Class of 2027 - Reparative Justice (Missouri Botanical Garden)
Legacy of Enslavement
This team pursues reparative justice at the Missouri Botanical Garden through studying the legacy of enslavement at the gardens. They analyze the Garden’s archival records to uncover the history of enslaved individuals and the ways the Garden’s growth depended on systemic white supremacy. As an approach to repair injustice, they plan to curate exhibits and learning opportunities to amplify the stories of people of color whose contributions to the Gardens are not immediately apparent to guests. Scholars consider the social and psychological impacts these stories may have on their audience and on future generations. The team works in subgroups to address educating youth visitors, developing a visual archival display, and considering the relationship between the Garden and surrounding neighborhoods. Their mission is to acknowledge the Garden’s reliance on slavery and to share the stories of the many people who contributed their knowledge and work to the Gardens.
Extractive Colonialist Practices in Botany and Recovering Plant Knowledge
This team embarks on reparative justice at the Missouri Botanical Garden by investigating extractive colonialist practices in botany and recovering and commemorating plant knowledge from indigenous, African, and African American cultures. The Missouri Botanical Garden has the third largest herbarium in the world, a collection of plant specimens drawn from every continent. Most botanists are from cultures sometimes referred to using the acronym WEIRD: Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic. The information they attach to each plant specimen, therefore, often results in cultural gaps and biases. Within their subgroups, they explore the herbarium and plant knowledge to discover ways to recognize the advances of marginalized cultures on a global scale, consider the effects of diaspora on both culture and nature, and research extractive and colonialist legacies that are reflected in the Garden.
