Jessica Hernandez: Healing with indigenous science and holistic thinking (ep352)
“In a way, Western science compartmentalizes a lot of the information through those boxes or as I say, through those puzzle pieces. Indigenous science looks at the entire picture to formulate our information and our questions.”
In this episode, we welcome Dr. Jessica Hernandez, a transnational Indigenous scholar, scientist, and community advocate based in the Pacific Northwest. Her work is grounded in her Indigenous cultures and ways of knowing. She advocates for climate, energy, and environmental justice through her scientific and community work and strongly believes that Indigenous sciences can heal our Indigenous lands.
Dr. Hernandez is the author of the newly published Fresh Banana Leaves: Healing Indigenous Landscapes through Indigenous Science.
Subscribe and listen to Green Dreamer in any podcast app or read on for the episode transcript.
If you feel inspired by this episode, please consider donating a gift of support of any amount today!
Transcript:
Note: *Our episodes are minimally edited. Please view them as open invitations to dive deeper into each resource and topic explored. This transcript has been edited for clarity.
Jessica Hernandez: I'm an Indigenous woman from the Zapotec nation that's located in Oaxaca, Mexico. Maya Ch'orti,' which is our community, is separated by three borders of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. But I'm from the El Salvador side.
During the 1980s and the 1970s, there was a war in Central America that devastated our countries. That war is now considered genocide against Indigenous peoples by the United Nations, given that it was targeting indigenous communities the most.
As a result of that war, my father ended up having to forcefully join the movement, especially since we were losing a lot of our men. He fought in the war for three years before he was displaced, and eventually made it to the United States. As a result of that, I grew up with my Indigenous dictionary because my parents are the only ones displaced from their families, their lineages.
Every time we would go home, it was actually going back to our ancestral lands. So, I was always interested in learning more about our environment, because my relatives, my parents would instill in me those strong relationships, [reflected by the ones] that our communities hold with nature: reciprocal relationships between us and our animal and plant relatives.
Because of my interest in learning more about our environment, and wildlife, I ended up pursuing environmental sciences, and eventually received a doctoral degree.
Kamea Chayne: And the title Fresh Banana Leaves?
Jessica Hernandez: Yes, so why I decided to name the book Fresh Banana Leaves was based on the story that centers our displacement.
The story is of my father, who was forcefully required to either join the army, or the guerilla—the opposing side of the government. He ended up having to choose sides when he was 11. Three years after that, when he was 14, his entire guerilla encampment was bombarded, it was attacked, and one of the things that he recalled was everything that the bombs touched being destroyed. It was obliterating everything in sight, so he went to seek refuge under a banana tree.
This wasn't just a random banana tree, it was a banana tree that he had played with, a banana tree that he had built a relationship with since he was a child. He used this banana tree to climb and escape the reality that he was facing during that time. He would talk to the tree as though it was a friend. When he went to seek refuge in his tree, he saw a bomb drop on top of the banana tree. But instead of igniting, he saw how the leaves of the banana tree actually wrapped the bomb in a way that prevented it from igniting.
So one of the teachings that my father still holds to his heart is that nature protects us, as long as we protect nature. In this case, he protected the banana tree. As a result of this, then the tree protected him.
In western religion, we're taught that our guardian angels are protecting us. But in my family's spirituality, we're taught that our animal and plant relatives are also protecting us. But obviously, we have to have reciprocal relationships: we protect them so that they can protect us in return.
The name Fresh Banana Leaves is symbolic of my father's story, of how those leaves gave him a fresh start, and because those leaves are the main reason why I'm here today, alive and being able to tell and write his story, as well.
Kamea Chayne: I have chills listening to that story, and really appreciate you sharing this with us.
The relationship between Indigenous science and Western science is one that we have explored on the show before, with different Indigenous scholars as well as ecologists and scientists who receive their education from Western research institutions.
I'm curious to hear you deconstruct the methodologies of each and how they might lead to varying ways to understand a particular situation. I know you've talked about the linear framework of the scientific method, and your invitation to follow a more fluid and dynamic approach.
What do you mean by this and what are some of the limitations you've seen with the more linear methods of inquiry?
Jessica Hernandez: One of the things that I always say is that in Western science, we're taught to formulate our knowledges or our facts through this linear process—the scientific method where you make up a question, draw hypotheses and do research to collect data and determine whether the hypothesis was correct.
Western science is more reductionary—it tends to place things in boxes.
If you want to study fish, you will pursue a degree or major in fisheries. If you want to study health, you will go into the public health sector. That's what I refer to as the puzzle pieces that make up this entire puzzle.
For Indigenous sciences… oftentimes scholars refer to it as traditional ecological knowledge. But the reason why I don't like to use that term is that scientists tend to focus more on the traditional while ignoring that our knowledges have adapted, that we have formulated new facts and yet they still refer to us in the past tense because of that term traditional. So, I like to use “Indigenous science” more, especially given that I see our knowledge as a type of science, as someone who has been trained in Western science. Because we adapt our knowledges, and we do research, but obviously not through the linear framework that the scientific method calls for.
As I was saying, one of the comparisons that I always like to give is how Indigenous science is like looking at an entire, completed puzzle: where we look at how everything is interconnected, how we cannot remove one puzzle piece, otherwise our entire puzzle is not complete. But Western science focuses more on the puzzle pieces, and not on completing the entire puzzle.
So say we want to study why fish are declining, we will focus more on fish health, we will reduce our focus to something more narrow. Versus in Indigenous science, we look at everything more holistically. We look at the trees, the air, the pollution, the water, and other fish species that are not necessarily that fish species. It tends to be more holistic, more big picture.
We're looking at the entire puzzle, as opposed to looking just at the puzzle pieces.
In a way, Western science compartmentalizes a lot of the information through those boxes or as I say, through those puzzle pieces. Indigenous science looks at the entire picture to formulate our information and our questions.
Kamea Chayne: That analogy is really helpful. Certainly, there's value to both the puzzle pieces and the completed puzzle. I think we all have to have the humility to recognize the limitations of every form of knowledge in order to broaden and gain a deeper perspective on the world.
Seeing as you straddle these worlds, what roadblocks have you come across when trying to uplift and integrate Indigenous science into your Western scientific publications, especially in relation to this idea of credibility and what is seen as “legitimate” forms of knowledge within Western science?
Jessica Hernandez: As an Indigenous scholar who has to publish, especially in the sciences, we walk a fine line. Oftentimes, we want to share our knowledge but some of our knowledge is sacred, some of our knowledge we have to follow a cultural protocol in order for us to share. One of the limitations that I experience is the roadblock that...
Lived experiences are not really welcome in science spaces, where we tend to focus more on numerical data.
Our lived experiences, our firsthand observations, especially as people who still live in their lands, who have formulated knowledge of our environment since time immemorial that has been passed down through generations… Science doesn't validate that knowledge or those observations.
Science also doesn't respect that some of our knowledge is also sacred, that it's meant to be kept within our own communities. That's not to say that it's a secret that we can only have access to, it is just that our communities are now very careful because time after time, we have seen how we have shared our knowledge and it has been co-opted or stolen, especially in the name of “science”. Our communities have shared sacred knowledge and they have published that without our consent, and without following the cultural protocol. As a result of that, we have to walk a fine line as Indigenous scientists to make sure that we do not share sacred knowledge.
But at the same time, when we share our lived experiences, which are different from our sacred knowledge, those lived experiences are invalidated. Firsthand observations are ignored. Because we don't have anything to cite from our knowledge.
A prime example that I like to give in the environmental sciences is the whole field of permaculture, where “permaculture” was coined by a white, cisgender male who worked with an Indigenous Aboriginal community in Australia, where they shared that knowledge of how to look at agriculture from a more holistic lens (as opposed to the Western framework where we produce these monocultures). He then decided to take that knowledge, and coined it in the western world as “permaculture”.
That field today is a really rich field in terms of economic revenue. But when we see whether the field is actually benefiting the Indigenous community from where he co-opted that knowledge… it's not.
Kamea Chayne: To add to that, something I've personally observed is that as people increasingly become aware of the value and importance of learning Indigenous perspectives and ways of knowing and become interested in things like Native cultures and Indigenous foods, a lot of people want the “cultural” aspect, they want the knowledge and the medicines and the ecological practices, but are more reserved when it comes to engaging with the more challenging politics of Indigenous sovereignty.
So a lot of people want to take part in the healing and support the healing, but don't necessarily see that healing as political, or see that one's access to healing in their own ways can be extremely contentious and even entail violent consequences.
So what do you feel is important to add here when thinking about the relationships between culture, knowledge, and politics?
Jessica Hernandez: Oftentimes are our Indigenous cultures are commodified to be consumed, but Indigeneity, healing...
Everything is political because we live in settler-colonial frameworks. Our government structures that continue to oppress Indigenous peoples, continue to build on eco-colonialism.
The fact that Indigenous peoples no longer have a right to steward their lands, where our management and policies are enacted by those who hold power and privilege who are not Indigenous peoples… It's important for people to participate with us in political action. Otherwise, they're not truly intending to be a part of the healing. We tend to look at healing as very linear, but it’s not. There's going to be ups and downs, there are going to be good and bad emotions. It’s important for our allies to also partake in the political sphere of that because that is a part of healing.
Colonialism embedded many layers into our communities. One of those layers is the political government structures and the politics, that prevent Indigenous peoples from speaking up when they don't want a pipeline going through their sacred sites, when they don't want to rely on extractive energy resources because it continues to pollute their environments, their sacred water.
Both of them cannot be separated, especially if we're truly trying to heal our planet and communities that have suffered from colonization.
Kamea Chayne: Part of what you talk about in terms of what is necessary on the political front is supporting Indigenous sovereignty includes, for example, supporting the land back movement. I think to the vast majority of the general public, which consists of mostly working-class families and people just trying to make a better living to feed their families and survive this extractive system who don't even necessarily own a home or land, for that matter, land back is something they presume they’d be averse to.
And of course, every Native community defines this in a different way, and I want to acknowledge that. But from your perspective, what has this movement meant to you, and what have you learned to be the best ways to initiate these conversations, especially with the broader populace?
Jessica Hernandez: There's a lot of misinformation and misconceptions regarding land back. Oftentimes people who are not Indigenous to the Americas think that it's this massive deportation that's going to take place, where only the people who are Indigenous to these continents are going to be allowed to remain here. But I think that that's not the case with the land back movement.
Land Back is giving the autonomy to steward and caretake for our land, back to Indigenous peoples.
We see that climate change impacts are jeopardizing Indigenous communities the most and first. So a lot of our Indigenous communities had to adapt to climate change impacts. In comparison, Western sciences are a little bit behind, because most of the sciences are done in urban settings, where they are not experiencing the same climate change impacts.
The land back movement calls for validating Indigenous stewardship, validating those Indigenous knowledges that protect our environments, and moving forward so that we can actually truly mitigate and adapt.
The land back movement is also about moving away from those extractive political regimes, or even capitalism that continues to see nature or natural resources as capital or economic value, as opposed to relatives that we should build connections with and be in relationships with.
Kamea Chayne: There are certainly deeper worldview shifts that come with it. What seems to me to be a challenge within settler-colonial societies is the superiority complex. Because these societies were essentially built on and realized through domination, it becomes a cultural value for people raised within them to aspire to win, to conquer, to own, and to control, because that is at the foundation of the established order and how a lot of people have been conditioned to define success in life.
So whether we're talking about the validation of other forms of knowledge like Indigenous science, or whether we're talking about the land back movement, I think there is this deeper value shift that needs to happen because when we have cultures that see eco-social hierarchies as necessary and domination and control as success, then legitimizing other forms of intelligence and knowledge that change the power dynamics can feel like a threat.
The same is true for land stewardship as well. Land ownership is something that is so prized within our society. But I think for different reasons that more so have to do with wealth accumulation in the settler culture as opposed to kinship and the ability to build a deeper relationship with place and to care for the land as an extended self. The idea of land back also can feel like a threat, rather than an understanding that it is what can support our collective healing.
What else comes to mind for you as we peel back the layers to the deeper values and perspectives and worldviews that are at the heart of these transformations needed for our planetary healing?
Jessica Hernandez: Even when we look at our educational systems, when we study ecology, when we study the life cycles of plants and the water cycle, there's still this disconnection of how it all relates to humans.
It's important for us to also question why we continue to teach ecology in this way, where we look at a pyramid of species and humans are always a species at the top, where it's not a linear relationship, where the power hasn't been shared among those pieces equally. Queer ecology and deep ecology are trying to dismantle those notions that humans continue to be the top species in the hierarchy of species.
It starts with also questioning the learning that we did in the K-12 system and unlearning and relearning those concepts, those notions, so that we can better formulate, understand, and include Indigenous worldviews on how to build that kinship and be in relationship with animals and plants, and also the non-living natural resources. Because we have been conditioned to learn ecology, to learn biology from this lens that continues to separate humans from nature, we're not going to get there.
We're not going to understand the significance of the land back movement until we can unlearn ourselves what we have been taught all these years.
And also relearn, so we can embody a more inclusive environment where our voices are not the only ones at the table, but that other voices that are often ignored or not even invited to the table also get to speak for their communities and their environments as well.
Kamea Chayne: Another thought that came up for me is how the dominant culture tends to assign more value and legitimacy to aspects of a society or of knowledge when they are separated and compartmentalized, which goes back to what you were saying earlier.
In our broader society, there has been compartmentalization of institutions of knowledge and the formal educational systems, institutions of policymaking and governance coming from something that is outside and on top of the separation between the public and the private, the separation between food production systems and wild land conservation. This disassociation between the representational monetary system of assigned values and the socio-ecological system with their own dynamic currencies of more relational value.
So the dominant culture tends to only recognize these parts of society as “legitimate” when they are separated and professionalized in silos, and not so much when they might be working really intricately together inside of highly complex and integrated kinship and relational systems.
I don't know where this urge to constantly reduce and simplify and separate comes from, but this also feels like a part of a deeper crisis, because when we give more value to something only after it's gone through a process of simplification and separation, then that's probably what we'll end up doing to ourselves and to our planet.
Jessica Hernandez: Our Indigenous sacred knowledge wouldn't make sense until people unlearn how we continue to compartmentalize things or reduce things so that they can be consumed, as opposed to understanding them holistically. Even going back to how we can build relationships with nature...
We have to stop compartmentalizing nature as though it's an entity separate from humans.
Until we can unlearn and our society can unlearn, it will never be possible for us to even share that sacred knowledge, because we know there's still going to be a need for people to compartmentalize things, to reduce them and then coin them such that it can be consumed further by the Western societies and cultures.
Kamea Chayne: And that's the crisis in form. We can't really be replicating how we're doing things, in the same ways that created the problem. So, it's not just taking the knowledge, but applying them in the same ways, but rather really shifting how we're doing things and how we're thinking about things and our worldviews and values altogether.
Jessica Hernandez: That's definitely a great way to put it. Oftentimes people question why we keep certain knowledge is sacred. But I think you were mentioning also that we're not going to be able to share that until people stop looking at it as something that has to be compartmentalized or reduced for it to be further consumed and further exploited in the name of capitalism, in the name of democracy, and in the name of education.
Kamea Chayne: It's kind of like when little kids are growing up, sometimes you just have to withhold some things from them until you feel that they're ready for it, until they've gone through the necessary background learnings and other forms of growing up and transformations that they need before they're ready to hold that knowledge in a responsible manner.
To weave in our earlier conversation to better understand the climate crisis, one of the key differences you've noted between Western and Indigenous science is how Western science tends to look for a lot of quantifiable measurements to track, whereas Indigenous science may be more qualitative in a lot of ways. Another difference is that the first holds this dispassionate observer as objective and separate from what's being studied, whereas Indigenous inquiries often hold a more relational lens and see the observer as a part of the matrix itself.
With all of this in mind, as you've tried to understand climate change from different angles beyond just the quantifiable measures like carbon emissions, what have you learned by using a more qualitative, relational, and even historical lens to look at the same crisis, that maybe you feel has been missing from the major and dominant climate narratives?
Jessica Hernandez: As a climate scientist, somebody who teaches introduction to climate science, we continue to follow textbooks that continue to separate climate change data from the impacts it has on humans. But what some of these textbooks or some of these scientists miss is how climate change is displacing many people.
A big reason why that continues to be missing is because displacement is criminalized in the United States.
That's why it's called “immigration”. Immigration policies are very strict on climate refugees and people who are being displaced because of those extreme climate change impacts they're facing in their countries, coupled with political turmoil, coupled with the natural disasters that they're trying to still recover from, or revitalize their countries from, are criminalized. They're prevented from being considered refugees because one, they're coming from the Global South, which tends to be where most of the displacement is taking place, and two, because immigration is more tied to the political spectrum.
It connects back to the fact that we want to consume Indigenous cultures and we want them to heal Indigenous communities, but we don't want to get involved in the political spectrum in the politics behind it. Part of that is that displacement rate that we're facing. For instance, looking back on my own personal history, we were displaced because of that genocide that my father was lucky enough to survive. But there were a lot of our relatives who didn't survive.
Our Indigenous communities rapidly decreased. We had thousands of Maya Ch'orti' fluent speakers to the point that we only have a few, probably less than 10. Oftentimes one of the things that's missing is displacement and how that displacement impacts Indigenous people, how it fractures part of our identities because we are not back in our ancestral lands and some of us are not even given the opportunity to return because our Indigenous communities are still persecuted.
Our Indigenous leaders are murdered, especially if they advocate for environmental justice, for the protection of Mother Earth. People fail to see that even now, Latin America is the deadliest place for Indigenous leaders. We are still persecuted. We're still murdered. Latin America also holds 50 percent of the world's biodiversity—so we're not protecting the people who are trying to protect 50 percent of the world's biodiversity.
We're failing to recognize that we might lose that biodiversity because we didn't want to get involved in politics, because we didn't want to see the bigger picture of how climate change and climate science are interconnected.
Indigenous rights, especially south of the border and even today in the United States and Canada, we see how Indigenous communities who advocate against the destruction of their environments are still met with violence. That violence is documented, especially against our elders, our Indigenous women, and our Indigenous children, and is still not punished.
So what are the driving factors behind that displacement? The government structures that allow people to be violent towards our Indigenous leaders—capitalism, greed...
Kamea Chayne: That certainly emphasizes how important it is to hold a more holistic lens when trying to understand any crisis, because climate change isn't just about the ecological aspects without humans, and that also comes from a perspective of separation that people are separate from the “environment” as well.
In terms of healing for our path going forward and reversing this trend of displacement, destruction, separation, and simplification, you bring up this idea of ecological debt. Sometimes it's also referred to as climate debt, which calls for climate reparations for those basically who have contributed the most to the crisis to give back the most in terms of helping to resource the solutions and supporting front-line communities to adapt.
As you've said before: “When we talk about Indigenous rights or human rights in general, oftentimes, as people who are marginalized, we’re told to get over it, because that’s in the past, but that past for us is not really that far along, and in my case, that’s in my parent’s generation, my grandparent’s generation…for many Indigenous peoples we cannot just simply get over things, because it’s something that we endured not that long ago… that intergenerational trauma is passed down to us…healing is not going to happen in our lifetime in our Indigenous communities, but I know that we’re planting those seeds…”
I think this goes back to the sense of superiority embedded in the culture where a lot of people will say those who hold greater positions of power and who hold more resources today and who own more land, well, they fought in the past and they won. So other people should just deal with it and move on.
I almost feel like that comes from a place of disassociation from our interdependence that also needs healing in and of itself, and that we shouldn't prop up as being better off, because it's essentially just being out of touch with our interdependence. And if we are a part of the same extended body of the Earth, then the act of healing for any community will have restorative ripple effects far beyond where it's taking place.
I would be interested in hearing you elaborate, though, on your vision of addressing ecological debt and how we might reframe our perspectives on it so that it's not viewed as “giving in” or “losing” for people who may feel like that's what reparations means for them.
Jessica Hernandez: One of the things that we tend to forget is that in order for us to heal, we need to know or learn what we're healing from.
And it's interesting that we're having these discussions while many school districts and governments, and state legislatures are passing laws that are preventing the history of those who have been marginalized to be taught in schools.
I think that's also fracturing and removing us from the healing that we have to do collectively.
It's important for us to learn the histories behind conservation, to learn that history even behind climate change and climate science. We remove ourselves so much, because those fields tend to be more data-driven… We forget to look at the bigger picture: which is our collective healing as a species, our collective healing as Mother Earth’s children.
Without knowing our true history and only relying on the history that we have been taught in schools, we're failing our own healing. Because how are we supposed to heal if we don't know what role our ancestors played? We don't know how our existence is upholding certain oppressive systems that continue to further marginalize Indigenous peoples, that continue to segregate against Black people. So it's important for us to learn that history.
But it's an interesting time and space that we're in now, because we have pushed for that call to learn other histories aside from the dominant—a dominant history that allows people to be like, “Whoa, our ancestors fought and they won, so get over it, It's our land.” We're seeing that in schools, especially with parents, they don't feel comfortable having to unravel those histories because there is that guilt that comes with them. Part of healing is allowing us to feel all those emotions and making space for them, and not trying to stop something because it's making us feel guilty.
There is this push from Black and Indigenous communities to unravel those history books that have been marginalized and ignored from textbooks. A lot of parents and people who hold power and privilege are scared. They're frightened to let their children learn those histories because they feel like they're losing control and power. But that’s part of our healing.
In order for us to move forward, we have to learn our true histories, the histories that have been ignored, the histories that are not the [dominant narrative] or that have been normalized in our educational system.
Kamea Chayne: It's so true that it's important to allow ourselves to hold a safe space to feel all of our emotions because there's a role for these emotions. So, whether it's guilt or shame, it's important to feel that because they might guide us towards the acts of healing that we really need. They might inspire us to make amends for what has been severed or harmed in the past.
The last thing I wanted to bring up with you is that I'm aware for you at a personal level, you've been really involved in doing mutual aid in support of your community as part of how you're supporting the work of collective healing. As people are increasingly interested in learning what actions we can take and what we can do, I'm curious what that type of community building has looked like for you in practice and what recommendations or any other actions you have for our listeners.
Jessica Hernandez: Part of the gift of my parents being the only ones displaced from their lineage and their families is that I get to go back home and build those relationships. It's a double-edged sword because sometimes we do feel alone and we feel lonely because we don't have family members that we can drive an hour and visit because they are not here and those settler borders, especially to even cross those settler borders, is a big deal, right? It's like really impossible, especially from coming from down south.
Mutual aid is grounded in Indigenous principles where we collectively work to help one another. We can see that in our agricultural practices, where when we have rolls of corn, we don't take as many as we can, we only take what we need. If you've got a family of three, you will take three corn, and to your family of 10, you take 10 corn. But a family of three doesn't question why the family of 10 ended up getting more corn. Because you take what you need. Mutual aid is a part of that. You give what you can when somebody needs it, hoping that you're planting seeds, so that when you end up needing, people are also going to help you.
Through mutual aid, there's that collective healing, especially as we are seeing how Indigenous communities are impacted by climate change. One of the mutual aids was to support the Mixtec community of San Pablo Tijaltepec who had lost their communal harvest because of the hurricanes during the hurricane season. The hurricanes destroyed their milpas, their communal garden, and their food source. The mutual aid helped them to heal because many people, when facing those impacts, end up being displaced, which is not something people want.
None of my parents are happy that they're here—they didn't have a choice. Part of that is that they want to support their community members, so they don't have to leave their lands. That’s part of why even in the diaspora, we help a lot of our community members back home. Because nobody wants to be displaced from their lands.
Even with just $5, we can help to make a difference in their lives. Our community members in the diaspora and also our allies are willing to support that. That's part of the collective healing.
*** CLOSING ***
Kamea Chayne: What's an impactful publication you follow or a book that's been really profound for you?
Jessica Hernandez: I think Decolonizing is Not a Metaphor by Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang.
Kamea Chayne: What is a personal motto, mantra, or practice you engage with to stay grounded?
Jessica Hernandez: Meditation, especially when I'm having a rough day or when I'm tired.
Kamea Chayne: And what is your biggest source of inspiration right now?
Jessica Hernandez: Just the love that Fresh Banana Leaves has received from people, also non-Indigenous people, and community members.
Kamea Chayne: Jessica, deep gratitude to you for sharing your wealth of knowledge and learnings here with us. Thank you so much. What final words of wisdom do you have for us as green dreamers?
Jessica Hernandez:
