LFF #32: Radical Collaboration and Collective Power: Women’s Climate Leadership

In Memoriam: Honoring Women in the Vanguard Who Have Passed Away

In this darkening season, when the leaves begin to drop from the trees and sweep across arroyos, we are invited into a time of thinning veils: Samhein, Halloween, Dia de Los Muertos, a time to pay homage to those who have left this realm. At Bioneers, we’re reflecting on what it means to have lost, in quick succession, many of our Leading from the Feminine vanguards—women whose ideas, courage, and organizing helped shape the feminist movements of our time. In a moment of profound political instability, when women’s rights and hard-won freedoms are being undermined and rolled back, the passing of these luminaries holds a particular weight. How do we carry forward their legacies when the struggles they devoted their lives to remain unfinished—and, in many ways, are taking new and troubling forms?

In this LFF issue, we honor Gloria Steinem, Dolores Huerta, and Simone Margaret Senogles, women whose lives and work have helped shape the Bioneers community and the broader interconnected movements for justice, liberation, and collective well-being. We also revisit the voices of Joanna Macy and Susan Griffin, whose passing only heightened the immeasurable wealth of insight, imagination, and wisdom left for us to draw upon. Their work reminds us that the personal and the political, the human and the more-than-human, and the struggles for social and ecological healing are deeply intertwined and—as during this time of year—separated by only the thinnest veils of perception.

Honoring the legacies of feminist leaders also means acknowledging complexity. Some of the women who helped lay the groundwork for contemporary feminist movements have come under necessary critique as subsequent generations challenge the exclusions, blind spots, and assumptions within earlier visions of liberation. These critiques aren’t separate from their lineage, they’re part of its ongoing evolution. Across generations, women leaders have carried forward these foundational struggles while working to expand their footprint, reimagine their possibilities, and redirect the work towards a more inclusive and intersectional future. A living legacy isn’t something to preserve unchanged, but something to question, deepen, and bring into fuller alignment with the world we’re striving to create.

This is part of what remembrance asks of us: not simply to celebrate those who came before, but to reckon honestly with what they actually gave us, namely: what remains unfinished, and what must continue to evolve.

As we honor these women, we also honor the many leaders who are carrying forward these foundational struggles while working to reimagine their possibilities and redirect the work towards a more inclusive and intersectional future. Their collective wisdom is a reminder that no singular generation can define progress, no legacy can be carried by one community alone, and no movement can stand still and also stay relevant.

May these meditations offer a prism of gratitude and mourning, and a renewed tether to the lineage of women’s leadership—and to our shared responsibility to keep its most liberatory possibilities active and churning.

‘There is no death, daughter. People die only when we forget them,’ my mother explained shortly before she left me. ‘If you can remember me, I will be with you always.’
– Isabel Allende, Eva Luna

In Memoriam: Honoring Women in the Vanguard Who Have Passed Away

GLORIA STEINEM (1934-2026)

In this episode from The Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature, Escaping Control: Linking Gender, Social Movements and Democracy, the late world-renowned feminist, writer and change-maker Gloria Steinem connects the dots among disparate social movements to reveal the common patterns of oppression that underlie them all. From gender and race to democracy and universal spirituality, she applies her razor intellect, compassionate heart and nuanced eye to weave a unifying vision of a richly human and humane world where all people are valued for their uniqueness and full humanity – neither treated as property, nor defined by labels or stereotypes.

DOLORES HUERTA (1930–2026)

We join many friends and allies in mourning the very recent loss of Dolores Huerta, one of the most important labor, environmental justice, racial equality, feminist, and immigrant rights leaders of the past 70 years. Beyond being a legendary activist who energetically joined nearly every major fight for justice of our era, she was truly an extraordinary woman who was still organizing and going to protests (and out dancing!) into her 90s, and who though a practicing Catholic (and mother of 14!), became a forceful defender of reproductive freedom. We at Bioneers were honored to have Dolores Huerta speak at our conference in 2024. We invite you to listen to her keynote address, Organizing for Justice. 

SIMONE MARGARET SENOGLES (1970-2025) 

Simone Margaret Senogles of the Red Lake Nation, a life-long activist, worked with the Indigenous Environmental Network for over 25 years in many different capacities, including educating on the local impact of toxic chemicals and spearheading the organization’s food sovereignty work. She was also: a founding member of the MMIW 218, a grassroots group dedicated to addressing the crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women; on the governing board of Grassroots Global Justice, an alliance of organizations of working and poor people and communities of color; a co-founder of the first Indigenous Feminist Organizing school in the US; and a prolific Anishinaabe artist who could sew, weave, bead, quill, craft with birch bark and tend bees. She was the daughter of longtime Bioneers ally, Tom Goldtooth and sister of Dallas Goldtooth. In her memory, we share Bioneers’ award-winning radio program, No More Stolen Sisters: Stopping the Abuse and Murder of Native Women and Girls.

JOANNA MACY (1929–2025) AND SUSAN GRIFFIN (1943–2025)

Joanna Macy and Susan Griffin, two profoundly influential feminist thinkers, writers, and cultural visionaries whose work has helped generations of people reimagine our relationships to one another, the natural world, and the possibilities for social transformation. Joanna Macy, Godmother of Deep Ecology and the founder of The Work That Reconnects, brought spiritual wisdom, ecological awareness, and a fierce commitment to social change into a powerful framework for collective healing and action. Susan Griffin, acclaimed writer and feminist philosopher, transformed how we perceive and understand the intersections of gender, power, culture, and the natural world, giving voice to connections long obscured by dominant ways of thinking. In this Bioneers conversation from the archives, Heart to Heart – Women’s Leadership in Transforming Culture, the two are joined by their living contemporaries Sarah Crowell, Sofia Quintero, and Akaya Windwood for a rich exploration of women’s leadership, cultural conditioning, and the possibilities for creating a more inclusive and compassionate world. We share this conversation in celebration of two remarkable legacies, and in recognition of the women continuing to carry forward, challenge, and transform the lineages they helped shape.

Featured Media

Across generations, women leaders are carrying forward the work of those who came before—honoring their contributions while building more inclusive, intersectional, and expansive visions of liberation.

Listen: On the Issues with Michele Goodwin

As a constitutional law professor, author, and host of the podcast “On the Issues” at Ms. magazine—the publication Steinem co-founded—Michele Goodwin centers her work on reproductive freedom, civil rights, and systemic gender equity. Like Steinem, Goodwin champions the philosophy that movements cannot rely on singular leadership to carry them forward. Both reflecting on the loss of Steinem and holding her in beloved remembrance, she reminds us to embrace joy. “It can be hard to think about the importance of making a joyful noise, the importance of keeping a torch lit, the importance of holding on and persevering with that torch in order to light other torches. It can be hard to see that the flame is still burning. But it is.”

Watch: Profile of Camila Chávez

Camila Chávez, co-founder and executive director of the Dolores Huerta Foundation (DHF), is carrying forward the grassroots and intersectional work of her mother, Dolores Huerta. Chávez leads community organizing, civic engagement, and leadership development programs across California’s Central Valley, including youth-organizing initiatives designed to train young people of color in advocacy, education equity, environmental justice, and LGBTQIA+ equity, with an intersectional focus on building local political power and accountability in marginalized communities. Watch as DHF organizers implement the “house meeting model,” with small groups of neighbors, co-workers, and friends and help them identify shared concerns and recognize that they are the leaders best equipped to make the change they seek.

Read: Indigenous Women Taking Charge for the Protection of the Future

Indigenous feminist leaders like Kandi “EagleWoman” White (Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara) continue to expand on the foundation that the late and beloved Simone Margaret Senogles built. Through the Indigenous Environmental Network, White trains young Indigenous youth in community-based environmental projects and sustains the Indigenous Feminist Organizing School that Senogles helped pioneer. This 2022 Cultural Survivor interview between Senogles, White and Daisee Francour explores the diversity in Indigenous Feminisms and how Indigenous Women are taking charge for the protection of their future.