A review by talypollywaly
Fresh Banana Leaves: Healing Indigenous Landscapes through Indigenous Science by Jessica Hernandez

emotional informative fast-paced

4.0

I think this book was incredibly poorly marketed, let's start there. This was more heavily a critique of conservation, as founded by white men, more than anything (with layers of memoir). Despite the author's abhorrence of Western Science, I think laying down a groundwork that defined, established, and clearly outlined her definition and plan for indigenous science as a field of both practice, study, and retribution, would have greatly benefited the market that this book was aimed at.

However, she greatly contradicts herself at the end of the book by saying she purposefully keeps certain Indigenous knowledge to herself. So maybe that's why she didn't want to define herself too clearly? IDK.

(Otherwise, why else publish in the U.S. and push this in white liberal markets "for lovers of Braiding Sweetgrass" etc.)
In addition, there were a few minor errors within this book that just irked me, since this is supposed to be a published, "well-thought-out" book for sale. There are other thoughts I have of this book, but I will be keeping them to myself since there are plenty of negative reviews of this you can read and I don't feel the need to pile on.