Media advisory issued March 6, 2002, effective immediately.
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Note: This event occurred in 2002. Please see our news releases section for upcoming events.

Rainforest Shamans' Apprentice Visits Ardmore
A Time magazine "Hero of the Planet" is the latest Profiles and Perspectives speaker to visit southern Oklahoma, discussing two decades of life in the Amazon rainforest.

ARDMORE, Okla. — Dr. Mark Plotkin may not physically fit the comic book image of a "Hero of the Planet," but that didn't prevent Time magazine from naming him one in 1998. Plotkin will discuss his 20 years of experience working with tribal people of the Amazon and their plants in a Noble Foundation-sponsored Profiles and Perspectives program Tuesday, March 12, at the Charles B. Goddard Center, 401 1st Ave. SW. The program is free to the public.

Plotkin may not look like a superhero, but anyone trailing the ethnobotanist through the Amazon rainforests would soon realize that few can match his enthusiasm, stamina and quest for knowledge — knowledge found through listening to and talking with the elder shamans of declining native tribes.

And there's no mistaking that Plotkin is on a mission of heroic proportions — to study the healing arts of the dwindling forest Indians, and convert that new-found knowledge into new foods and medicines for the modern world.

Healing plants and shamanic traditions of Central and South America will be the focus of Plotkin's presentation. He is a research associate at the Department of Botany of the Smithsonian Institution and executive director of the Amazon Conservation Team, a non-profit organization dedicated to protecting biological and cultural diversity of the tropical rain forest.

Many may recognize him as being featured in a PBS Nova documentary, on CBS's 48 Hours, and in a leading role in the IMAX film Amazon, which was nominated for a 1997 Academy Award.

In the closing of his book Tales of a Shaman’s Apprentice (1993), Plotkin writes, "A missionary once asked … 'Why do we want to know all the plants on the earth? When the final trumpet is sounded, we’ll know everything anyway.' That may or may not be true, but until then we cannot sit still. If we are to safeguard the rights of the indigenous peoples, protect endangered species, find new foods to feed the hungry and new medicines to cure the sick, now is the time to act …. If we don't, our children and grandchildren will inherit a world infinitely less diverse biologically and culturally than the one into which we were born."

The rainforests where Plotkin has spent most of the last two decades is a far cry from the classrooms where he received his education at Harvard, Yale and Tufts. He formerly served as a research associate in ethnobotanical conservation at the Botanical Museum of Harvard University, director of plant conservation at the World Wildlife Fund and vice president of Conservation International in Washington, D.C.

The Profiles and Perspectives program is funded by the Noble Foundation to bring world-class presenters in a variety of fields to Southern Oklahoma; speakers who would not normally appear in a smaller metropolitan area. Scheduled later for the 2001-02 series is nationally known comedian, syndicated humor columnist and one-time Ardmoreite Argus Hamilton. He will appear at the Goddard Center on May 14.

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Photos:

Cutline for all photos: Mark Plotkin during an August 2001 research trip to Suriname in northeast Amazon. Photo/Charlie L. Soap

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The Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation, headquartered in Ardmore, Okla., is a non-profit organization conducting agricultural, forage biotechnological, and plant biology research; providing grants to numerous non-profit charitable, educational and health organizations; and assisting farmers and ranchers through educational and consultative agricultural programs.

To learn more, visit the Noble Foundation Web site at http://www.noble.org.

More news releases available at www.noble.org/Press_Release