Bioneers Overview, Reach, and Resources

Download the Indigeneity Program 2024 Annual Report

Since its inception, Bioneers has been fundamentally shaped by Indigenous knowledge, participants, and partners. Bioneers’ Native-led Indigeneity Program invites allyship to support the leadership, rights and cultural survival of First Peoples. 

Our program creates live events, media, curriculum, and catalytic initiatives to support the leadership and rights of First Peoples while weaving networks, partnerships, and alliances.

We co-produce the annual Bioneers Conference and the world-renowned Indigenous Forum. We adapt these presentations and events into radio shows, TV broadcasts, videos, media collections, articles, blogs, curricula, and books.

We coordinate life-changing experiences for youth through our Native Youth Leadership Program, introducing participants to new ideas, role models, and each other to foster transformative learning.

Our Indigenous Rights of Nature initiative mobilizes knowledge through original resources, programs, and InterTribal events. Our flagship Native Youth Ambassadors Program supports youth in leading efforts for their Tribes to protect species and ecosystems.

Through these efforts, many of our Indigenous partners have achieved international acclaim and policy change through the environmental and social justice campaigns they champion at the Bioneers Conference and Indigenous Forum. More and more people are recognizing that “Indigenous issues” are all of our issues and that Indigenous pathways to community, spiritual, and ecological restoration have the power to solve our biggest global problems

• Current funding partners include: California Wellness Foundation, One Small Planet, Yuhaaviatam of San Manuel Nation, as well as private donors and anonymous funders.
• Indigeneity is a Native-led Program within Bioneers that promotes Indigenous approaches to solving the Earth’s most pressing environmental and social crises. We produce the Indigenous Forum within the Bioneers Conference, including original media, educational materials, and catalytic initiatives to support the leadership and rights of First Peoples while weaving networks, partnerships, and alliances among Native and non-Native allies.
• The Indigenous Forum amplifies the voices of Indigenous leaders to connect people from all over the world through shared wisdom, practices, movements, and solutions.
• Indigenous perspectives are central to Bioneers’ mission to restore people and planet. Tribal leaders, activists, and youth look forward to the Indigenous Forum as a place to convene, learn, plan, and spend time together. In 2025, this tradition continued as over 294 Indigenous community members representing over 165+ distinct tribal affiliations joined us. You won’t find such a diverse array of Indigenous presenters and presence in a welcoming, cross-cultural format than at the Bioneers Conference. 
• Over the past 35 years, Bioneers has cultivated a rich repository of original Indigenous content media including articles, videos, podcasts, and radio shows. To support the use of Bioneers’ original content in the classroom, we create Indigeneity Curriculum. In 2024, we launched two synchronous courses for lifelong learners via the Bioneers Learning platform, Being a Good Relative: Allyship with Indigenous Peoples and Indigenizing the Law.

Native Youth Leadership (NYLP)

The Native Youth Leadership Program’s (NYLP) mission is to create opportunities for Native youth to participate in, network at, and be empowered by attending the annual Bioneers Conference and year-round curated events. Indigeneity Native Youth Initiatives include the Native Youth Leadership Program, Intercultural Conversations, and Native Youth Ambassadors.

All three initiatives host youth together at the Bioneers Conference with a highly curated track of presentations, discussions, and activities designed to nurture experiential learning, leadership and friendship. In 2025, we awarded 110 of conference youth scholarships to NYLP youth attendees, facilitators, and chaperones including a cohort of 48 from Intercultural Conversations (IC) and 67 Native Youth Ambassadors (NYA) programs.

The philosophy that nature has a right to exist and thrive is rooted in Indigenous knowledge. Over the past six years, the Bioneers Indigeneity team has developed educational materials — from guidebooks to articles, radio shows and videos– to support Tribes interested in adopting Rights of Nature laws. We have shared this information at numerous Tribal conferences and workshops building the movement across the country.

In 2023, in conjunction with Bioneers’ Intertribal Rights of Nature Gathering, we brought together a group of Mashpee Wampanoag youth who drafted a “Rights of Herring” resolution that their Tribal Council unanimously adopted. They named their group “The Native Youth Ambassadors.” In 2024, we expanded the Native Youth Ambassador initiative to serve six groups, providing them with funding, resources, tools, and collaborative experiences for Native youth organizers on a mission to steward their lands and waters for generations to come.

After many years of partnership, Bioneers and the Center for Democratic and Environmental Rights are working collaboratively to develop an online app, a Rights of Nature GIS map project (access password: rightsofnature2024). This app is now being used by Native and other organizers to find and connect with potential allies in protecting and defending localized ecosystems in their bioregions.

 Young Leaders at the Bioneers Conference 

• 403 youth scholarships were offered and 353 youth and their mentors attended the 2025 Bioneers Conference, an increase of 40 % from 2024. 
• Bioneers commitment to elevate the voices of youth was demonstrated by having three exemplary young leaders offer keynotes from the main stage: Asa Miller (coral reef restoration in Cuba), Shreya Chadhuri (student organizer decolonizing environmentalism), and Mahjabin Khanzada (Afghanistan refugee advocate)  
•  All youth had a dedicated, interactive space to participate in a wide variety of opportunities, such as: preconference orientation where youth shared a meal and participated in problem solving breakout groups, an interactive session on nonviolence and healing trauma led by author/nonviolence trainer Hazu Kaga, a songwriting workshop led by eco hip hop artist DJ Cavem, Community of Mentors sessions which gave youth the opportunity to be in a facilitated conversation with a presenter, mixers to have fun and meet their peers, art projects, and an Open Mic which was the energetic capstone of the program. The Native Youth Program also produced a number of workshop sessions open to all youth.

“This was my first Bioneers, and there’s still a lot to process. The big win though was that my 17-year-old sibling, Royce, was there as part of the high school student contingent. Royce has really struggled since Covid, like a lot of kids have. Right beforehand they got scared and didn’t want to come, but in session after session I watched them get more and more animated. They raved about how whales should sue us and if plants were conscious. As a kid that always loved science, but didn’t know how to engage with it, to watch them be able to see themselves in the science community was such a gift. Thank you. —Ann-Marie Benz, Horticulture Program Manager California Native Plant Society

 Young Leaders Fellowship 

The Young Leaders Fellowship, in its second year, provides the opportunity for a young activist to create a media project on a topic that they are passionate about. This year’s Fellow Anna Steltenkamp’s project features young international activists from eight countries. The project is in the final stage of production and will be released in late spring.  

Anna was recently awarded Duke University Nicholas School of the Environment’s most prestigious merit scholarship to pursue a Master of Environmental Management degree. This is what Anna had to say about how her Fellowship was a critical stepping stone to this opportunity:  

“Thank you again for the role you played in making this possible by supporting me throughout my Bioneers project last year and taking the time to write my letter of recommendation. My work with Bioneers played a big role in inspiring and guiding me to return back to school, and I look forward to investing in my own potential to be a community changemaker like those I interviewed [for the Fellowship] last year.” 

Healing Together for Food and Land Justice

In October of 2024, the Young Leaders Program, in conjunction with the Native Youth Program, held an overnight event with about 50 youth called “Healing Together for Land and Food Justice” at Pie Ranch and Deep Medicine Circle farm. During the event, youth were able to put their phones down for a couple of days, camp on an organic farm and immerse themselves in nature. They picked strawberries, baked pies, and learned about food justice from an East Bay urban farmer. At Deep Medicine Circle, the group was educated about the land back movement from an Indigenous lawyer working to increase access to traditional lands by Native folks in order to implement Indigenous stewardship practices to heal the land. 

Since 2020, during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, Nina Simons, in coordination with Co-Directors of Bioneers Indigeneity Program Cara Romero (Chemehuevi) and Alexis Bunten (Unangan/Yup’ik), began allocating funds to worthy individuals, organizations and community caregivers through small grants and fellowships as part of the Everywoman’s Leadership Regranting Fund. It’s now three years later, and the funds continue to flow financial resources to Indigenous individuals, youth, elders and communities via an innovative Re-Granting Fund, distributing small direct cash grants. It has proven to be literally life-saving in many cases. In 2024-25 we’ve granted over $110,000 to more than 68 organizations, 4 worthy individuals, and 1 community caregiver through small grants and fellowships.

Funds by multiple private donors, foundations and grant giving organizations have allowed us to attract additional regranting funds for these purposes from longtime donors and foundation giving organizations–including multi-year grants for the Indigeneity Team to distribute at their own discretion.

Where Water Flows Life Thrives: Ensuring Drought Resilience and Water Security for Farms, People and Ecosystems is a 5-part multimedia series highlighting innovative designs and far-sighted strategies based on principles drawn from conservation hydrology, permaculture, regenerative agriculture, and keystone species restoration that demonstrate how to sustainably steward our most precious resource and ensure water security for all life. It includes essays by experts on various aspects of water conservation. It’s artistically produced with parallax scrolling, videos and other vibrant graphic techniques that have creatively expanded the way that Bioneers presents media. In just the first 4 weeks after rollout, it had 8,000 views. To date, it has had over 53,000 views.