Introduced by Melissa Nelson.

Elizabeth Kapu’uwailani Lindsey, Ph.D. is an award-winning filmmaker and anthropologist committed to ethnographic rescue and the conservation of vanishing indigenous knowledge and tradition. Indigenous science and TEK have a key role to play in planetary restoration. The first female National Geographic Fellow and a descendant of Hawaiian chiefs, English seafarers and Chinese merchants, she was raised by Hawaiian elders who prophesied her role as a steward of ancestral wisdom. She will describe her 2010 186-day expedition by amphibian seaplane to access some of the world’s most fragile environmental and cultural regions, and present her findings about the interrelatedness of poverty, education, cultural survival, biodiversity and health.

This speech was presented at the 2010 Bioneers National Conference.