Fresh Banana Leaves: Healing Indigenous Landscapes through Indigenous Science

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it truly pains me to rate this book so low. i was SO excited to read this--i've been looking for writing on this topic for a few months--and

Fresh Banana Leaves‘ shows how conservation has harmed ‘Fresh Banana Leaves‘ shows how conservation has harmed

Hernandez: When I talk about ecological grief, I’m talking about the longing that many [displaced] Indigenous peoples have to return to their lands. Another way to look at that is the relationships that we [Indigenous people] have with nature — especially with our plants, animals and nonliving relatives. When the impacts of climate change destroy them, there’s a mourning that we all undergo as Indigenous peoples.

Jessica Hernandez, an environmental scientist, draws parallels between her father’s story and that of the banana tree. The banana tree’s journey from Southeast Asia via colonial European ships forced the resilient plant to adapt to its new home in the Americas. Similarly, her father adjusted to being displaced, eventually settling in the United States, often experiencing less-than-warm welcomes along the way.

Fresh Banana Leaves - Etsy UK Fresh Banana Leaves - Etsy UK

Conservation is very linear, focused on one species, and doesn’t necessarily look at the entire landscape. Look at the contributors of why a certain species is declining, and sometimes it’s not even that people are overharvesting — it’s climate change and other environmental impacts we tend to ignore. Do you want to preserve the whole leaf? Then take a whole leaf and gradually add it to the hot water. Despite the undeniable fact that Indigenous communities are among the most affected by climate devastation, Indigenous science is nowhere to be found in mainstream environmental policy or discourse. And while holistic land, water, and forest management practices born from millennia of Indigenous knowledge systems have much to teach all of us, Indigenous science has long been ignored, otherized, or perceived as “soft”–the product of a systematic, centuries-long campaign of racism, colonialism, extractive capitalism, and delegitimization.

However, do not keep the leaf for more than 30 seconds. It will cause to convert leaf color greenish to brownish.