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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 on her Indigenous cultures and ways of knowing. She advocates for food, climate, 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 supports Black & Indigenous-led conservation and environmental projects through community mutual aids and micro-grants. She is currently a National Science Foundation-funded postdoctoral fellow working on the nexus of Energy & Equity (energy justice) at the University of Washington, Bothell. ​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., 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.
Hernandez, J., and Spencer, M.S. (2020). "The Future of Research Is Indigenous: Culturally Grounding Our Indigenous Scholarship." 
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.