Fresh Banana Leaves: Healing Indigenous Landscapes through Indigenous Science

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Dr. Jessica Hernandez's book starts with her father's story about being a child soldier in the civil war in El Salvador. However, do not keep the leaf for more than 30 seconds. It will cause to convert leaf color greenish to brownish.

Fresh Banana Leaves: Healing Indigenous Landscapes - Science Fresh Banana Leaves: Healing Indigenous Landscapes - Science

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. Hernandez also claims at one point that she cannot speak for all indigenous people, but that's kind of what she seems to do at multiple points in the book (e.g., claiming that all indigenous cultures respect nature and never exploit animals). 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 Here you can use a polythene bag too. But make sure to enclose the bag loosely. It helps to limit your banana leaves for the cold air. The plastic bag will protect your leaves from drying out.Westerners, [Dr. Hernandez] writes, fall short on including Indigenous people in environmental dialogues and deny them the social and economic resources necessary to recover from ‘land theft, cultural loss, and genocide’ and to prepare for the future effects of climate change.” This is a convenient way to keep your banana leaves fresh for a long time. Believe me; you can keep them at their original state for six months. SN: You also write about how many non-Indigenous scientists practice helicopter research. How does this affect Indigenous communities? Yes, under the lens of Western environmentalism, banana trees are an invasive species to my ancestral native lands. However, to us, bananas are not invasive; they are displaced relatives that have adapted well to our climates and are now incorporated into our traditional diets. Ultimately, the kinships and relationships we have developed with them have made them our relatives as well. All I can think of is that, like me and many Indigenous peoples in the diaspora, banana trees have also been displaced. We have been displaced from our native and ancestral lands and forced to adapt to our new environments and form new kinships with our new land."

Fresh Banana Leaves - Bstedwin How To Preserve Fresh Banana Leaves - Bstedwin

DR.MICHAEL SPENCER, Presidential Term Professor of Social Work and director of Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islander, and Oceania Affairs at the IndigenousWellness Research Institute (IWRI),University Take out the banana leaf while it has a greenish appearance. Do not try to remove the banana leaf with your hand. It will burn your hand. So, take them out using a appropriate tool.

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. The child soldier, a member of the Maya Ch’orti’ group indigenous to the region, made a crutch from a branch of the tree and limped toward Guatemala, toward freedom. “I strongly believe that it was this banana tree that saved my life,” he told his daughter, Jessica Hernandez, who shares the story in Fresh Banana Leaves: Healing Indigenous Landscapes Through Indigenous Science. “It is ironic because banana trees are not native to El Salvador,” he said. Do not store any other items on the banana leaves. It can be caused to fragile the leaves when frozen. Tip 2# Preserve banana leaves using the refrigerator Do you want to preserve the whole leaf? Then take a whole leaf and gradually add it to the hot water. On a positive note, the personal anecdotes and references did make my blood boil, and I feel called to do more for indigenous communities. I just wish this book educated me more on how I could do that. For example, Dr. Hernandez talks about community based participatory research (CBPR) which is excellent, but I wanted more suggestions like that that weren’t limited to an academic setting. What can a “regular” person do to support indigenous people? That was the question I wanted answered and I feel like this book fell short when it could’ve been an invaluable resource. Environmental scientist Jessica Hernandez is the author of Fresh Banana Leaves. Univ. of Washington

Fresh Thai Banana Leaf (leaves) 200g Imported Weekly from Fresh Thai Banana Leaf (leaves) 200g Imported Weekly from

However, thaw them for around 30 minutes if you want to use them. To speed up the thawing process, wash it using running water or hot water. This is Nonfiction. The author makes some valid points but what stood out the most was the ranting. And the narrator (who was not the author) had such sarcasm and disdain in her voice, by the end, I was just glad it was over. I felt like I was being yelled at even though my people are also her people. I kept wondering if she knew who her target audience was. It sounded more like she was preaching to the choir rather than raising awareness and throwing in some education. It's true that Hernandez doesn't directly romanticize the Indigenous cultures that she comes from. She calls out xenophobia in Mexico and the ways in which her cultures have internalized colonizer concepts of misogyny and queer-phobia. At the same time, the deepest she digs into the ways in which her cultures practice science (ostensibly the point of the book) is that they consider all natural phenomena to be their relatives. This is not revelatory; this is a sound bite and a t-shirt. Leaving it at that practically invites people who have no acquaintance with Indigenous science to romanticize and commodify it. Adding to the problem, Hernandez puts Desmond Tutu's quote about swapping the land for the Bible, along with less well attributed truisms, into the mouth of her wise grandmother; and she translates interviews with her father into English nearly literally, making him sound ignorant and fractured in ways I'm sure he didn't in the original. Both of these things further contribute to the tendency to cast her Indigenous relatives as Noble Savages.This book delivers two important messages. Primarily, that Indigenous ways of learning and knowing differ from European-derived science, and that Indigenous science should be respected for its longevity, depth, adaptability, and place-specificity. Secondarily, that those who are most oppressed have the most to teach us, and the world has the most to gain in uplifting them. In Fresh Banana Leaves, Jessica Hernandez weaves personal, historical, and environmental narratives to offer us a passionate and powerful call to increase our awareness and to take responsibility for caring for Mother Earth.” A must-read for anyone interested in Indigenous environmental perspectives.” I particularly loved how Hernandez interweaves her research and reflections with stories of her family (especially her father and grandmother) and interviews. There is a beautiful flow throughout this book and it is just incredibly rich with many layers. This book is great for every one interested in ecological justice, restoration (ot healing as Hernandez prefers) and the climate crisis (and shouldn't that be somehow all of us?). Inspiring and sobering, philosophically powerful and practically grounded, this book weaves together storytelling, razor sharp critiques of oppression, and liberatory pathways for how we can achieve transformation in solidarity. Dr. Hernandez offers the instructions so many environmental protectors and conservationists need toknow. These prime banana leaves are rich in color, crisp and glossy. After unrolling, wash leaves and trim edges prior to preparation. Boil leaves for two minutes to soften them a bit before cutting into desired sizes.

Fresh Banana Leaves - Jessica Hernandez Fresh Banana Leaves - Jessica Hernandez

Science News spoke with Hernandez about what she sees as conservation’s failures, Indigenous displacement and the connection between the two. The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.Banana leaves consist of huge moisture content. So, to keep them alive, you have to retain this moisture amount in the leaves. So, follow these steps. It saddens me that people continue to impose that we have to make our race "better" by living in and adopting western ways. This book excelled in talking about this issue and the consequences it brings. I was expecting to learn more about what I, as a white person living on indigenous land, could do to “heal indigenous landscapes through indigenous sciences.” But I didn’t get that. I recognize it is not the responsibility of every POC to educate white people on what we need to do to support communities of color. However, based on the book description that’s what I was expecting. I was eager to learn how I could play an active role in decolonizing environmentalism but I don’t feel like I gained that knowledge. At the end of chapter 5 Dr. Hernandez asks reflective questions to urge us to think about how we can help indigenous communities. I just remember being like, what? That’s why I’m reading this book?