Our Instructors
Get to Know Us
Albuquerque Herbalism is proud to feature classes with a range of perspectives informed by the varied ancestral and professional backgrounds of our instructors. What we have in common is deep connection to our beloved Southwestern landscape. Read more about our approach to herbal education here.
Dara Saville
Founder; Semester Course + Advanced Group Facilitator
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Meet Dara
Dara Saville is the founder of Albuquerque Herbalism and the executive director of the Yerba Mansa Project, a nonprofit organization. Her work involves teaching herbalists, organizing the community to undertake native medicinal plant restoration on public lands, writing on medicinal plants and landscapes of the Southwest, and fostering a renewed land connection through public events and field trips.
Dara is the author of the University of New Mexico Press book, The Ecology of Herbal Medicine: A Guide to Plants and Living Landscapes of the American Southwest and a contributing author to several herbal compendium books. She is currently a Geography and Environmental Studies PhD student in a joint program at the University of New Mexico and New Mexico State University. Dara’s subfield is GeoHumanities with a focus on the ecological-social lives of medicinal plants and people. She is also a graduate of Tieraona Low Dog’s Foundations of Herbal Medicine program, an instructor in UNM’s Sustainability Studies and Holistic Health Programs, and a board member of the Native Plant Society.
Find out more about Dara: https://darasaville.com/
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Anna Marija Helt
Medicinal Mushroom + Chronic Inflammation Courses
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Meet Marija
Dr. Anna Marija Helt is an herbalist and microbiologist in Durango, Colorado. Before falling in love with all things plant, she researched cancer development and pathogenic viruses for a dozen years as a research scientist. After career burnout hit, she switched to running a motorcycle cafe in San Francisco while studying western herbalism, aromatherapy, and a smidgen of Traditional Chinese Medicine. Upon moving to Colorado, Marija became a full time botanical geek, clinical practitioner, and writer. She incorporates weeds, only the most abundant native plants, mushrooms, and aromatics as her allies. Her continuing goal is to help clients to reach their greatest health and to introduce botanical medicine to folks who are not already on the bandwagon. Her approach involves a deep study of herbal traditions combined with a critical evaluation of botanical research science.
Through Osadha Natural Health, Marija works one on one with clients to help them achieve their health goals. She also teaches classes and workshops on a wide range of topics in natural health and biological science, as well as working one on one with students wanting a more personalized education plan.
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Atava Garcia Swiecicki
Mexican Traditional Medicine/Curanderismo
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Meet Atava
Atava Garcia Swiecicki, MA, RH (AHG) is guided by her dreams and her Mexican, Polish, Hungarian and Diné ancestors. She studied Feminist Studies at Stanford University and received her master’s degree in the Indigenous Mind Program at Naropa University Oakland. Atava has studied healing arts extensively for over thirty years and has been mentored by herbalists, curanderas and traditional knowledge keepers. She works as a clinical herbalist and teacher and is dedicated to remembering the healing traditions of her ancestors and supporting others to reconnect with their ancestral medicine. She also loves helping people build relationships with plants, whom she considers some of our greatest teachers and healers. Atava is the founder of the Ancestral Apothecary School of Herbal, Folk and Indigenous Medicine on Ohlone territory in Oakland, CA. She’s currently living in Tewa Pueblo territory in Albuquerque, New Mexico where she finished writing her first book called The Curanderx Toolkit: Reclaiming Ancestral Latinx Plant Medicine and Rituals for Healing.
Her websites are: www.ancestralapothecary.com and www.ancestralapothecaryschool.com.
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Christiana Magdalena Hopkinson
7 Sacred Directions + Nutrition
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Meet Christiana
Christiana (She/Her/They/Them) is a Xicana, born and raised in Corrales, New Mexico with mixed ancestral roots in Northern Mexico and Western Europe.
A wife, sister, daughter, granddaughter, mother to countless plants and a few dogs and cats. A lover of all things wild and free and the owner of Obsidian Hummingbird Wellness, LLC. Which brings the knowledge and wisdom that they carry together to guide and support community wellness; Body, Mind, Spirit and Heart.
Focusing on empowerment and education with movement, nutrition, and herbalism; with her Ancestral teachings and practices at the core of all they do.
As a practitioner of Ancestral medicine, she carries the teachings of her Maestra Cuauhtil Cihuatl, along with her Ancestors’ wisdom, with love, honor & respect. She is also a practitioner of regional herbalism and loves to connect with the Land and plants so close to her heart. She has a background in movement, exercise and nutrition. With a Bachelor of Science in Nutrition and Dietetics from UNM and has been a certified personal trainer through NSCA since 2010.
You can find more info about her here: ObsidianHummingbirdWellness.
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Candace Quintana
7 Sacred Directions
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Meet Candace
My name is Candace Quintana, and I live in my ancestral homeland of New Mexico, where my roots run deep. I earned a Bachelor of Science in Elementary Education from the University of New Mexico, driven by my passion for learning and teaching. I am an elementary school teacher and enjoy working with children. Beyond academics, I dedicate myself to caregiving—nurturing my children, and three dogs with love and respect. My care extends to Mother Earth as well, tending to plants and animals with the same compassion. Grounded in New Mexican tradition and guided by responsibility, I strive each day to honor my heritage and support the life around me by studying traditional healing and working with my community on helping others on their healing journeys. I would like to acknowledge two of my teachers who played a significant role in my healing journey and deepening my understanding of ancestral medicine; Rita Navarrete, Laurencio Nuñez.
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Brook Brooks
Herbal Wines & Vinegars
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Meet Brook
I am a viticulturist, garage winemaker, writer, and educator based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. I co-founded and co-organize Last Ditch, a grape and farming collective that seeks to reconnect people to the grapevine, and to each other through collective seasonal work and education in the vineyard and cellar.
My matrilineal ancestors settled in Butte, Montana starting five generations ago. Some came via wagon trains before 1880, settling in the valleys near Butte where they farmed to supply the nearby mining towns. Others arrived later by rail, moving directly into Butte to work in the mines and the boarding houses. Irish people who came following the Great Hunger, as well as Scottish and Swedish folks displaced by forced emigration and famine. Heavy drinking was woven into the rhythm of shift work, ethnic fraternal life, the boarding house economy, and the culture of these hardscrabble places.
My patrilineal ancestors are Sephardic Jews who settled St. Augustine, Florida in the late 1500s seeking refuge from violent religious persecution and Quaker Anglo-Saxons who immigrated to New England in the 1600s seeking religious freedom. Five generations ago my patrilineal ancestors, still living in Northern Florida, converted to Mormonism.
I was born queer in the early 1980s in Utah, raised inside Mormon prohibition culture, and came to wine, farming, and fermentation the long way around: through leaving the church in my early 20’s and a slow reclamation of practices once forbidden or lost.
My medicine path moves in the wake of these ancestral and personal histories. It attempts to find a third space that isn’t organized around prohibition or intoxication: solutions that likely made sense to my ancestors who were estranged from their land, language, communities, and foodways. I want to remake a relationship to the grapevine: one that re-centers the growing, making, and enjoyment of wine within community-based practices yoked to seasons of tending, harvest, and celebration.
My work also strives to reclaim, rework, and queer the Mormon cultural and devotional practices I was raised to value: keeping kitchen and medicine gardens, preserving food for long-term storage, land and water stewardship, community care, quilting, and ancestor work.
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About Our Team
We offer a variety of classes including one-day topics as well as in-depth series courses. Our goal is to make herbal education accessible through affordable classes and community partnerships while supporting the health and wellbeing of our human and nonhuman community.
