Samantha Skenandore – Re-Evolving Indigeneity to Save our Planet
Bioneers | Published: May 6, 2026 Indigeneity Video
Introduction by Britt Gondolfi, Bioneers Indigeneity Special Programs Coordinator.
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 in which decisions will be made based on their effects seven generations in the future, we need to empower the extraordinary crop of young leaders, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, now emerging on the scene. Samantha Skenandore, of Ho-Chunk and Oneida ancestry, one of the nation’s leading practitioners of and experts in Federal Indian law and tribal law, delves into the living legacies of her people’s guardianship of water, springs, trails, portals, and burial and sacred sites to illustrate the types of values we need to ground ourselves in, and describes some of her legal battles to highlight some of the types of struggles we must wage. But, above all, she exhorts us to do everything we can to support a new generation of change-makers that is combining the deep wisdom of ancestral TEK (Traditional Ecological Knowledge) with the best of contemporary science and technology to address our complex modern problems.
This talk was delivered at the 2026 Bioneers Conference.
Samantha Skenandore, a member of the Ho-Chunk Nation who previously served as a Tribal Attorney for the Ho-Chunk Nation’s Department of Justice and clerked for the United States Department of Justice, Indian Resources Section, is a founding partner of Skenandore Wilson LLP with 20+ years’ multi-jurisdictional legal experience working with tribal governments and enterprises to build governmental and economic infrastructures across Indian Country. She works in a wide range of legal domains, including: tribal and corporate governance, business transactions, economic development, real estate, cultural resources, water rights, labor issues, and representing clients before members of Congress, congressional committees and federal agencies. Samantha has also been integral to the Bioneers Indigeneity Program, helping develop a toolkit to help frame legal considerations for tribal nations to consider adoption of “Rights of Nature” laws.
EXPLORE MORE
Legalizing Nature’s Rights: How Tribal Nations are Leading the Fastest Growing Environmental Movement in History
The Rights of Nature movement launched internationally in 2006 and is growing fast. Driven primarily by tribes and citizen-led communities, more than three dozen cities, townships and counties across the U.S. have adopted such laws to create legally enforceable rights for ecosystems to exist, flourish, regenerate and evolve.
In this podcast episode, Native American attorneys, Frank Bibeau and Samantha Skenandore, and legal movement leader Thomas Linzey report from the front lines how they are honing their strategies to protect natural systems for future generations.
Rights of Nature in Indian Country
Honoring the Rights of Nature has always been essential to the worldview and cultures of First Peoples. The Rights of Nature movement simply puts into law what has always been a part of traditional laws: that the natural world must thrive if our Peoples and cultures are to survive.
As a coalition of Native and Native-descended authors, the Bioneers Indigeneity Program team wrote a guide by and for American Indian/Alaska Native community members who are interested in learning about how the Rights of Nature can bring Tribal values into contemporary law.