Association Kekoldi Named Recipient of 1996 Richard
Evans Schultes Award
London and Washington,
D.C., July 2, 1996 The Association Kekoldi Wak Ka Koneke
located in Canton Talamanca, Limon Province in Costa Rica
is the recipient of the 1996 Richard Evans Schultes Award.
The Bribri and Cabecar peoples of Kekoldi Indian Reserve
are recognized for the steadfast defense of their forests
and traditional life using a three part strategy. First,
they are conducting the land tenure and land use studies
needed for legal enforcement of their land rights. Second,
they are educating the public about the Bribri and Cabecar
use of medicinal plants and their underlying philosophy
about the natural world, for example, through their book
"Taking Care of Sibo's Gifts", in Spanish, Dutch
and English editions (in collaboration with North American
sociologist, Paula Palmer). Third, book profits are used
to purchase deforested lands from non-Indian landholders
within the boundaries of their Reserve, then reforested
critical watershed areas and the $5,000 that accompanies
the Schultes Award will help purchase more land within
the Reserve.
As Richard Evans Schultes
stated, The efforts of the Kekoldi Association help all
of us understand that ethnobotany is part of a much larger,
integrated whole for indigenous peoples. I am delighted
that the award will further their actions to preserve
their forests and their culture. The Schultes Award is
presented annually by The Healing Forest Conservancy to
a scientist, practitioner, or organization that has made
an outstanding contribution to ethnobotany or to indigenous
peoples issues related to ethnobotany. The award honors
the name of Richard Evans Schultes, the Harvard ethnobotanist
widely recognized as one of the most distinguished fi-ures
in the field. For his work, Schultes received the annual
Gold Medal of the World Wildlife Fund from the organization's
then president, Prince Philip of the United Kingdom, the
Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement and the Linnean
Gold Medal. Schultes has Raffauf, The Healing Forest
(1990) and Vine of the Soul (1992). The Healing
Forest Conservancy is named after their 1990 book. The
International Nominating Committee for the award is chaired
by Micheal J. Ballick, Ph.D., Philecology Curator of Economic
Botany and Director of The New York Botanical Garden's
Institute of Economic Botany. The award was announced
at the joint meeting of the Society for Economic Botany,
of which Schultes is a founding member and the International
Society for Ethnophannacology. The meeting titled, Plants
for Food and Medicine was held in London from July
1-6, 1996, at Imperial College, The Natural History Museum
and Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.
To date, there have
been three other recipients of the Schultes Award. The
late Calvin R. Sperling, Ph. D, of the National Germplasm
Resources Laboratory at the US Department of Agriculture
was recognized in 1993 for his comprehensive work as a
field ethnobotanist in the preservation of genetic resources
and the ethnobotany of economic plants. The 1994 Schultes
Award was presented to Professor Hernando Garcia Barriga
of the Universidad de Colombia in recognition of his contributions
to the field, including training of numerous students
and publication of his three volume series Flora Medicial
de Colombia. The series is widely considered the definitive
work on ethnobotany in Colombia. The Schultes Award for
1995 was presented to Janis B. Alcorn, Ph.D., Director
for Asia and the Pacific for the Biodiversity Support
Pro-ram at the World Wildlife Fund in Washington D.C.
The award recognizes her outstanding contribution of strengthening
indigenous peoples participation in community based conservation
of biological diversity.
Each Schultes Award
has featured a $5,000 cash prize donated by Shaman Pharmaceuticals,
Inc. and The Leland Fikes Foundation, Inc. The Foundation,
located in Dallas, supports local biomedical research
and has a general interest in biodiversity as a part of
the broad field of medicine. The Healing Forest Conservancy
which sponsors the Schultes Award was founded by Shaman
Pharmaceuticals Inc., based in South San Francisco, California,
and focused on the discovery and development of pharmaceuticals
through ethnobotany. The Conservancy, a non-profit public
foundation, is dedicated to the conservation of tropical
forests, particularly medicinal plants and their sustainable
use for human health. The focus of the Conservancy is
to deliver compensation programs that strengthen the integrity
of traditional cultures to native communities that have
participated in Shamaii's drug discovery process.
To purchase copies
of "Taking Care of Sibo's Gifts". Contact Paula
Palmer at the American Inthan Science and Engineering
Society in Boulder, CO, USA. at Tel: 303- 939-0023 and
Fax: 303-9398150.
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