The Plant Cruzer
El Planta Móvil
The Indigenous Alliance Without Borders/Alianza Indigena Sin Fronteras (AISF) and the Plant Cruzer/Planta Movil project distributes plant medicine to Indigenous organizations and QTBIPOC-allied activists at no charge. The Indigenous-led project provides medicine for people in Indigenous networks based on Indigenous values of respect, reciprocity, responsibility, and redistribution, such as trade and barter or reciprocal exchange and donations. As such, this project also recognizes the sovereignty of the plant nations and their rights to peoplehood within the natural world. The PLANT CRUZER is a mobile tea/medicine station that can travel in a backpack, on a bike or in the back of a PT Cruiser or truck bed. The Plant Cruzer provides sustainable plant medicine from the desert.
The AISF has entered into preliminary partnership with other Indigenous cooperative agreements, such as with the Indigenous Institute of the Americas. Eventually we will expand the exchange of plants within a variety of Indigenous trade networks.
Gardens and projects allied with the AISF Plant Cruzer/Planta Móvil include: Oidag (garden in O’odham): The Giving Place at the Native American Research and Training Center at the University of Arizona, Las Milpitas Farm (Tucson, AZ), and the Indigenous Grocery Store of the Indigenous Institute of the Americas – www.iiamericas.org.
Those interested in adopting a formula may email the plant keepers at alianzaindigena@gmail.com. Tequios (Nahuatl for communal work for community good) are conducted periodically as a form of Indigenous capacity building in working with plant medicine, particularly the first medicines of the Turtle Island. Tequios are also done to gather resources to implement community projects. Traditional Indigenous herbalists coordinate, guide and conduct the medicine making.
By providing medicine within Indigenous communal networks and relations, the Plant Cruzer seeks to strengthen "healing as self-governance" within Indigenous communities.
"Healing is Self Governance."
--Kalpulli Ikzalli (AISF allied organization)