Indigenous Science with Dr. Jessica Hernandez

Is Western science always the best science? On this episode, Neil deGrasse Tyson and comic co-host Marcia Belsky discuss Indigenous methods to combat climate change with Indigenous scientist and author Dr. Jessica Hernandez.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.

• 0:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk. I'm your host Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. And today, we're going to talk about environmental science. And what it means to even be engaged in that if you're in the West or somewhere else. Well, let's find out what that means in a minute. I've got with me my co-host Marcia Belsky. Marsha, welcome back to StarTalk.

• 0:39Marcia Belsky?

  Yay, thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here. I'm excited for this topic too. I'm really, really excited to hear about this.

• 0:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Really, it's a really, it's a topic that everyone ought to know about and most people don't even know exists.

• 0:53Marcia Belsky?

  Exactly.

• 0:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that's, that's where I see this. And so who we have here is a world expert on indigenous environmental studies. Who even knew that that was a thing? Jessica Hernandez. Jessica, welcome to StarTalk.

• 1:09Speaker 02

  Hello, Pali Chibiri. Thank you for having me here today.

• 1:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Excellent, excellent. And get your academic pedigree on the table here. You have a PhD from UW. Did I say that right? UW?

• 1:20Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  University of Washington in Seattle. And that PhD was environmental and forest sciences. Okay, another underappreciated feature of the world are forests. And so Jessica, you also have a master's of marine affairs, which sounds like some secret office of the Pentagon or something. You know, the few, the proud, the Marines. So does marine have a very specific definition other than, when I think of Marines, I think of marinas with boats. But surely there's a scientific meaning for that word.

• 1:53Speaker 02

  So marine affairs is like very an interdisciplinary program. So it focuses on like ocean science and also freshwater sciences. But it also integrates the policy. So one of the classes that we had to take was international ocean law, which is like a different field from, you know, what we are used to as scientists.

• 2:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow. You know, an equivalent thing to that is space law, right? It's another place where there isn't a country, but we still have to cooperate as humans. So we might have a lot to learn in space law by whatever you guys have arrived at.

• 2:24Marcia Belsky?

  This is the international law, like, what do they call, like, boat law? It's always a movie plot device, so they're like, international waters.

• 2:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They just crossed the border there, the boundary. They're now in international waters, so we can bomb them out of the ocean.

• 2:38Marcia Belsky?

  Yeah, or do marine research.

• 2:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, yeah, and so Jessica, more importantly, or I'm not going to value judge one thing you do or another, but for the world, more importantly, you're an environmental advocate. And that's so important, but you have a totally different outlook on this. And I'm delighted to learn that you wrote a book that highlights so much of this work. And great, I love the title, "Fresh Banana Leaves." What the hell is that about? And then we go to the subtitle, "Healing Indigenous Landscapes Through Indigenous Science." So let's just start right out. What is it we can learn from Indigenous science that, quote, "traditional science" either doesn't know or can't learn, or we're ignorant to, or we're in denial of?

• 3:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what are you bringing to the table coming from that place?

• 3:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, thank you for your question. And I think one of the ways that I look at Indigenous science is that, you know, a metaphor that I like to give the audience is like Indigenous science kind of looks like the completed puzzle versus Western science is we focus on the puzzle pieces, right? So we focus typically on two or three. So we're missing to look at the holistic or the entire picture in this sense. And Indigenous science, the way that is, you know, created as a framework, we put our spirituality and our identities at the front and center of it versus in Western science, as you both know, right? It follows the scientific method where we are told to remove ourselves, our spirituality, from the Western science in the name of objectivity. So Indigenous science, in a way, connects our relationships that as humans we have with nature

• 4:13Speaker 02

  and how we are a part of nature and nature is a part of us. So that's the differences that I usually tell the audience, especially when comparing and contrasting Western science and Indigenous science.

• 4:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I think a philosopher would say that science, modern science, as we now think of it in the schools, is reductionist, and whereas what you're describing is more holistic, right? Because if you're reductionist, I'm not looking at the whole puzzle. It's this corner of the puzzle, and I know exactly how this piece fits that piece, and I'm so close to those two pieces, I have no idea what the whole puzzle looks like, because I've focused. And whereas if you are holistic, you're factoring in everything. But is that always a better thing to do?

• 4:57Speaker 02

  I think it has its ups and downs, right? Because sometimes, you know, you can kind of invest a lot of time trying to, you know, look at the entire puzzle piece. But one of the things that I often see in the Western sciences is by us focusing on two or three puzzle pieces, or like you mentioned, the corner of the puzzle, we end up creating more harm, especially as it pertains to our environments, especially as it pertains to people. And given that, you know, we have racial injustices that are interconnected to environmental injustices, to climate injustices, oftentimes as scientists, we end up creating more harm than good. So I think that, you know, that's the pros of, you know, looking at the entire puzzle piece, so that we can reduce the harm that we generate as scientists.

• 5:41Marcia Belsky?

  I feel like admitting the human aspect too kind of makes the whole thing more honest, because it's like with Western science, or whatever you call it, like modern science, there is always humanness and human opinions and human decisions in it. Because I remember reading about how when they decided how to model DNA, it like came down to these two software modeling companies, and one had way more money. And so that's like, kind of where they went. But like, Western science is kind of in denial of all the sociology involved in that. So it's like-

• 6:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I think at its best, that sociology will determine what gets researched.

• 6:16Marcia Belsky?

  Yeah.

• 6:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But at the end, what is determined to be true, I think it's a second-

• 6:21Marcia Belsky?

  They try and make it objective, yeah.

• 6:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, at that point. But you're right, it totally affects the funding and what people study, or more importantly, to Jessica's point, what people even care about.

• 6:31Marcia Belsky?

  Yeah, right.

• 6:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  At the end. But, okay, so Jessica, there's an extract from some indigenous tree, and I don't remember which tree, you surely know the tree, from which we derived the active ingredient in aspirin.

• 6:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so that's been extracted. Again, it's reductionist. No, don't chew on the bark. Because who knows what else is in the bark? Plus, that might not be fun. Here it is in a pill. So what happened there is some indigenous medicine became scientifically verified. And so now that's just science, right? So, so why should indigenous science be something different from modern science? Why isn't it just, you found something that's true, we check it in the lab? Yep, it's true. Now it's science. Why can't we think of it that way?

• 7:20Speaker 02

  I think one of the things that I can think of is like how Western science is kind of founded on colonialism, right? When we look at who is considered the founders or the pioneers of many scientific disciplines, they're white European men who came to the Americas and kind of, you know, formulated their own philosophies based on, you know, Western religion that they introduced into the Americas. And I think that with indigenous science, it kind of addresses that colonialism, right? Because when we look at our landscapes, when we look at the ancestral knowledge that has been passed down to us, especially, you know, from my grandparents, from my parents to myself, you know, part of our history has been fractured because of colonialism.

• 8:02Speaker 02

  But yet, we're still trying to fight those nuances that Western or modern science kind of dismisses, especially as it pertains to indigenous peoples. One being like you mentioned, examples of our traditional medicinal plants or the medicine that we practice, and how we can compare that to how Western medicine is practiced today, right? Where they're also looking at one puzzle piece and they're giving you, you know, medicine for whatever you're going into the doctor for. But in reality, the long-term effects, you know, it has other impacts in your overall health. So I think that, you know, that's an example that, you know, the foundation of colonialism and how that's embedded in the modern or Western science we practice.

• 8:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I like that, that the medicine they prescribe for that one ailment is a puzzle piece. Because they're not looking at the whole thing. You got this one ailment, we give you this one pill, and then come back, you know, later for another pill, maybe. So, so you speak, you speaking in first person, are you a descendant of indigenous peoples?

• 8:59Speaker 02

  Yes, I'm Maya Chorty. So my Maya Chorty community comes from Central America. So we are at the border of Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. And my father was actually displaced during the Central American Civil War, where he was actually 11 years old when he was forced to be a child soldier in that war. And then I also come from the Zapotec communities, which are located in Oaxaca. And that's where my father eventually received refuge, as he was making his journey up to the United States to receive asylum. And that's where he met my mom. So I come from both communities in that sense.

• 9:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so you not only got it in your family, but now you have the academic side of it to go with it. So that ought to make you pretty potent in these conversations when you have to convince people of what they need to do. So tell me about climate change and Indigenous science.

• 9:53Speaker 02

  And go.

• 9:57Speaker 02

  Tell us about climate change and go.

• 9:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You have two minutes. Give me your best two-minute answer on...

• 10:03Marcia Belsky?

  Yeah, how are you gonna fix the problem that we caused?

• 10:07Speaker 02

  Well, I guess to give my two-minute solution, when we look at Indigenous communities, especially our relatives or our communities who are living in our ancestral lands, one of the things that I can notice is that we are already facing the climate change impacts, right? When we look at Latin America, Latin America is the house for 50% of the world's biodiversity. So we're seeing how even despite colonialism, capitalism, all these Western ideologies being introduced into our lands, we're still stewing and caretaking for 50% of the world's biodiversity.

• 10:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But just to be clear, the Amazon Basin is most of that, isn't that right?

• 10:41Speaker 02

  Yes, and we see how even, like, you know, the Indigenous communities in the Amazon are facing extreme violence because, you know, they're going against these international agricultural corporations, multi-billion-dollar corporations that are trying to deforest the Amazon rainforest.

• 10:57Speaker 02

  And I think that through that, many indigenous communities are trying to mitigate climate change, but oftentimes when we talk about in the Western science or in the international scope, right, we're kind of focusing more on the adaptation strategies. But you know, in indigenous communities, we're mitigating those impacts by going against extractive energy resources, by going against, you know, agricultural corporations that are kind of introducing monoculture that are, you know, is in a, in, at the end of the day, destroying the biodiversity. But yet, you know, when it comes to the climate change discourse and going to these international forums, indigenous voices are nowhere to be found, right? They often talk about us, but they don't include us at the table or allow us to leave

• 11:41Speaker 02

  those tables or conversations.

• 11:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is a big issue. I mean, I mean, so, so this goes beyond science. This is policy. And, and when you mentioned sort of the, the colonistic cultures descending on the native cultures, um, yeah, I, I don't have a problem when you say they brought their science with them, but the real oppressive parts of it is not so much, I would think, is not so much the science, but their way of, way of living and their way of conducting business and their way of how they think of themselves relative to other people. You know, because every colonist is like, I'm great and you're not, and I deserve this and you don't, and my God says it's better than your God. And that's a whole, I, I, I don't want to call that science because it's not.

• 12:29Marcia Belsky?

  Yeah, because it's like, science should just be indigenous science until religion and colonialism and capitalism, all these things come into play that change it into this destructive.

• 12:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, this whole, this whole soup of, of, of, of forces that probably don't have only one solution. It's got to be a multi-pronged solution because it's come, like you, like you said, Marsha, it's coming from economics and culture and religion and all of these bits and pieces that we call civilization.

• 12:56Marcia Belsky?

  Yeah. And you're fighting it. It's interesting because it's like, I feel like it's kind of what's happening in every area where it's understanding these great forces, like. And you're fighting against it locally, you know, and it's like, well, we can protect like what we still have, but then you're still fighting against people trying to take that and encroach on, you know, the land that is protected.

• 13:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right. We gotta take a quick break, but when we come back, I want to take a deep dive into that biodiversity question. I didn't know that like it was 50% of the world's biodiversity is in Latin America. That's an amazing fact.

• 13:30Marcia Belsky?

  Me neither, yeah.

• 13:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I knew that Amazon Basin would have a lot of whatever it had, but for it to be that much even of the whole world, and, and just to watch the, the contest, the conflict between indigenous peoples and the West that basically, the West, what Europe basically that wanted to conquer the world. So when we come back, more of indigenous peoples and their role in saving the planet on StarTalk.

• 14:03Speaker 03

  Hey, I'm Roy Hill Percival, and I support StarTalk on Patreon, bringing the universe down to earth. This is StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson.

• 14:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back, StarTalk. This is on indigenous environment, saving the planet, the conflict between Western science and what indigenous peoples know about the land that they're on and the holistic caring of the earth. It's all here. It's, we've got it all. It's all wrapped up in the expertise of one human being, Jessica Hernandez. And Jessica, do, are you a full-time environmental activist now? What is your affiliations?

• 14:50Speaker 02

  Right, I'm doing research. So I'm stationed at the University of Washington-Battle, and I'm doing actually research on environmental physics. So kind of looking at climate science from the energy perspective, especially given that energy is a core concept that's taught in physics.

• 15:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, definitely is. Yeah, there's, it's like half of physics is what, what is the energy doing now? And what shape is it taking? So, you know, the more you can get in there, the better. So, so we left off, we were talking about the biodiversity of the world, and so much of it being in Latin America. But tell me- How, what area, how much of Earth's surface is indigenous? I know Australia, there's a lot of sort of Aboriginal lands. Australia's a large continent.

• 15:33Marcia Belsky?

  Still indigenous?

• 15:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I, well, I don't know. But last I checked, there was, you know, the land given unto the Aboriginal people. So I'm just wondering, Jessica, what's the latest on that? On this relationship between original peoples and everybody who came later?

• 15:50Speaker 02

  One of the things that I see especially in the global context is that indigenous communities are still fighting for those land rights. As we all know, right? Nobody wants to give up their land, especially land that has been stolen from people, especially indigenous peoples. We have a unique history, right? When we talk about like, for instance, the continents of Australia, the continents of Africa, the continents of South America and also North America. And I think that is very different in each community, especially in each continent. But for instance, in the Americas, we are seeing some indigenous movements that are reclaiming land rights, especially the land. And one of the movements that I talk about in my book, Freshman Annalise, is the Sapatistas movement. So the Sapatista movement was actually led by indigenous women.

• 16:31Speaker 02

  Even though when you look at the Sapatista movement, if you were to Google, the men are actually the ones that are amplified, even though it's an indigenous woman-led movement, because, you know, we know that patriarchy is still embedded in environmentalism. And that movement, basically, the indigenous communities of South Mexico in the state of Chapas, decided that they were gonna overtake the capital of their state and actually burn land deeds in the municipal towns. So by burning land deeds, right? Nobody had ownership of their lands anymore, so they reclaimed their lands through that way. It was a peaceful resistance movement. Ironically, the Mexican government didn't enact any violence against them to stop them. So they were successful in that sense.

• 17:14Speaker 02

  So that's, you know, an example of how I can think of indigenous peoples having to reclaim their land rights. But obviously, it's not something that's automatically given to them. But we're seeing that as we speak today, even in the global context.

• 17:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, so my only American counterpart to that was in the 1960s, when people resisting the Vietnam War would burn their draft cards, right? So they're burning the paper. Claim on their life, alright? And so if you burn the land deeds, that's brilliant. If you burn the land deeds, there are no land deeds.

• 17:46Marcia Belsky?

  There's still, there's a lot of like, even in America, like United States of America, there's all this like pipeline protests like because, you know, they're taking land that was promised over treaty and being like, never mind. And kind of everybody's looking the other way.

• 18:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can do if no one's looking, right? You need advocacy, precisely. Otherwise, you know, you get steamrolled. So, so, so tell me, how much of the world is overseen by indigenous people of the world's land?

• 18:14Speaker 02

  So the stat says that even though we make, you know, indigenous peoples make less than 5% of the world's population, we're storing 80% of the world's biodiversity. So that 80%, you know, it's, it's a drastic percentage, especially when we talk about biodiversity and, you know, the entire world in that context.

• 18:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow, okay, so then, okay, so then it's up, up to you to protect it. I mean, what, how do you, how does someone reply to that? If you got 80% of it, fix it, you know, or do, do something with it.

• 18:43Speaker 02

  I think that oftentimes, you know, we are still, like even like Marsha was mentioning, like the pipelines, right? We still see how when we're trying to protect our landscapes or our lands, we are faced with extreme violence. I think with, you know, the prime example that we all witnessed was what was happening in Standing Rock, right? Where the police were actually using tear gas or military equipment to stop those protests because, you know, they didn't want to listen to indigenous peoples.

• 19:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, so, alright, you're telling me all the problems. But at StarTalk, we solve problems here, okay?

• 19:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do you, uh, well, let me save that for the fir- third segment, where you're going to give us the solutions, step by step solutions for, for the better world. But, um, tell me about the, give me some specific examples of what

• 19:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What indigenous peoples are doing with regard to forests and the oceans that others could be doing that could help things.

• 19:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, so one of the things that I can think of is in my sapo tech community, nation, we are made up of different pueblos or different tribes. We are actually stewarding a forest, right? So we're actually leading timber companies where we actually are not necessarily deforesting the entire forest, but we're, you know, taking timber in a way that allows us to take the timber from older trees when they're mature, but it still allows the trees to grow again, right? So it's not necessarily getting rid of the entire tree. It's kind of cutting it in a way where we're using our traditional knowledge to cut what we need, especially to sell timber in that sense. And I think, you know, when we look at the timber industry, especially when we are looking at even mentioning books, right?

• 20:23Speaker 02

  There is a paper shortage because of the pandemic and also because we have cut down so many trees. So in that regards, that's an example of how we can actually still use those natural resources that are, you know, that our society depends on without destroying the entire resource itself, right? So in this case, the tree. Another example that I can think of is also how we view agriculture, right? So in my communities, we have these systems known as milpas. And these milpas are holistic agricultural systems where they don't necessarily need much men labor, like Western agriculture, where these milpas kind of generate themselves. You know, obviously, we pray to them. We do ceremony, especially before we harvest. And we also have animals that live there that also nourish us, right?

• 21:09Speaker 02

  In Oaxaca, we consume a lot of grasshoppers and insects because they're rich in protein.

• 21:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yum, yum, yum.

• 21:16Speaker 02

  You know, we make our grasshoppers, which, you know, in Western diets, you know, it's like, what is it? It's rare, right, to eat grasshoppers? But in that sense, you know, the milpas.

• 21:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Rare doesn't really capture the fact.

• 21:30Speaker 02

  That's true.

• 21:31Marcia Belsky?

  Whatever. They're eating frog legs.

• 21:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, frog legs are okay.

• 21:34Marcia Belsky?

  Grasshoppers never. Whatever, yeah.

• 21:36Speaker 02

  But I guess.

• 21:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Got to draw the line somewhere.

• 21:39Speaker 02

  So you're like indirectly consuming.

• 21:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I've actually, I've had, I've had pan fried grasshoppers before.

• 21:46Marcia Belsky?

  Yeah, see.

• 21:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I don't know, you know, a little salt and pepper, they were fine. So.

• 21:53Marcia Belsky?

  I definitely think the way I'm socialized, I always scares me because it's always like when the apocalypse comes, are you going to be able to like eat bugs or eat everything and people who can live off the land? Obviously I have such an advantage and I'm like.

• 22:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're the first to go.

• 22:07Marcia Belsky?

  I really like.

• 22:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're the first wave of death.

• 22:10Marcia Belsky?

  I'm first to go. Push comes to shove, I like to think I could eat a grasshopper, but we'll see, we'll see.

• 22:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I heard you mention trees. Just to be clear, you are harvesting parts, like limbs of the tree for your needs and then the tree just continues to grow. So you, at no point do you kill the tree for those needs. Is that correct?

• 22:30Speaker 02

  That's correct. And I think that, you know, Western science still needs to, in a way, um, catch up to the indigenous knowledge that we have, but as.

• 22:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, we're not even thinking that way.

• 22:38Speaker 02

  We're just thinking of cutting the whole tree.

• 22:41Marcia Belsky?

  But it's the greed. If they would cut, that's like, I feel like they could think that way, but a company would look at that and say, why would we take a slower and less amount of product?

• 22:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Take it all.

• 22:51Marcia Belsky?

  And like, just, it's like you said, they're not thinking about the whole thing. They're just thinking about the pieces and their piece.

• 22:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The tree is a puzzle piece, yes.

• 23:00Marcia Belsky?

  And if everybody's doing that, but if everybody actually adapted sustainable practices and not just like going green for a commercial, you know what I mean? So that they can advertise like our offices have cut down energy by five percent.

• 23:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, wait. So, so isn't it still sustainable to cut down a tree, but then plant another tree? Isn't that still creating some kind of equilibrium? It's a more violent equilibrium, of course, but isn't that still what, I mean, I was amazed growing up, how is it that every year there are Christmas trees available?

• 23:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, so there's gotta be some somewhere because because you you're buying a tree that's older than a year, right? So somewhere they're growing trees at a faster rate than we're using them. Otherwise, we would have run out of trees. Right? So so isn't there isn't it possible to have an equilibrium of new trees versus trees you cut down?

• 23:58Speaker 02

  I think one of the important things to mention is that, you know, when we're trying to talk about mitigating climate change, right? Like, we're trying to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases, and we know that trees kind of, you know, help us mitigate those impacts. You know, a tree takes years or generations to actually mature into a bigger tree. I know that for Christmas trees, there are, you know, kind of like farms to just, you know, grow those trees. So as a result.

• 24:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I had to conclude because I did the math and it wasn't working otherwise.

• 24:28Marcia Belsky?

  They're honestly creepy. If you've ever driven by a Christmas tree farm, it's really creepy because it's like a suburb.

• 24:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All the trees are the same height, coming in in a line.

• 24:39Marcia Belsky?

  It's really weird.

• 24:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, my God.

• 24:41Marcia Belsky?

  Yeah, it's really weird.

• 24:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I have a I have a possibly sensitive question. I'm not sure. So not to generalize all indigenous peoples of the world, but there does appear to be a common theme where ancestral knowledge is cherished and it gets handed down from generation to generation, and no one wants that to be lost lest you break off an entire branch of wisdom that had been there ever since the dawn of things. Is that a fair generalization? Of course, there are detailed differences, I would expect, but because I want to make a different point related to it. But is it fair to make that generalization?

• 25:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I think that, you know, one of the examples that we can look at is slavery, right? Because slavery was stealing indigenous peoples from the continent of Africa and kind of ripping them apart from their roots and bringing them into the Americas to caretake and steward the lands, right? Nobody taught them how to do that. And I think that through that, right, I know that, you know, not every indigenous person agrees with me, but I always include our black relatives into in the indigeneity discourses because, you know, they have indigenous roots that were stolen from them. And one of the ways that they were able to kind of fracture that indigeneity was through, you know, separating families. And we saw those tactics even used in boarding schools, right, where indigenous children

• 26:08Speaker 02

  were ripped from their families so that they can be assimilated. And we and we it's very parallel to what happened in slavery. And I think that oftentimes, you know, that's a that's a great statement to make because we saw those things happen in the past, especially as it pertains to black and indigenous peoples in the continent of Americas.

• 26:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Did you actually use the word indigeneity? I love it.

• 26:29Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 26:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, very cool word. Oh, my gosh. Okay, so here's my here is my question to you then. Isn't the problem, isn't an aspect of that problem that many of the indigenous peoples did not have writing as a tradition? Because when you have writing as a tradition, nothing gets forgotten. It just gets put in a book and now a next generation can read the book and compare it to other new discoveries. And then it it becomes part of the culture with no risk, lest there be a library fire, with no risk of it getting permanently lost. So why doesn't somebody just write down all of these traditions and then we have this

• 27:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  canon of indigenous holistic ways? And then we can go page by page and say, you know, we tested that in the laboratory, we have a better way for that. Hey, we never knew about that. Let's try that out. How come that's not happening?

• 27:24Marcia Belsky?

  We all see how yoga went. So I'm sure that would go well if we put it all into a book and then Westerners could just charge people to read it. Yeah.

• 27:35Speaker 02

  I think that it's important to mention that some of our ancestors actually had a writing systems, right? When we look at the Mayan civilization, and when we look at even the Oaxacan indigenous communities, we had codices, which were written, um, ancient, you know, kind of like our writing style, but they were burned during colonization. A lot of our regalia, our traditional clothing, actually, um, coming from a family that embroiders and does regalia for our communities. We write our own stories through that art, through the embroidering of the flowers, but yet, when we look at how colonization addressed that, they burned those items because they were, you know, because of Western Christianity, they were kind of relating that to, you know, worshiping the devil, worshiping evil spirits. So they burned

• 28:19Speaker 02

  a lot of that. We have some codices, you know, our written, um, writing styles in stones, kept behind museum glass doors, right? To the ones that were actually not burned, and they're in Europe. So how do we have access to those things that these multi-billion dollar museums are actually, you know, keeping behind museum glass doors when, in reality, you know, that can be used for us to also pass down the knowledge and reclaim some of the knowledge that was, you know, stolen and lost because of colonization or the...

• 28:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, of course, there's been an ongoing movement to decolonize, uh, museums and other institutions that exist, uh, all the fruits of indigenous peoples in, through the lenses of, of Western folk. So, we're gonna take a quick break, uh, but I want to remind people that you have a new book, and the first two words are banana leaves. And you have to just, before we go to break, just explain the banana leaves, because it caught, it did catch my attention, mind you, but I'm not, now, I'm forcing you to tell me a little more about those two words.

• 29:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, so, um, banana trees are actually native plants to Central America, and I think that one of the reasons why I entitled it Fresh Banana Leaves is because banana trees, while they were introduced into Central America, they have become our relatives, right? When we look at Central American cuisine and, and our food, and the traditional foods like our tamales and everything else that we make, we incorporate those banana leaves, and I think that... That's a history that many indigenous communities in Americas that have banana leaves into their diets, kind of have the relationship with banana trees as it relates to them becoming a relative and also a displaced relative. And we can talk more about that in a minute.

• 30:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow. Okay, so it's not only a literal but metaphorical reference to an entire way of living.

• 30:07Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm. And it also kind of ties to my father's story, especially his story when he was a child soldier. At the age of 11, he was forcefully made to join either the guerrilla or the military, the government military. So he joined the guerrilla. And one of his stories that he tells me is that banana trees, even though they were introduced into Central America, they became their only food source, right? When we look at the guerrilla, the guerrillas in Central America, they were made up of indigenous children fighting against oppressive government structures, especially the government structures that introduced these plantations that were forcing indigenous children to work for, you know, pennies, oftentimes for just a meal. And I think through that, you know, it kind of also plays into

• 30:51Speaker 02

  the role that, you know, these banana trees, they were fighting against, like Marsha was talking about, we were fighting, they were fighting against these systems that were introduced, not necessarily against the banana trees, but the systems that kind of govern those plantations, especially as it relates to, you know, those Western monocultural agricultural systems.

• 31:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Management habits of the thing, right?

• 31:12Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 31:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right?

• 31:13Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 31:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm. Well, all right. When we come back, I want to, I want to actually hold you to the grail here and get you to solve some of these problems, okay? And we're going to do that on StarTalk when we return.

• 31:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back. StarTalk, our third and final segment. We're talking about environmental science and indigenous peoples, indigenous traditions, indigenous ways of interacting with their environment, nature, and contrasting that with Western ways, especially Colonialistic Western ways, which is a whole story unto itself. And we've got Jessica Hernandez. Dr. Hernandez is one of the world's experts on this subject and just recently wrote a book called Fresh Banana Leaves. And they could get the title right here. Healing Indigenous Landscapes Through Indigenous Science, published earlier this year. Of course, I've got Marcia Belsky. Welcome back, Marcia Belsky.

• 32:23Speaker 02

  Hello, hello.

• 32:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, okay. So Jessica, we've spent the better part of a half hour describing, you know, evil European historical and current ways and Indigenous challenges to that. How do we solve this problem? I see two problems. One of them is, is anyone ever going to listen to Indigenous peoples who have been there way longer than everybody else? And the second, you can listen to them, but how do we know that's going to solve the larger problem that we've created? How do we know that?

• 32:55Speaker 02

  I think we're seeing how current international policy and also national policy is trying to understand that, you know, actually, local knowledge and listening to Indigenous peoples can help us mitigate climate change. We saw how this administration recently passed a presidential memorandum where President Biden actually says, oh, we should actually incorporate local knowledge and Indigenous knowledge when it comes to environmental regulations, right? But we know that a memorandum is not actually policy that states have to follow. It's just something that the president kind of pledges to do. Another thing that we're seeing is the International Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC, recently submitted a report where they're actually saying, oh, yeah, it's time for us to listen

• 33:38Speaker 02

  to Indigenous peoples as it relates to addressing climate change impacts. So I think that there is a lot of power behind local knowledge, especially local Indigenous knowledge, to steward our environments. And I think that that all relates to the land back movement. And for those who haven't heard of the land back movement, the land back movement is kind of a way that Indigenous communities are trying to get their land back and not necessarily to own their lands, but because, you know, ownership is a Western construct, but to steward and caretake of their land, especially the Indigenous communities who have generations of history, you know, stewarding those landscapes in that sense.

• 34:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so what's an example of something?

• 34:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Indigenous wisdom can bring upon the solutions that we're seeking.

• 34:25Speaker 02

  For instance, you know, we gave the example of my community, my Sepotec community and how we actually, you know, take care of our forest. I think another ways is even when we look at indigenous communities and how they're actually going against destructive energy resources. Like recently, we saw how in Ecuador, the Amazon rainforest had over 5,300 barrels of oil spill, even though the indigenous communities of that region were against that building of those pipelines going through the Amazon rainforest, right? So fortunately and ironically, it takes an environmental catastrophe or environmental, you know, drastic event to happen for people to be like, oh, actually, we should have listened

• 35:07Speaker 02

  to indigenous communities from the start because, you know, in that case, they could have prevented those, you know, thousands of oil barrels spilling in the Amazon rainforest.

• 35:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Can I be a colonist to capitalist just for a brief second? Ready? 5,000 barrels? That's nothing. You can see some of the other oils. That's a, that's a light oil.

• 35:27Marcia Belsky?

  That also that they didn't want built, exactly. It sounds like, it feels like there's still a very infantilizing approach to like native communities where it's like very like.

• 35:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a good word, way to say it. I agree 100%.

• 35:39Marcia Belsky?

  You know, like asking to help when we need it. And like you said, mostly after the fact, after a catastrophe, even laying blame when it's like just to dodge blame for like where the issues actually arise from. And then you see native people working so hard to preserve the land and to, you know, just fight to be listened to. And it feels like we could just cut out so much of the BS by just cutting out that first step of like, should we even listen to them? Will it even work? And it's like, I think we've seen pretty well what the issue is and who knows what keeps the earth going versus what kills it.

• 36:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But what about? I, I agree, Marsha, completely. But, but Jessica, isn't part of what you are saying to just leave stuff alone?

• 36:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that's, so is that even policy to say, leave it alone? That's just saying, whatever you do, you're gonna kill it, mess with it, make it worse. So just leave it alone. What I was expecting was if you're gonna tell me you've got some secret indigenous wisdom, that you'll say, here, do this. Actively do something rather than not do something the Western colonists would have done. So is this something active you can tell us to do?

• 36:52Speaker 02

  I think that, you know, a lot of indigenous knowledge is not necessarily meant to be kept in secret, right? It's sacred, and I think that has to go back with what Marsha mentioned, right? How sometimes when we have shared indigenous knowledge, it has been co-opted. And I think an example that I can think of, you know, she mentioned yoga. I can think of permaculture, right? Permaculture, to get a certificate in permaculture, you have to pay hundreds of dollars. And permaculture is actually stolen aborigine knowledge from the, you know, indigenous peoples of Australia, where a white cisgender man came and he was like, oh, this is amazing. Let me package it so that the Western society can consume it. And we're gonna call that permaculture. And for those who don't look at the histories behind certain disciplines or, you know, areas

• 37:37Speaker 02

  of study, you know, they don't know that that's actually indigenous, you know, co-opted indigenous knowledge. And I think that it's also building better relationships where we look at indigenous knowledge not to be consumed, but something like you were mentioning, Neil, that can be, you know, that can help us mitigate climate change. And I think that unless we dismantle that Western way of thinking, where everything has to be sold, where everything has to be commodified, you know, indigenous communities are gonna be a little bit receptive to sharing their indigenous knowledge based on, you know, these past cases.

• 38:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, as I understand it, you have certain shepherd, shepherding of forests, given where you, your ancestry. And something that's been with earth ever since there's been earth and forests are forest fires. They've been sort of picking up the pace lately. But nonetheless, how did indigenous peoples ever? Deal with that because those can happen very naturally with a dry season and a lightning bolt.

• 38:34Speaker 02

  So one of the methods that you know, it's not that has been coined into a Western concept is known as prescribed burning. Where you know, it's kind of similar to how we stored the timber in our Saputec Nation where we burn certain parts of the tree and the forest. So that prevents, you know, it gets rid of that dry, um, you know, areas of the forest so that it prevents future wildfires. I know I gave the example of milpas and milpas are also, um, you know, these holistic agricultural systems that during the summer season. They actually burn themselves, right? It doesn't necessarily require us to put it on fire, but those milpas. They're very restorative in that sense that they burn themselves and then that allows the crops to regrow again.

• 39:16Speaker 02

  And I think that that's the same that the management's practices that we have embedded into our forests is that prescribed burning. To prevent, you know, future wildfires in that sense.

• 39:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. So that's a, that's a, that's a positive outcome here. I mean, obviously the fires are growing in frequency because of other more global climatic issues. But specifically, if we think of a fire as a puzzle piece, you have a puzzle piece solution to a fire. That has been shared and has been implemented successfully.

• 39:46Speaker 02

  Yes, and we're, you know, like you mentioned, it's starting to be picked up. So it's not necessarily like a hundred percent implemented, but it's getting there, right? We're seeing that more in California, in Washington, we're seeing some areas that, you know, the local firemen are actually saying, oh yeah, we should actually. Learn from the indigenous communities and do these prescribed burning to prevent wildfires in the future.

• 40:05Marcia Belsky?

  And it's the relationships, like you said, I feel like it's hard because. We're still bridging that gap and it's like, why would, you know. In some ways, even a local fire department, like, you know, even building that relationship of like trusting the indigenous. People there and the indigenous people trusting, you know, the like. Western people there enough to like, you know, work as a team with all that history there. It feels like that's so much of the solution here, but it's so complicated.

• 40:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I've got another question here. So in this age of jet transportation, which has been with us for about 60 years. No, hardly anyone dies where they were born. So this notion of belonging to the land is, that ship has sailed.

• 40:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Literally, I guess, but that is that that's a that itself is a state of mind. What what do you do about that going forward into the era of cross continental travel?

• 41:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think that oftentimes it's a matter of reclaiming our own histories, right? Because, for instance, in my Sepulte community, our creation stories tell us that when we, you know, pass on, our spirits enter the clouds, right? And that's why our, you know, nation is considered the Binisah people, which means the cloud people. And as a result, right, like our heaven, if we were to look at it from Western religion terms, it's in the clouds, right? And it's, you know, and it shows the manifestation that we we're still a part of nature. Because, you know, what happens in the clouds? We have the water cycle, right? We get the water, the nourishes the plants, the nourishes the land. And I think that, you know, oftentimes we talk about how, you know, being indigenous means holding on to those relationships, to that spirituality,

• 41:52Speaker 02

  even while you're displaced. And, you know, fortunately, for many people who have been displaced, like you're mentioning, because it, you know, you can travel or you are forced to migrate, you lose kind of, you fracture that identity. But I think it's important to reclaim our histories, especially when it relates to the spirituality that still holds us connected to those landscapes.

• 42:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So spirituality is not sort of a fundamental part of modern science? So how do you bridge that gap?

• 42:19Speaker 02

  I think it takes us to relearn and unlearn the ways that we have been taught science, especially when it comes to, you know, being objective. Because when we look at the foundations of many signs, and for instance, you know, somebody who's studying the concept of energy, we know that the concept of energy was actually created during the British Industrial Revolution, right? So there was a lot of Western religion, yeah, embedded in that concept of energy. But when we practice energy from the environmental physics lens, we tell ourselves, oh, yeah, it's not sociopolitical. It doesn't have any ties to our society. It's an abstract concept that cannot be seen or perceived. But in reality, when we look at the history of that concept, it's very embedded in that religion and that, you know, British Industrial Industrial Revolution beliefs.

• 43:02Speaker 02

  But somehow, there's a disconnection between the history and how we're told to practice that today.

• 43:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So how would how should someone practice it today? Someone gets a degree in physics. What would you want? How would you want to see that? You want them to read up on indigenous ways? Just so that where they can or should fold it in, it's available to them? Because right now, of course, we're not even exposed, even if there were something there.

• 43:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I think that, you know, I currently work with a lot of physics teachers, especially teachers who teach in the secondary educational system. Because, you know, physics is a secondary educational topic that's taught everywhere. And I think that one of the ways that we can do that is even by integrating equity, right? When we look at, you know, teachers serving black and brown students, a lot of, you know, the energy impacts that it has in societies is actually impacting the students' community. So it's not just looking at the indigenous ways of knowing, which I think is a great step to do, but also looking at the societal implications that the concept of energy has through place-based education, right? Like, someone who grew up in South Central Los Angeles, there are so many examples that I can think of how energy actually created more environmental pollution

• 44:13Speaker 02

  and how that's related to the high asthma rates that, you know, we suffer as children living in South Central Los Angeles.

• 44:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so that's energy produced by fossil fuels, but you can make energy other ways that wouldn't pose that risk. So that's a factor as well. And, you know, Marsha, when I kept hearing this thing about a puzzle and whether it's holistic, I was just wondering if in a stand-up routine, is an isolated joke a puzzle piece? But you only give a really good performance if it all fits together and makes one big puzzle at the end? You get a bigger applause if it's holistic?

• 44:46Marcia Belsky?

  Yeah, I feel like, because, yeah, think about if somebody had like a five-minute set on late night and they had one good joke, but the rest of it bombed. Like, unless it was like, I don't think there could be any joke good enough where you wouldn't be like, that guy was terrible. Like, because unless he's like a one-liner, but then you'd be like, how come only one of them's good? Why is he on my TV? You know, all the pieces gotta fit together for it to make sense. I feel like that makes sense too with like getting people in physics classrooms just to have different perspectives because different perspectives lead to less blind spots. So it's like, I feel like you get more indigenous people and more spirituality just to have a seat at the table. It's like, you know what I mean?

• 45:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Jessica, maybe that's more of what we need, just a seat at the table here, just so that the the view can be aired in front of those who never even knew the view existed.

• 45:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, and sometimes, you know, even our elders tell us that sometimes we had to build our own tables and leave those tables because oftentimes when we get a seat at the table, we're seen but not heard. And I think that, you know, it kind of depends on who is inviting us at the table and whether they're actually willing to hear us as well and listen to what we have to offer.

• 45:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so we gotta land this plane and that means we're running out of time. Sorry. Sorry to use a technological reference here, but land this plane. And so Jessica, it seems to me there are many more books you can write or that can be written, if not by you, by others with a slightly different expertise that have these same tap roots that can just wake up the world to how to think about Earth differently. So have you given up hope as so many others have or do you still think you can save the world?

• 46:28Marcia Belsky?

  Such a loaded question.

• 46:29Speaker 02

  I feel like I'm in my third thesis.

• 46:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, where are you on the extinction issue of human species?

• 46:37Speaker 02

  Yeah. I haven't given up hope and I think that, you know, even being able to say that I wrote a book, especially a book that uplift uplifts also my community's voices and knowing that I have the privilege, right, that comes with having a PhD, with having that educational system in the Western terminology, right, where I can talk to scientists in the United Nations and they actually listen to me because, you know, I'm not just using, you know, lay persons. Terminology, which is unfortunate, right? Because we're still operating in Western science where we need that terminology. I think that, you know, that gives me hope, especially seeing how my father was able to survive a genocide that, you know, even though, even though it was coined as a war, the United Nations has identified that as a genocide because it actually targeted indigenous Mayan

• 47:22Speaker 02

  people in Central America. I think that that gives me hope and also seeing how there's, you know, other people in our generation trying to move the needle, especially when it comes to including voices of communities of color.

• 47:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, so now you get me sad that I didn't have you on years ago. If this, we put you a seat at the StarTalk table and it's like the year 2022, and I hope that's not too late. So Jessica, thank you for that marvelous closing statement, I guess it sounded like. And maybe we can do this again when there's more developments because we always like tracking stories that, that we're introduced to here on StarTalk, but we want to see where they go in the years to come. So thank you for being on StarTalk. And, and, and Marsha, where do we find you?

• 48:06Marcia Belsky?

  Yeah, find me on social media. It's at Marcia Belsky on Twitter and TikTok, and then my Instagram is at Marsha Sky.

• 48:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cool, cool. And Jessica, are there, are there websites or organizations we should know about that you support or that you can resonate, where other people can sort of share resonant energy and possibly money to the causes? Resonant money is the best kind. So where, where do you want to send people?

• 48:30Speaker 02

  Yes, I usually leave mutual aids and mutual aids, you know, they support the communities, especially projects, and I usually share them in my Twitter, which is at Dr. underscore Nature.

• 48:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Doctor Nature? Did you? You have Doc, Doctora Nature?

• 48:46Marcia Belsky?

  That's huge.

• 48:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh my gosh. Okay, that's gangster right there. That's, forget my name, I, I am nature and I am one with nature. Doctora, is it an underscore or go straight in?

• 48:58Speaker 02

  Um, underscore nature, yes.

• 49:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Doctora underscore nature.

• 49:02Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 49:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, well, that's gonna be easy to find. All right, guys, great to have you. And this has been StarTalk, the Indigenous Peoples edition. I can call it that. Neil deGrasse Tyson here, your personal astrophysicist. As always, keep working up.