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Dr. Jessica Hernandez  is a transnational Indigenous scholar, scientist, and community advocate based in the Pacific Northwest. She has an interdisciplinary academic background ranging from marine sciences to forestry. 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. In 2020, she became the first alumni from her high school in South Central Los Angeles to receive a doctoral degree. She is the founder of Piña Soul, SPC, an environmental consulting & artesanias hybrid business that supports Black & Indigenous-led conservation and environmental projects through community mutual aids and micro-grants.

Her current research, as a postdoctoral research fellow funded by the National Science Foundation, is investigating the role energy plays in addressing climate change impacts, from an environmental physics lens. ​ By formulating energy justice pillars and deriving solutions from case studies that focus on sustainable energy and mitigation strategies (primarily those implemented by Indigenous communities), this research will help physics education recognize the historic and present-day inequities in the energy industry.

She currently holds appointments at Sustainable Seattle (Board Member), City of Seattle's Urban Forestry Commission, and the International Mayan League (Climate Justice Policy Strategist). Her book, Fresh Banana Leaves: Healing Indigenous Landscapes through Indigenous Science, is forthcoming this Spring '22.

Publications

Hernandez, J. (2022) Fresh Banana Leaves: Healing Indigenous Landscapes Through Indigenous Science. *Forthcoming 2022*
Hernandez, J. (2022) Indigenous Ways of Knowing. Native Education Leadership from the Pacific Northwest: Advancing Native Ways of Knowing, Traditions and Culture. University of Washington Press. *Forthcoming 2022* 
Hernandez, J., Scherr, R., & Robertson, A. D. (2021). Redefining Energy Justice in Physics Classrooms. Environmental Justice.
Hernandez, J., and Vogt, K.A. (2020) "Indigenizing Restoration: Indigenous Lands before Urban Parks." Human Biology 92.1: 37-44.
Hernandez, J., and Spencer, M.S. (2020). "Weaving Indigenous Science into Ecological Sciences: Culturally Grounding Our Indigenous Scholarship." Human Biology 92.1: 5-9.
Spencer, M. S., Fentress, T., Touch, A., & Hernandez, J. (2020). Environmental Justice, Indigenous Knowledge Systems, and Native Hawaiians and Other Pacific Islanders. Human Biology, 92(1), 45-57.
Hernandez, J. (2020) The Role of Environmental Economics in Environmental Justice. The Medicine Wheel : Environmental Decision-Making Process of Indigenous Peoples. ​Michigan State University Press.
Hernandez J. (2020) Environmental Curriculum Supplement. ​The Whale Child. North Atlantic Books.
Hernandez, J. (2019). Indigenizing environmental justice: Case studies from the Pacific Northwest. Environmental Justice, 12(4), 175-181.
"For our Indigenous pueblos, by our Indigenous pueblos. May we continue to write and tell our stories, instead of our stories being written and told for us."
​ -Fresh Banana Leaves by Jessica Hernandez, Ph.D.
"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 by Jessica Hernandez, Ph.D.
"The same way human beings are destroying our Mother Earth, our spirits are being destroyed as Indigenous women. We continue to live under the notions of patriarchy that dictate that our social place should be below a man’s political, social, and cultural power." -Fresh Banana Leaves by Jessica Hernandez, Ph.D.
"This was one of the banana trees we had in our encampment. For a couple of months,
it served as our only food source for the entire guerilla.We survive off bananas from these trees and tortillas we would make that we would season with salt."  
​-Fresh Banana Leaves by Jessica Hernandez, Ph.D.