FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Katy Moran
202-333-3438
Professor Nancy J. Turner Named Recipient of
1997 Richard Evans Schultes Award
St. Louis and Washington, D.C., June 5, 1997 -- Professor Nancy J. Turner of the School of Environmental Studies at the University of Victoria, BC, is the recipient of the 1997 Richard Evans Schultes Award, it was announced today. 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. “Advocate for indigenous peoples,” “accomplished academic,” “inspiring professor,” read the flood of nominations for Nancy Turner. Specific recognition is given for her leadership in partnering with First Nations peoples to bring ethnobotanical knowledge to the forefront in discussions on management of the ancient, temperate forests of the Pacific Northwest with the government of Canada. Turner’s impressive scholarly recognition by her peers on the temperate climate ethnobotany of the First Nations in British Columbia -- almost 30 books, monographs or chapters -- is surpassed only by the number of her many devoted students whom she has inspired to enter the field of ethnobotany.
The award honors the name of Richard Evans Schultes, the Harvard ethnobotanist widely recognized as one of the most distinguished figures in the field. For his work, Schultes received the annual Gold Medal of the World Wildlife Fund, the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement and the Linnean Gold Medal. Schultes has published over 400 technical papers and nine books, including, with Robert 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 Michael J. Balick, Ph.D., Philecology Curator of Economic Botany and Director of The New York Botanical Garden’s Institute of Economic Botany. The award was announced in St. Louis, MO, at the annual meeting of the Society for Economic Botany, of which Schultes is a founding member.
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Moran, Page 2
To date, there have been four 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 the publication of his three volume series Flora Medicinal 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 Program at the World Wildlife Fund in Washington, DC. The award recognizes her outstanding contribution of strengthening indigenous peoples’ participation in community-based conservation of biological diversity. For the 1996 Schultes Award, the Bribri and Cabécar people of the KéköLdi Indian Reserve in Costa Rica were recognized for their strategy to maintain their culture by enforcing their territorial rights -- publishing a book about the Bribri and Cabécar use of medicinal plants and using book profits to purchase lands from non-Indian landholders within the boundaries of their reserve.
Each Schultes Award has featured a $5,000.00 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 foundation, is dedicated to the conservation of tropical forests, particularly medicinal plants and their sustainable use for human health. Its focus is to deliver compensation programs that strengthen the integrity of traditional cultures to native communities that have participated in Shaman’s drug discovery process.
Nominations for the 1998 Richard Evans Schultes Award are open until May 1, 1998. The award seeks a balance in geographic location, gender and field of study for recipients. Nominations of indigenous people or organizations active in this area are especially welcome. Please submit nominations (of others, it is not self-nominating), along with a statement of the candidate’s qualifications to:
Katy Moran, Director, The Healing Forest Conservancy
3521 S Street, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20007 - U.S.A.
202-333-3438 Fax - <moranhfc at aol.com>
