Book Review: Paulo Basta et al. (Eds.) Pohã ñana: Ñanombarete, tekoha, Guarani ha Kaiowá arandu rehegua

The publication under review is the product of six-year study initiated by non-indigenous researchers at the public health school within Brazil’s biomedical sciences research institute Fiocruz, in collaboration with indigenous Guaraní-Kaiowá people. The research journey takes the epidemiologists into the Guaraní-Kaiowá community, where they realise that a deeper understanding of traditional healing approaches is needed. Through this engagement, the project of documenting the medicinal plants used by these peoples is born, responding to the political struggles of the Guaraní-Kaiowá, who have been expelled from their ancestral lands. The researchers come to see the medicinal plants as 'not just plants, but also plants', as they gain appreciation for the metaphysical role of plants within Guaraní-Kaiowá cosmology. The work is an interesting tentative exploration of working across languages, cultures, epistemologies, ontologies and cosmologies, and, although not directly intending to, brings the question of ontology to the study of ethnobotany. In this way, it provides a relevant case study for Science and Technology Studies.