cultural activities and traditions of the region (Arakelova 2014; Pieroni et al. 2019). Indeed, the knowledge of wild plants in the Nineveh Plains can be considered a form of biocultural heritage, linked to sustainable land use, food security, cultural preservation, and local environmental knowledge (Pieroni et al. 2021). Moving forward, the team will aim to explore the roles of plants and landscapes in shaping the unique cultural heritage and practices of the region (Lange 2022).

Conclusion

A motivation of the Nineveh Plains project was to enhance pathways for cultural restoration and exchange. Often, such projects focus on more formal processes of social reconciliation. Indeed, many community members seemed surprised when our team asked them to talk with us about wild plants — a topic quite out of the norm, they told us, for the usual NGO and research teams that came to their villages. Yet, we saw rich potential for a focus on wild plants, as people from all the groups we spoke with mentioned wild plant collection and use as an activity with cultural importance. The example of the Nineveh Plains illustrates how ethnobotanical research can contribute to broader projects of environmental sustainability and cultural heritage, especially in post-conflict landscapes.

The subject of broader applications of the Nineveh Plains project model brings up questions of scale. Our collaboration on wild plants was relatively small-scale in nature, especially compared to other development and peace-building efforts in the Northern Iraq region. Many of the significant issues people are facing were simply beyond the scope of our project: removing land mines, installing irrigation systems, or rebuilding infrastructure. While we could connect community leaders to possible funding sources for these goals, we could not help directly. Instead, we took a more individual scale to cultural and ecological landscape restoration, considering the stories, memories, knowledge, and experiences of individuals as connected to place.

Thus, instead of scaling up and consolidating approaches to our work, in many ways, we scaled down and allowed room for the multiplicity of relationships between people and plants to emerge. Indeed, especially in complex social and ecological systems, more ways of knowing plants are needed, rather than less. For this reason, we use the plural “ethno-botanies” when imagining the future of the discipline, seeing the potential for an expansive ethnobotany to facilitate cultural understanding and exchange, taken person by person, and plant by plant.