Creative Commons: a nonprofit organization that helps overcome legal obstacles to the sharing of knowledge and creativity to address the world’s pressing challenges.
According to their website, the group strives to: Provide Creative Commons licenses and public domain tools that give every person and organization in the world a free, simple, and standardized way to grant copyright permissions for creative and academic works; ensure proper attribution; and allow others to copy, distribute, and make use of those works.
As a student of herbal studies and alternative approaches to healing, I often wonder about this heir of pretentiousness and lack of sharing that exists among the herbal community.
I reflect on a visit to Asheville, North Carolina and a particular Traditional Chinese Medicine practitioner and store I walked into. At that point, I knew little about TCM and wanted to learn more, but the person acted as if they didn’t care to share, or give me the time of day. They spoke to me as if I should know the answers to the questions being asked. I walked out of that store wondering why other healers wouldn’t want to readily share information that has the potential to increase healthcare for all.
The sad truth is that this is oftentimes the case in many different disciples. Scholars in all field tend to have this idea that the information they know is theirs. This is likely because they spent many years and potentially many dollars to learn the knowledge they possess and if they don’t refrain from sharing, they might copyright the information they put out into the world.
I received extensive training on Creative Commons and Open Educational Resources (OER) while working at Plymouth State University in the Office of Interdisciplinary Studies. There, I learned that there are openly sourced, free textbooks out there for most core disciplines: Business and Communication, Education, History, Law, Math, Arts..etc. I graduated in May of 2020 eager to bring this training into herbal studies and as I’m learning more and more, I’m realizing that hardly anyone is talking about it.
This is problematic for many reasons. The first is that herbal studies are fundamentally openly sourced. There was a lawsuit years back where a company tried to patent “fire cider” and sued many small businesses making fire cider. Fire cider is a style of medicine making characterized by adding healing herbs and foods to vinegar and honey that has been passed around for many, many years. Therefore, no one really owns or can own fire cider. Like much of herbal medicinal studies, fire cider has been passed around for a long time and those learning to make it can adapt it to their own needs and desires. Creative Commons licensing allows people to do just that: adapt, share, remix works for their own herbal practices or personal lives in the name of alternative healing and collaboration.
Photo by Rebecca Roberts
The photo on the right depicts my teacher Katrina Blair teaching my class how to make a hawthorn berry pie. She came up with the recipe on her own using her magical plant wisdom to spread the word of healthy food and nourishing our bodies. That’s what it’s all supposed to be about.
To be clear, Creative Commons licensing doesn’t take credit away from whomever generated the content, but rather, it allows creators to decide how their content is used. For example, they can choose if commercial use of their work is allowed, if changes/additions are allowed to be made and if someone can use your work, but it must be under the same CC license. CC licensing can be used in blog posts, art, writing pieces and more. It prevents the long & sometimes seemingly difficult or impossible process of asking authors for permission to use their work when it’s copyrighted.
So far, the only website I’m aware of that’s working toward the Open Source Herbalism movement is Herbalista. Licensed under Creative Commons, this is how Herbalista has asked users to use their content:
- Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
- ShareAlike — If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same license as the original.
- No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.
On their website, Herbalista.org, they claim that:
“Herbalista recognizes healthcare as a fundamental human right. We sponsor health services and herbal education through a variety of programs, empowering folks to care for themselves and their neighbors. We believe true healthcare is based on a foundation of mutual respect and mutual aid– solidarity not charity!”
The non-profit provides a sliding scale herbal clinic, free herbal care to communities and need and for online users, sliding scale online workshops and many downloadable documents with medicine making how- tos. Some of these include, sanitation practices, oil infusion blend worksheet, reishi mushroom worksheet, fire cider worksheet, oil & salve worksheet..and the list goes on.
Moving forward, I’m hoping to start the conversation of open educational resources in herbalism and breaking the traditional confines of copyrighting everything in place of a community that’s focused on sharing ways that we can improve health care for all. The greatest herbalists in the world should know that the focus of their practice should be on sharing wisdom of their work and the work of those who have passed down traditions from a melting pot of cultures so that healers today and in the future can have access to this ancient wisdom.
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