Summer Session 1 | Peru

Amazonian Plant Biodiversity and Traditional Medicine

About This Program

Four Weeks. Ancient Medicinal Knowledge.

The Amazon holds tens of thousands of plant species, and Indigenous communities have understood their uses for millennia. In four weeks, you step into that knowledge, working alongside the healers who have used these plants for generations and asking how traditional medicine and biomedical science can inform each other.

You'll work alongside local healers and SFS faculty to document the plants of traditional medicine, build a botanical collection with a field identification key, and learn how medicinal plants are harvested and remedies prepared and used.

An armful of freshly cut medicinal plants gathered against a red shirt

In the Field

What You'll Do

Two people crouch to cut medicinal plants in a sunlit Amazonian garden

Ethnobotanical Plant Surveys

Document medicinal and culturally significant plants with guidance from indigenous knowledge holders in Peru's Upper Amazon.

Weathered hands strip leaves from a medicinal plant stem over a bowl of cut greens

Learn from Amazonian Healers

Learn hands-on from mestizo and Indigenous healers how medicinal plants are harvested and remedies prepared and used.

A man seated outdoors holds up two long strips of harvested bark, one in each hand

Approach Enigmatic Healing Knowledge

Explore puzzling Amazonian healing concepts with scientific rigor, documenting from experienced practitioners how their practices hold health in balance and how sacred plants like tobacco and coca shift from powerful medicine to deadly vice.

Beyond the Center

Field Sites

Field sites run from old-growth medicinal forests in Indigenous communities and protected areas to the Takiwasi Center's plant garden and the homes where healers perform their rituals.

Pink hibiscus blooms in a tropical botanical garden in Peru

Takiwasi Center

A Tarapoto treatment center that heals addiction with Amazonian medicinal plants.

Indigenous women in traditional red dress stand among the buttress roots of a giant forest tree

Nuwas Forest

An initiative led by Indigenous Awajún women, who add value to medicinal plants while conserving the forest.

Hands hold a plant sprig while others sort cut leaves into a pot behind

Healer Communities

Where mestizo and Indigenous healers harvest plants, prepare remedies, and perform their rituals.

Experience Peru

The Healers Know the Forest by Name.

Indigenous practitioners have cataloged Amazonian plant diversity for millennia, knowledge that Western science is only beginning to verify. Students collect botanical specimens alongside local healers, document medicinal uses through ethnobotanical interviews, and learn how medicinal plants are harvested and remedies prepared and used. A tour of the Takiwasi center's medicinal-plant garden and a visit to an Awajún women's forest initiative connect the plants to the people who protect and use them.

Academics

Ethnobotany in the Field

This 4-credit course integrates plant taxonomy, ethnobotanical research methods, and conservation biology into intensive daily fieldwork. You'll build botanical collections, learn plant identification techniques, and produce a research portfolio documenting your findings.

Ethnobotany Plant Biodiversity Traditional Medicine Tropical Ecology