Review: ‘Growing Papaya Trees: Nurturing Indigenous Roots During Climate Displacement’ By Jessica Hernandez

Climate change is about more than the environment – it is also a rising demographic force that is reshaping where and how people live. In this deeply personal book, Indigenous scientist Jessica Hernandez explores the experience of climate migrants from Indigenous communities around the world, with a particular focus on Oaxacan people in California. 

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“Like papaya, my mother told me, displaced Indigenous peoples are either loved or hated,” the author says in the first part of the book. Loosely linked by the overarching metaphor of the papaya tree and fruit, the book contains chapters on displacement overall, the impact of climate change, land use and energy, youth, and climate justice. It is bookended by “A love letter to our ancestral lands” and “A love letter to displaced Indigenous peoples”. Her stated aim is to create solidarity by addressing and describing the common problems Indigenous people face: these include the difficulties of emigration, questions of identity and language, education and rights, and, most of all, the Indigenous voice.

The two main themes of the book – climate migration and the Indigenous experience – sometimes jostle for primacy. This confusion is justified, since multiple issues are at play: it is already difficult to make a direct link between climate change and migration, but when the complexities of Indigenous rights are added to the mix, things get even more complicated. 

As the daughter of an Oaxacan climate migrant, the author mainly brings a first-person perspective to the topic. We hear about her mother’s wrenching decision to leave her baby sister behind; her father’s trips to Mexico, where cops demand bribes from him because of his Salvadoran heritage; and her own bitter experience as a child in the United States, where she is lumped into a nebulous “Latinx” category.

The book contains many beautiful descriptions of the Earth’s natural bounty (including papayas, of course) and of scenes of community, family, and food, as well as a poignant meditation at a lakeside on the relationship between humankind and land. The importance of Indigenous connection to the land is a persistent theme in the book: indeed, throughout, the word Land (or Lands) is always capitalized as if it were, itself, a nation.

Multiple times and in multiple places throughout the book, the author explores the interrelated roots and impacts of Indigenous climate migration rather than providing a strictly linear path of reasoning. Several messages emerge from this flow. 

One is the understanding of the environment as an extension of the self, rather than a separate resource to be exploited (an interesting feature of the author’s definition of “migration” is that it includes animals). No one could believe climate change was a hoax, the author points out, if they weren’t so disconnected from their environments.

Another is the need to include Indigenous voices – on climate change committees, in policy on land use rights, whether this is in decisions to locate wind farms or lithium mines on Indigenous land, or in the acknowledgement of Indigenous knowledge such as medicinal plants. 

The author also comes back several times to the tension between Indigenous approaches and capitalist or colonialist systems, including the new green colonialism: “As Indigenous Lands are taken over for renewable energy projects, the very people who historically cared for these environments are pushed aside.” Western science, according to the author, is “presented as acultural, apolitical, and ahistorical” but Indigenous contributions are disrespected. Direct conflicts have come into the limelight several times, for example at the proposed lithium mining in Nevada at Thacker Pass, opposed by the Paiute-Shoshone Tribe because of its status as the site of a massacre in 1865, and the successful rejection of the Fenix Nickel Mine in Guatemala by the Maya Q’eqchi’ people.

While the book purports to take a global view of Indigenous people’s migration and climate change, and it does bring in perspectives from other parts of the world throughout, it is at its best with the specifics of Indigenous Salvadoran and Oaxacan people in South and Central America, and their situation in California.

Additionally, more detail would have been welcome in several areas of the book. For example, the author mentions but never elaborates on the claim that “Greenwashing is a silent genocide that has led to the displacement of over six million people since 2023 alone.” Likewise, we learn about the fact that activist Ridrigo Tot and Guatemalan Nobel laureate Rigoberta Menchu succeeded in their battles, but nothing about how they managed it. And in a sobering section about violence against Indigenous people, we learn that between 2012 and 2023, more than 2,000 land and environmental defenders have been murdered globally – but no further information is provided.

The latter part of the book, focusing on climate justice, is timely. In today’s deeply divided world, the author states, “Being Indigenous means being radical … and being radical is perceived as extremist.” At the same time, she urges solidarity not only among Indigenous peoples but among everyone. After all, she says, there is such an extreme imbalance that the richest 1% emit half of global emissions, and the rest of us – the “poorest” 99% of global citizens – would need 1,500 years to produce as much carbon as billionaires do in one year. The author’s tone is wry as she cites the 2020 viral social media statement: “You are significantly closer to being a climate refugee than a billionaire.”

In this part of the book, she points out that in areas as far flung as Ethiopia, Gaza, Syria, Yemen, and Myanmar, conflict or war is exacerbated by climate change, is itself a cause of further emissions, and contributes to climate migration. The author’s empathy comes through with lines like, “I wonder how I would react if my community were to start a genocide. Would I have the courage to speak out against the atrocities, or would I be silent?”

In the end, the book reminds us, nobody actually wants to migrate – and when they do, they feel “profound loss and disconnection.” In a world where climate change is exacerbating every other issue and contributing to the drive to leave home, the situation of Indigenous migrants deserves attention and action.

Growing Papaya Trees: Nurturing Indigenous Roots During Climate Displacement
Jessica Hernandez, Ph.D
2025, Penguin Random House, 224pp

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