Coca, plant teachers and multispecies relationships

In Western terms, coca (Erythroxylum coca) is considered a psychoactive plant. For Amerindians however, the coca plant is an animated being. Like ayahuasca and tobacco, coca has this special quality of being a plant teacher. Plant teachers are important sources of knowledge: the plant spirit teaches on healing and multispecies perspectives, amongst others. Thus, this research focuses on Amerindian epistemologies on coca in terms of spirituality, community and multispecies relationships. The epistemological tension in understanding the agency of coca being a teacher will also be included within this research. Within objectivism, plant teachers’ agency is explained through messenger molecules, transferring information through cells (also referred to as biosemiotics). How are different epistemologies able to illuminate one another?