The systems shaping our lives — from democracy and labor to land, food, and technology — are being challenged and reimagined in real time.
Each year, the Bioneers Conference brings together people working at the forefront of that shift. In 2026, the ideas and exchanges that emerged spanned movements and disciplines, grounded in both urgency and possibility.
Featuring activists, scientists, artists, Indigenous leaders, and organizers, this media collection brings together perspectives from Bioneers 2026 shaped by real work and lived experience.
We’re just getting started! Additional media will be released in the months ahead, so if you’re not already on our newsletter list, sign up today.
Original painting “Carrier” by Lisa Ericson.
KEYNOTE ADDRESSES
Cory Doctorow
The “Enshittification” of Everything
Renowned science fiction author, activist, and journalist Cory Doctorow assures us that it’s not our imaginations: the internet does indeed suck now. Cory argues that we can – and we must – break free of the prison policymakers built for us and create a new internet that is fit to serve as the digital nervous system of this fraught young century.
Gary Farmer
A Change Has Gotta Come
Gary Farmer has been a groundbreaking figure in prying open doors for Indigenous contributors to the performing arts. He explores why it is more important than ever for Native people to control their own narratives, in an era in which our collective survival will depend on our learning to put the Earth first.
Ferris Jabr
Becoming Earth: How Our Planet Came to Life
Ferris Jabr, NYT bestselling author and one of our most celebrated scientific writers, explains how, over billions of years, microbes, plants, fungi, and animals radically altered the continents, oceans, and atmosphere, transforming what was once a lump of orbiting rock into our cosmic oasis. Life is Earth and Earth is life.
Saru Jayaraman
What has Democracy Done For Me Lately? Engaging Working People in the Fight to Save Democracy
Saru Jayaraman, President of One Fair Wage, one of the most effective, tireless advocates for working people in the nation, says we can rally many working people to the urgent defense against plundering kleptocratic authoritarianism, but only if we demonstrate to them that democracy is worth saving by making it responsive to their economic struggles.
Cristina Jiménez Moreta
Mass Deportations: A Tipping Point Moment for All of Us
With federal incursions tearing through communities and new detention centers coming online, we may feel powerless, but we’ve seen communities courageously rising up to defend their neighbors. Cristina Jiménez Moreta says this is a tipping point moment, and we need to draw from examples of historic change that started in the margins of society.
Young Leader
Coley Kakols Miller
Undam the Klamath: The Fight Isn’t Over Yet
After the largest dam removal project in U.S. history in which four out of six dams were removed from the Klamath River, an intertribal cohort of Indigenous youth became the first people in over a century to descend a 310-mile stretch of the river. Coley Kakols Miller shares her personal story of participating in that journey.
Brett KenCairn
Nature-based Climate Solutions—Centering Life to Heal the Planet
Brett KenCairn, founding Director of the Center for Regenerative Solutions, challenges the conventional understandings of the causes and solutions of climate change and its fixation on carbon and technology. Brett points to our ability to build a global movement, community-by-community, to harness nature’s power to regenerate landscapes at a scale.
Julian Brave NoiseCat
The Epic Misadventures of the Trickster Coyote
Julian Brave NoiseCat, activist, author, filmmaker, and multi-hyphenate storyteller and artist from the Secwépemc and St’at’imc nations, makes the ancient but ever potent “Coyote Story” archetype, one of the most significant oral traditions in human history, come to vivid life to shed light on our current situation and possible paths forward in these trying times.
Raj Patel
Food Solidarity vs Fascism
As we face authoritarian oligarchy, we can learn a great deal from how food workers confronted fascism a century ago. Raj Patel, a leading expert on sustainable food systems and tireless advocate for food justice, shares how these inspiring movements show how we can draw on the best human impulses to build economic systems built on solidarity and mutual aid.
Leah Penniman
Free the People! Free the Land!
Locally and globally, land and food have been leveraged as tools of oppression, but they can also be portals for liberation. Groundbreaking Black Kreyol farmer and food justice activist Leah Penniman offers us living proof that when Land is reunited with her people, mutual thriving can flourish in the form of solutions to climate chaos and food apartheid.
Michael Pollan
A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness
Michael Pollan, one of the nation’s most influential non-fiction writers and investigative journalists, traces his six-year quest to solve the greatest mystery in nature: how, and why, are we conscious?
Nina Simons
Living Between Paradigms
In this talk, Nina Simons begins by acknowledging the extraordinarily challenging period we are traversing and the inevitable anxiety and fear it generates in all of us. She then shares a variety of strategies and perspectives that help her re-center herself, reconnect to the web of life, and regain the ability to carry on the struggle for a better world.
Samantha Skenandore
Re-Evolving Indigeneity to Save our Planet
Samantha Skenandore, of Ho-Chunk and Oneida ancestry, says that if we are to have a chance of reversing the destructive path our world is currently on and ushering in a genuinely nature-honoring era, we need to empower the extraordinary crop of young leaders, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, now emerging on the scene.
Young Leader
Jasmine Smith
Living Our Ancestors’ Wildest Dreams, While Being the Voice of the Voiceless
Jasmine Smith, 16, a citizen of the Eastern Band of Cherokee and founder and Chair of NAIWA Daughters, issues a bold call to restore Indigenous youth to their rightful place as valued leaders, knowledge-holders, and essential advocates for the living world.
Young Leader
Kyle Trefny
When Orange Skies Clear
Kyle Trefny was 18 years old in 2020 when skies over much of the Pacific Coast turned orange with wildfire smoke. He shares how that moment led him to become a wildland firefighter and to join other youth in creating FireGeneration Collaborative, dedicated to building a future beyond intense wildfires and their devastating health impact.
John Warner
Biomimicry at the Molecular Level—Inventing a Sustainable Future
John Warner, one of the co-founders of the field of “Green Chemistry,” shares his vision of drawing from the molecular design genius of nature, which has been running countless chemistry experiments for nearly 4 billion years, to create products and technologies that provide for human needs without contaminating the biosphere and endangering our health.
Terry Tempest Williams
The Glorians Are Among Us
In this time of political and climate chaos, as we seek beauty and cohesion wherever we can find its glimmer, Terry Tempest Williams focuses on “The Glorians,” the overlooked presences—animal, plant, memory, moment—that reveal our shared vulnerability and interconnectedness with the natural world and how they can inspire us to carry forward with grace.
PERFORMANCES
Garth Stevenson
Garth Stevenson is a renowned musician, composer and eco-activist who has appeared on some 50 albums, collaborated with leading musicians from all over the globe. Garth has played his double bass not only for people around the world but also among seals, penguins, icebergs, and in the bow of small boats where he imitates whale calls on his bass. He performs music based on those extraordinary interspecies exchanges accompanied by stunning video footage.
Destani Wolf
Destani Wolf, Berkeley’s own powerfully soulful, deeply original and inventive, genre-defying vocalist and improviser, has appeared on over 40 albums including 3 that were GRAMMY-nominated, been a lead vocalist for Cirque du Soleil, and is a Professor at SF Music Conservatory and a member of Bobby McFerrin’s MOTION.
Destiny Arts Youth Performance Company
The Destiny Arts Youth Performance Company (DAYPC) is a diverse group of teens that collaborates with professional artists to create dynamic, original productions. Combining hip hop, modern and aerial dance, theater, song, and rap, company members take the stage to tell stories that stem from their lived experiences and express their visions for a world transformed.
