Fresh Banana Leaves: Healing Indigenous Landscapes through Indigenous Science

Jessica Hernandez, an Indigenous environmental scientist, breaks down why western conservationism isn't working and offers Indigenous models informed by case studies, personal stories, and family histories that center the voices of Latin American women and land protectors. Despite the undeniable fact that Indigenous communities are among the most affected by climate devastation, Indigenous science is missing from mainstream environmental policy or discourse. And while holistic land, water, and forest management practices are born from millennia of Indigenous experience and have much to teach all of us, Indigenous science has long been ignored, otherized, or perceived as "soft". This is the product of a systematic, centuries-long campaign of racism, colonialism, extractive capitalism, and delegitimization.