Fresh Banana Leaves: Healing Indigenous Landscapes through Indigenous Science

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When I am feeling more radical/political I will come back to this but it’s 3 days before Christmas and i just want to fade into the sunset with books that don’t make me angry. Hernandez: I get a lot of pushback, especially when we are communities of color speaking up against conservation.

Banana Leaves — Melissas Produce Banana Leaves — Melissas Produce

They give off a wonderful, subtle sweetness, adding their flavor to the foods that are wrapped in them. Science News was founded in 1921 as an independent, nonprofit source of accurate information on the latest news of science, medicine and technology.

When I picked up this book, I thought that there would be the more foundational talk around the indigenous version of sustainable practices that makes the WEstern concept of conservation obsolete. For example, they may be used to wrap fish before it is barbequed or to hold rice which is being steamed or baked. Through her scientific and community work, she advocates for climate, energy, and environmental justice.

Fresh Banana Leaves — An Indigenous Approach To Science Fresh Banana Leaves — An Indigenous Approach To Science

I've cut it down because A) no one needs to know that many of my thoughts and B) I don't mean to make this review a shortcut instead of reading the book in its entirety and learning from the author herself. Here, Jessica Hernandez–Maya Ch’orti’ and Zapotec environmental scientist and founder of environmental agency Piña Soul–introduces and contextualizes Indigenous environmental knowledge and proposes a vision of land stewardship that heals rather than displaces, that generates rather than destroys.

There is a lot of good, valuable information in this book, but the lack of editing makes it a difficult read, both on the basic prose level (words and sentences repeated) and on the level of the information provided (misattributed quotation, mixing up fair and free trade, describing England as an Eastern European nation).

Fresh Banana Leaves by Jessica Hernandez, Ph.D Fresh Banana Leaves by Jessica Hernandez, Ph.D

Ultimately, the kinships and relationships we have developed with them have made them our relatives as well. I need to ponder how I present science lessons to students and if I am providing space to listen to their knowledge and experience rather than glorifying a Western science model. I assumed it would be an overview of things we should be doing to correct our relationship with the environment across the board and in many different areas…. During the civil war in El Salvador that began in the 1970s, an injured Victor Hernandez hid from falling bombs beneath the fronds of a banana tree. As a PhD studying environmental fluid mechanics at UW I was very excited to read this book written by a PhD environmental science grad from UW.

Indigenous peoples know their lands, know their environments, know some of the changes resulting from climate change. Hernandez discusses how conservation as a scientific field needs to acknowledge how colonialism makes these practices necessary and how it still informs methodology. The book demonstrates how Indigenous peoples are not the perpetrators of environmental destruction but face the most harm from those actions taken by others. We see that with marine protected areas, where people who rely on fishing for sustenance are not allowed to fish. Simply lay a piece of banana leaf on your grill and cook your food items on top of it as you would with tin foil.