This review describes an Indigenous led project by Q’eqchi’ Maya healers of Belize to strengthen and improve traditional botanical healing. Goals of the project were to conserve medicinal plant knowledge, leading to ethnobotanical studies, and to conserve the plants themselves, by creating a community ethnobotanical garden. A total of 169 medicinal species were collected in the ethnobotanical survey, which provided unique knowledge on many rainforest species of the wet lowland forest of Southern Belize, not found in neighbouring Indigenous cultures. Consensus on plant uses by the healers was high indicating a well conserved codified oral history. After horticultural experimentation by the healers, the Indigenous botanical garden provided a habitat for and conservation of 102 medicinal species including many epiphytes that were rescued from forested areas. Ethnopharmacological studies by the university partners showed a pharmacological basis for, and active principles of plants used for epilepsy and anxiety, for inflammatory conditions such as arthritis, for dermatological mycoses, and for type 2 diabetes complications. Overall, the project has provided a model for Indigenous empowerment and First Nation’s science, as well as establishing this traditional medicine as an important, unified healing practice, that can safely and effectively provide primary healthcare in its cultural context.
Medicinal species of the genus Paeonia L. in the collection of Polar Alpine Botanical Garden