Putting Community Rights and Rights for Nature Above Corporation Rights

See more Matt Wuerker cartoons at www.politico.com/wuerker

Bioneers was founded on the premise that most of the solutions to our major ecological and social crises already exist. This is even truer today than it was 27 years ago. Why then has the global crisis ratcheted up from urgency to emergency?

The rhinoceros in the room is corporate power. Perhaps the greatest single cause of inequality and runaway environmental destruction is the concentration of extreme wealth and power by corporations and moneyed interests. Meanwhile, they’ve perfected legal frameworks that afford them the legal constitutional standing and rights of “personhood,” but without most of the responsibilities or consequences we individual “persons” have to face.

This year’s Bioneers Conference highlights a stellar line-up of groundbreaking leaders in the growing movement to overturn this preposterous plutocracy and “democracy theme park.” Thomas Linzey and Mari Margil of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund are true legal revolutionaries who have now helped hundreds of communities to successfully challenge the corporate juggernaut in their backyards. They are advancing radical new legal frameworks that privilege the rights of communities and enshrine “Rights for Nature” in local jurisprudence and national constitutions (most notably in Ecuador and Bolivia). Following their joint keynote on Friday, October 21st, Linzey and Margil will host a practical workshop along with Shannon Biggs of Movement Rights, sharing tested and practical organizing strategies that all of us can take home to our communities.

On Friday night, we’ll be hosting the international premiere of an exciting new film about Thomas and Mari’s work, We the People 2.0. Directed by Leila Conners, who co-directed Leonardo DiCaprio’s powerful movie “The Eleventh Hour,” the screening will include an introduction by Thomas and Mari.

We The People 2.0

Other keynotes and accompanying afternoon panels will directly address deconstructing corporate power, as well as how to create equitable and life-affirming economic models for a green and just economy.

Bill McKibben, the most influential climate activist of our era, a brilliant journalist and a founder of 350.org, will deliver a keynote on Saturday the 21st, sharing his vision of how we can turn the tide in the face of corporate power including the fossil fuel industry’s decades-long disinformation campaign to sustain profits and knowingly destabilize the earth’s climate. He’ll join an afternoon strategy summit, The Day After Tomorrow: A Post-Paris/Pre-Election Climate Summit with visionary climate leaders Annie Leonard of Greenpeace, Indigenous activist and 350.org campaigner Clayton Thomas-Muller, Vien Truong of Green for All, and the Sierra Club’s Michael Brune.

Two other dynamic keynotes on Sunday, October 23, will continue the conversation. Green entrepreneur Danny Kennedy, co-founder of Sungevity and Managing Director of the innovative California Clean Energy Fund, will illustrate how to achieve a clean, distributed, and democratized energy system. Vien Truong of Green for All will show how the exemplary California climate policy model puts environmental justice front and center as both an effective climate strategy and a powerful engine of equity and jobs. That afternoon, Danny, Vien and sustainability guru Gil Friend  (founder and chairman of Natural Logic and currently Chief Sustainability Officer of the City of Palo Alto, CA) will team up to jam about how best to scale up our efforts to create irresistible momentum toward a green and just economy.

And there’s so much more!!

No Time for Half Measures: Upending Destructive Paradigms. These leading thinker-activists are working to move beyond our deeply flawed economic system and help birth a new world with social justice and climate stability at the heart. With: the incomparable Annie Leonard, Executive Director of Greenpeace USA, and Alnoor Ladha and Jess Rimington of The Rules, an exciting new think tank

Mass Movements: Rising to Address Economic Inequality: Learn about successful struggles to empower workers and create equity. With: Annette Bernhardt, UC Berkeley Labor Center; Saru Jayaraman, ROC United; Andrea Dehlendorf, OUR Walmart; and Laphonza Butler, Fight for $15.

Our Power Campaign National Gathering - August 2014

Flexing Our Power: Creating an Economy For Life: This powerful session will explore how frontline communities are resisting and building new governance structures rooted in deep democracy, cooperation, and clean energy. It’s co-produced with The Climate Justice Alliance and features Miya Yoshitani, Asian Pacific Environmental Network; Mateo Nube, Movement Generation; Jihan Gearon, Black Mesa Water Coalition; and Antonio Diaz, PODER.

Leveraging Business for Good: A select group of visionary, mission-driven, socially and eco-conscious entrepreneurs will show how they are achieving business success demonstrates by adopting a very different model of business, sometimes called “Capitalism 2.0.”

Living Seeds

Seed sharing at the Bioneers Conference. Photo by Jan Mangan

Open-pollinated seeds embody genetic information developed over thousands of years of adaptation – allowing food crops to respond dynamically, season after season, to a variety of environmental conditions.

People and plants have co-evolved together, and the knowledge stored in seeds is a result of that symbiotic relationship. Seed saving and adaptation, by farmers selecting seeds from the plants that have the characteristics they most desire (flavor, stature, yield, resistance to drought, etc.), are the very genesis of agriculture.

Seed Sharing at 2011 Bioneers Conference
Seed Sharing at 2011 Bioneers Conference

10,000 years ago, the first farmers gathered seed heads from wild grasses in the Middle East and cultivated them. That process of selection and breeding has continued ever since, evolving those seeds into today’s modern wheat varieties. As plants and seeds respond to human stewardship, people are rewarded with an abundance of more flavorful and resilient crops, ensuring food security and allowing civilizations to flourish. The cultural story differs with each plant, but the process is essentially the same.

Grassroots knowledge and skills have traditionally driven this dynamic legacy, but consolidation of the seed industry, corporate control of seed supply, and patenting of seeds is robbing the public of its seed sovereignty.

You can reclaim democratic grassroots control of seeds by actively participating in the ongoing, 10,000 year-old practice of saving and sharing seeds at the Bioneers Seed Exchange. Master seed savers host this annual event, sharing seeds as well as their extensive horticultural knowledge.

For information on the state of seeds, listen to this short excerpt from Matthew Dillon of Seed Matters at Bioneers 2012, on how grassroots seed saving is an important political act:

And check out Living Seeds’ interviews with master seed savers, from a Bioneers seed-saving intensive:

Using Biomimicry to Redesign the Food System

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(Photo credit: AgriGaia)

Eating is our most intimate relationship with nature. Every time we take a bite of food there is an ecological, economic and social consequence. Food and all its associated activities – growing, processing, distributing, retailing, etc. – impact the environment more than any other human endeavor.

Bioneers, for 27 years, has been at the forefront of promoting innovative ideas and practices for developing a healthy, just, and sustainable food system. Bioneers can trace its origins to Seeds of Change and the Native Scholars Program, which worked with indigenous farmers to help conserve traditional cultural practices and seed stocks. Later on, we designed a blueprint for a statewide healthy food system with the Dreaming New Mexico project. Today, we are proud to be hosting the Biomimicry Institute’s Global Design Challenge for Food Systems Innovation at this year’s Bioneers conference.

Transforming the dominant food system will require a reframing of how we view nature. The industrial perspective, which sees nature as an antagonist, has resulted in failed solutions that cause waste, toxicity, malnourishment and degradation of the very resources on which agriculture depends. However, viewing nature instead as a cooperative, intelligent and generous partner opens up new pathways of possibility.

Janine Benyus, the brilliant biologist who developed the concept of Biomimicry, said, “The Biomimicry Revolution introduces an era based not on what we can extract from nature, but on what we can learn from her.”

But how does that help fix the broken food system?

Fortunately for all of us, Janine is not only asking that question, but also challenging others to work with the inquiry: “How would nature solve this?” At the 2016 Bioneers Conference, the Biomimicry Institute will award the $100,000 Ray C. Anderson Foundation “Ray of Hope” Prize to the most innovative biomimetic design to achieve global food security. The brilliance of grassroots, creative, nature-inspired design will be shared and placed into the intellectual commons to inspire and catalyze change. This honor is just one of this year’s not-to-be-missed events covering the intersection of Biomimicry and food systems.

Bioneers At Standing Rock

An update from the front lines by the Bioneers Indigeneity Program

#DAPL, #waterislife, #KeepItInTheGround, #sacredstonecamp, #bioneers

Many bioneers are on the frontlines protesting the 1,200 mile, $3.7 billion Dakota Access Pipeline, or DAPL. Dallas Goldtooth, Kandi Mosset, Xiuhezcatl Martinez, and Clayton Thomas-Muller are among the thousands of Indigenous peoples from Alaska to Florida who have joined “the largest gathering of Native Americans in more than 100 years,” according to the BBC. They are protesting on behalf of the millions of people whose drinking water is threatened by the pipeline construction, as well as the plants and animals that also depend on clean water.

Indigenous Environmental Network Organizer and Bioneers faculty member Dallas Goldtooth describes the effort:

“As Oceti Sakowin people, our relationship to the land and water is the foundation of our identity. Understand this, we will stop this pipeline… Our resistance is based on love for our people and the land, not out of hate for others. We utilize peaceful direct action to demonstrate our will and lead with the original instructions our ancestors have left for us. . . We must keep this oil in the ground for the benefit of all future generations.”

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Dallas Goldtooth at the Standing Rock Camp.

(photo: Josué Rivas, the Guardian)

Fossil Fuels and Cultural Trauma

The proposed pipeline cuts along several Native American reservations, crossing through sacred tribal lands that are protected by treaty. Over the Labor Day weekend, Energy Transfer Partners, the company behind the pipeline, illegally bulldozed burial grounds and sacred sites of prayer in a violent attack on the Native “protectors” who are standing bravely on behalf of the water and land. Paid security personnel pepper-sprayed and released attack dogs on the protectors.

We are reminded in this horrifying moment to acknowledge the ongoing traumas that our Indigenous brothers and sisters around the world face every day, as they stand on the frontlines resisting the fossil fuel industry. Standing Rock is another pinnacle moment in our human history. Or, as Bioneers co-founder, Nina Simons, put it, “Standing Rock is this generation’s Selma.”

“It’s a familiar story in Indian Country,” writes the Chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux, David Archambault,” in a New York Times Op Ed piece.

“This is the third time that the Sioux Nation’s lands and resources have been taken without regard for tribal interests. The Sioux peoples signed treaties in 1851 and 1868. The government broke them before the ink was dry.  When the Army Corps of Engineers dammed the Missouri River in 1958, it took our riverfront forests, fruit orchards and most fertile farmland to create Lake Oahe. Now the Corps is taking our clean water and sacred places by approving this river crossing. Whether it’s gold from the Black Hills or hydropower from the Missouri or oil pipelines that threaten our ancestral inheritance, the tribes have always paid the price for America’s prosperity.”

Too often, Indigenous voices are silenced when it comes to threats to environmental and social health. The protection of Indigenous homelands and cultural landscapes are critical to the wellbeing of all Americans. Beyond the flagrant and shocking destruction of burial grounds and sacred sites, beyond unleashing attack dogs on innocent victims of the fossil fuel industry, this issue shows that Indigenous voices of protest speak for all of us. We all have the right to clean drinking water. Our children and grandchildren don’t deserve to inherit the global warming crisis caused by our generation’s relentless fossil fuel consumption.

How To Learn More

You can follow what’s happening live at Standing Rock, by following the Sacred Stone Camp and Dallas Goldtooth via social media.

To learn more about Native American activism against the fossil fuel industry, check out these past Bioneers’ videos:

You are also invited to join us for live discussion October 20-23 at the Marin Center in San Rafael, California. Many of the bioneers protecting our rights at Standing Rock will be at the 2016 Bioneers Conference to talk about these critical issues. Highlights include:

For more information, feel free to contact us at natives@bioneers.org

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Cara Romero (Chemhuevi) and Alexis Bunten (Aleut/Yup’ik)

Bioneers Indigeneity Program

Youth Leaders Plant Seeds of Change at Bioneers 2016

The Bioneers 2016 conference is fast approaching, and the role of youth in the Bioneers experience is more critical than ever. The Youth Leadership Program offers a welcoming, interactive space at the conference that engages and activates youth (ages 13-23) to emerge as the next generation of leaders across social and environmental movements. We understand that today’s youth are bombarded with grim messages about the state of the world; with environmental, racial, gender, and socioeconomic injustices all around them, youth are at risk of being lost to apathy and cynicism.

The 2016 National Bioneers Conference is the antidote! We provide compelling, relevant opportunities for youth that ignite personal empowerment and inspire community activism. The Youth Unity Center will be filled with incredible workshops, including Malik Diamond’s HipHopForChange, Barbara Jefferson’s Liberation in Action, and Increase the Peace: Conflict Resolution led by Destiny Arts.

The Youth Leadership Program also nurtures youth expression, featuring arts as a method of activism: a poetry slam hosted by the renowned eco-hip hop artist Xiuhtezcatl Martinez of Earth Guardians, an open mic session, and various drop-in interactive art projects.

Check out Xiuhtezcatl’s performance from 2014 for a taste:

We welcome marginalized communities, with a safe space for meaningful dialogue in the Youth of Color Caucus and the LGBTQ Talking Circle. Youth can also participate in the Community of Mentors, small group meetings with seasoned leaders held throughout the conference. (For details, please see the Youth Leadership schedule.)

So come join us at this year’s gathering! Meet and network with other young activists in the environmental and social justice movements. Deepen your personal power and step up to leadership.

We offer a conference registration discount for students, and a limited number of scholarships to cover costs for young people to attend. You can apply for a scholarship here.

Want to help build a better tomorrow? Help deserving youth experience Bioneers by donating to our Barn Raiser Fundraising campaign – launching today! Help us bring more youth to Bioneers than ever and invest in youth leadership, for a just and sustainable future.

But don’t take our word for it. Listen to the young leaders already involved:

Indigeneity Program Presents Native Youth Leadership Initiative at the White House

On Friday, August 26, the Bioneers’ Indigeneity Program was invited to the White House to share our Indigenous Youth Program with leaders in Washington DC. The #GenerationIndigenous #GenIndigenous event, “Raising Impact with Innovation and Proven Strategies,” was organized by Native Americans in Philanthropy. The event showcased Native American youth programs which are using culturally comprehensive approaches to address the needs of Native American youth.

Our program and story, “Overcoming Barriers to Native Youth Inclusion at Bioneers,” was selected by a youth committee as an example of best practices in Native Youth Career Development and Connectivity in Indian Country. For the past four years we’ve been creating a unique opportunity for Native youth to attend the Bioneers Conference and Indigenous Forum, and we were incredibly honored to be able to participate and share our story of hope, courage and success!

We were joined by eleven other Indigenous Youth initiatives from around the country, including United National Indian Tribal Youth, Inc., Phoenix Indian Center FORWARD PROMISE, We R Native, Oyáte Wóókiye For the People, True North Organizing Network, GWU Native American Politicial Leadership Program, INSPIRE Native Teen Initiative, NERDS: Native Education Raising Dedicated Students, and Cultivating Coders.

For this opportunity of a lifetime, we gathered in the Eisenhower Building, adjacent to the White House in a Press Conference style board room. Each organization had 4-5 minutes to share their story through “lightning round” style presentations. We presented to philanthropic foundations that fund Native organizations, the Native American special advisor to the President, an Advisory Board Member of My Brothers’ Keeper Alliance, and the United States Chief Technology Officer from the office of Science and Technology Policy. This format provided a unique space to share our initiative face-to-face and to connect with our allies doing similar work, allowing us all to learn and be inspired by each other.

One of the many inspirational youth program leaders we met was Noah Blue Elk Hotchkiss (Southern Ute Indian Tribe/Southern Cheyenne/Caddo Nation). After becoming paralyzed in a car accident, Noah has worked tirelessly to bring adaptive sports to Native youth with disabilities.

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Noah Blue Elk Hotchkiss (Southern Ute Indian Tribe/Southern Cheyenne/Caddo Nation) addresses the audience.

 

Our Indigeneity Program Director, Cara Romero (Chehuevi), shared the story of the Bioneers Indigenous Youth Leadership Program. Thanks to tireless support from partners – including the San Francisco Unified School District’s Indian Education Program, the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians, and volunteers like you – this program has grown from an initial group of 4 youth in 2011 to over 60 attendees in 2015 and spots for up to 80 Native youth attendees this year! Our main message to funders and allies is that we must collectively create safe and culturally sensitive educational opportunities for Native Youth, where they can see, meet, interact and learn directly from Native leaders. This contact with Native leaders, with whom youth can closely identify, is critical to keeping them engaged in school and career pathways. “If you can’t see it. You can’t be it!”

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Bioneers’ Indigeneity Program Director, Cara Romero, shares the story of the Bioneers’ Indigenous Youth Leadership Program

In her speech, Cara also outlined our exciting new plans to bring Native content to a broader audience in 2017 via the internet and classroom curriculum. For more information about Bioneers Indigeneity Program activities, check out our webpage. If you are a Native youth, or know a Native youth who would like to attend our Native Youth Leadership Program at the Bioneers Conference (October 21-23, 2016), please apply through our Indigenous Youth group or individual scholarship applications.  

It was truly awe-inspiring to be in the room with so many accomplished and inspirational change makers from across the US. From the flash presentations, we learned innovative strategies and exciting ideas that we plan to incorporate in the Bioneers’ Native Youth Leadership Program. It was also exciting to share our program with the Native leaders, White House advisors, and Philanthropists who will help spread the word about our work.

As you can see by the transcript we share below, we are very proud of the Native Youth Leadership initiative, and the direction we are taking the program. We plan to extend program activities throughout the school year, via internet-based, open-access media and in the classroom through Native-made and Native-themed curriculum.

Hi, My name is Cara Romero and I am the Director of the Bioneers Indigeneity Program and the Bioneers Native Youth Leadership Initiative.  I am from the Chemehuevi Valley Indian Reservation in Southern California and I’m here with Alexis Bunten who is Aleut and Yup’ik from Alaska. We are honored to be here sharing our story with you.

Native youth of all backgrounds possess the ability to take on leadership roles. However, they also face complex issues of ongoing trauma and barriers to reaching these goals. Along with a vision of what’s possible, Native youth need exposure to many culture-based pathways on their journey to becoming future leaders.  Native youth must gain increased exposure and access to Native leaders, educators and authentic media and curriculum that they can identify with.  This is our overarching goal and mission with the Bioneers Native Youth Initiative.

Over the past 4 years, we have developed a Native Youth Initiative that addresses educational disparities and creates opportunities for Native Youth (both urban and rural) to attend and be empowered at the Bioneers Conference and world-renowned Indigenous Forum. The Indigenous Forum is a sovereign, Native-led educational setting where a powerhouse of indigenous leaders from diverse backgrounds and campaigns converge each year on Coastal Miwok territory San Rafael, CA.  Past speakers such as Oren Lyons, Winona LaDuke, John Trudell, Tom Goldooth , Suzan Harjo, Xiuhtezcatl Martinez, and Naelyn Pike addressing issues like climate change, truth and reconciliation, eco-apartheid, environmental racism, bio-diversity, Native arts, water, food security and women’s issues in Indian Country.  

In 2011, we launched an Initiative for Native youth to receive free registration and support to attend this three-day event of intense indigenous programming. In 2012, we received our first grant from the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians Community Giving Program to fully fund the attendance of 50+ Native youth and have continued to improve, develop and sustain our work with the youth.  From an initial group of 4, the program has grown to engage over 65 Native youth in 2015, many returning and we are expecting nearer 80 in 2016.  And, even more, now that we are taking our content online, we will see a surge in Native Youth served.

We have worked hard to overcome barriers to Native youth inclusion in the Indigenous Forum because it is our shared mandate from our respective Native communities. Overcoming barriers to Native youth inclusion includes empathy, understanding, cultural sensitivity and compassion to hardships so familiar and so traumatic they are too hard for me to share in this space.  We work sensitively and intuitively to identify and alleviate potential hardships for these Native youth to not just attend but to TRULY be available learn at the Indigenous Forum.

We co-own these hardships.  We find resources to problem solve and are at the same time resourceful with what we have.  We partner with other Native youth organizations, directors and chaperones to make this possible.  Together, we work as healers in our collective community–taking many under our wings in the absence of parents, role models and opportunities.  We concentrate on culturally relevant programming. We design Native Youth centered enrichment activities like hands on arts, murals, a digital ambassadors program, ceremony time, and a poetry slam. With help from our partners and funders, we provide financial support to address hardships that inhibit learning like food, camping and transportation.

Support and information like this counters the messages and lessons Native youth learn about their history and cultures in the school environment and media. It gives them confidence, helps them be proud of who they are and supports them in developing positive and balanced messages to share with the world. Our goal is to help them find their voices. Some of our youth have already gone on to become cultural, environmental and social justice leaders in Indian Country. Some of them are in Standing Rock today. we hope to continue to foster new Native leaders.

This year, the Native Youth Leadership Program is expanding into Native designed media and curriculum for the classroom further bolstering the philosophy that Native youth must see themselves and their diverse identities and issues reflected in the content they are learning in order to stay engaged. We believe this kind of educational content will inspire Native youth to become the next generation of leaders in their communities.  We invite you to join us in our initiative for fair and equitable education and opportunities for Native youth at the Bioneers Indigeneity Program.”

Igniting Inclusive Leadership at Bioneers 2016

At this critical time, the world desperately needs leadership – from all of us – to transform how we live on Earth and with each other. The kinds of leaders we’re highlighting at this year’s conference create a regenerative loop that’s energizing, inviting and joyful. Each of them inspires leadership in those around them.

Some of these leaders have been role models for me. They have used their own pain, traumas, and learning to inform and transform how they show up in the world. Their vulnerabilities have become their strengths. By walking through the fire of the worst challenges life has thrown at them, they’ve become beacons that illuminate ways toward liberation, equity, healing and democracy.

Three women who embody that kind of leadership open this year’s conference on Friday, October 21:

Eve Ensler has become more compassionate, more connected to nature, and a more effective leader after undergoing treatment for cancer. She will perform Coconut, about reclaiming our sacred relationship to our bodies. She’s also hosting two afternoon sessions: a conversation on intersectionality with the dazzling Kim Crenshaw (who coined the phrase), and a conversation with three remarkable men on the tyranny of masculinity.

Ericka Huggins’ personal transformation took her from political prisoner, Black Panther leader and human-rights activist to an advocate for integrating spirituality with engaged action, whole-person education and restorative justice. The light that shines within her is truly transformative. Her keynote should not be missed: The Role of Spirituality in Social Justice Work.

Katsi Cook, an environmental-justice researcher and midwife from the Mohawk nation, is weaving Indigenous women leaders across Turtle Island into a network. This will exponentially strengthen their efforts to protect and defend their cultures and communities, as well as our collective home on Mother Earth. Given the fierce commitment, relational intelligence and community-organizing skill of many of the Indigenous women leaders I’ve encountered, this makes me feel incredibly hopeful.

I’m particularly enthused about this year’s experiential workshops. That is how I learn most deeply, and I have learned that inner awareness often translates into outer effectiveness. In Cultivating Women’s Leadership, we’ll offer a taste of the kinds of practices we offer in our six-day residential intensive, to experience what leading from the feminine feels like. When we prioritize relationship ahead of tasks, all the work gets easier and more fun.  In Engaging Leadership: From Insight to Impact, we’ll explore varied lenses into the kinds of inner insights that can liberate greater leadership results.

Leadership in Service to Healing

Many of us are being called to leadership that’s about cultural, social or individual healing.

For me, today’s most vital leadership is guided by relational intelligence, which features arts, embodiment and social repair as essential elements.  Climbing PoeTree, the luminous performance arts/activist duo, titled their keynote Creativity – The Antidote to Despair. Here’s a preview from Alixa, one half of the duo:

Relational intelligence at every age, to bring our whole selves to this time, is also featured in The Science Behind Trauma and the Art of Healing Relationships,  Multicultural Women Explore Social and Ecological Healing and Revolutionary Medicine.

All of Bioneers’ Council sessions are designed to surface collective wisdom in the presence of each others’ brilliance, and I’m especially eager to participate in the session on Life in the Balance, about restoring equilibrium through the sacred masculine and the sacred feminine.

Perhaps our greatest social wound is between women and men. Studies reveal that the deepest bias within the human psyche – deeper than race, faith, class or age – is about gender. Will Keepin and Cynthia Brix will be offering a keynote, workshop and intensive on transforming gender oppression, which promise to help with this much-needed healing.

And at the center of all relational intelligence is equity. This year’s conference is abundant with opportunities to explore gender, race, class, economic and intersectional justice as it emerges in many movements, including climate justice. Green For All’s Vien Truong will share her wise perspectives on how to build a new clean-energy economy that brings prosperity and justice to low-income communities and communities of color.

Many of today’s most effective movements and groups are practicing distributed leadership, where the responsibilities and burdens are rotated or shared.  For my way of seeing, the relationship economy and practices of generosity, respect and reciprocity will be hallmarks of this emergent leadership. Women are leading much (though by no means all) of it, and these voices exemplify the leadership I hear Mother Earth herself calling us toward.

You won’t want to miss it, and I hope to see you there.

Register for the 2016 Bioneers Conference here »

This Week on Bioneers Radio, “We’re All Chimps: Or Are Animals Persons Too?”

Today is the premiere of The Bioneers radio’s 16th season. Our first program features the remarkable story or primatologist researchers Roger and Deborah Fouts who raised chimpanzees as family. Joshua Fouts, their son, is the Executive Director of Bioneers. A few thoughts from Josh.

I hope you’ll enjoy listening to this opener to Season XVI of The Bioneers radio and podcast series; it’s one of the few stories I have heard that captures with delicate nuance the essence, sacrifice, heart, struggle and love that my parents poured into their 40-plus years with their chimpanzee siblings. Kenny Ausubel’s words, Stephanie Welch’s production and Neil Harvey’s voice tie it all together a lush and arresting Theater of the Mind.

I found myself overcome and a bit caught by surprise by the emotion that this story evoked in me. Such is the power of great storytelling.

For most of my life, people have asked me: “What was it like to grow up with chimps?” The answer is one that I’ve never been able to adequately respond to, other than to say that, like any child, what one experiences in their childhood is all they know to be “normal.” I didn’t know anything different.

Washoe
Washoe

My family’s normal was spent with an extended family of sign-language-speaking chimps. Our day-to-day normal included washing our clothes with chimp blankets, and spending our holidays with our chimp aunts and uncles (they were my parents’ sisters and brothers, thus our aunts and uncles). In practice, this often meant plucking long, bristly chimp hairs from my winter sweaters during high school (not the greatest pick-up line for a date), or getting up early each holiday to first spend it with the chimps and wait for them to open their presents or eat their “bird meat” (their sign language term for turkey) or “fruit tree” (the holiday conifer we decorated with edible treats), before concluding the holiday with my human family.  It also meant sharing their joys – exuberant hoots and signs for “hug!” every morning that my mom or dad would arrive to see them; and sorrows, when they lamented the loss or absence of a friend.

What I learned from a family that included chimps was a deep appreciation for how we as humans are loathe to open our hearts to the differences between “us” and whatever we consider to be “them.” Only as an adult have I come to appreciate the value of how vigilantly and presciently were my parents’ instructions to us as kids to consider chimps not other, but “us.” Not chimp, but family.

The symmetry and beauty of hearing this story told on the Bioneers radio series and to be part of an organization whose very mantra is “It’s all alive; It’s all connected; It’s all intelligent; It’s all relatives” is not lost on me.

Growing up in the sidecar of a chimpanzee’s destiny is something that I’ll probably be processing for the rest of my life. But I can tell you one thing: That sidecar lead me to you right here right now.

I’m no longer in the sidecar. Washoe, the matriarch of our chimp family, left us in 2007. And as she was freed of her mortal coil, so were we invited and challenged to live our lives more fully aware of the interconnectedness between us all.

In these times of tension and crisis in our world where the differences between us as humans seem starker than ever, Washoe’s story is one of healing and connection; a connection we all must strive to find.

I hope this insight into the importance of the interconnectedness of all beings in this story and the episodes to come rings as true to you as it did to me.

It’s Here! Season 16 of Bioneers Radio (and Podcast)

We’re thrilled to announce the launch of Bioneers Radio Series XVI! In all sincerity, it may be the best ever. Synchronously, 10 of the 13 programs have a strong racial justice theme, which was woven throughout the 2015 conference program. It has been a special joy to be completing the series just when we learned we won the Gold medal for one of last year’s shows — along with two other episodes honored as finalists — at the New York Festivals, the top global honor.

And the first show of the new series is very personal: It features the groundbreaking primatologist parents of our Executive Director Joshua Fouts! A don’t miss!

Our award-winning radio and podcast series features the bioneers — social and scientific innovators who are delivering breakthrough solutions to the most epic challenges facing people and our planet.

Find the show on your local radio station via our national station locator or tune in for free via iTunes, Stitcher, SoundCloud or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also download previous seasons of the programs.

We’re deeply gratified that Bioneers radio continues to offer some of the most electrifying and diverse programming available, free to you on any radio dial or digital device. Huge thanks to each of you who support these powerfully paradigm-shifting media.

Here’s what’s coming to feed your ears, starting this week:

Roger and Deborah Fouts

We’re All Chimps: Or Are Animals Persons Too?
In Western civilization, human beings are considered the exceptional species and uniquely intelligent. Yet science is consistently revealing our intimate biological kinship with all species, especially the primates with whom we share 99% of our DNA. The breakthrough primatologist researchers Roger and Deborah Fouts (parents of Bioneers Executive Director Joshua Sheridan Fouts) take us on their amazing journey with chimpanzees that shows that, not only are people animals, but animals seem to be people, too.

Welcome the Water: Climate-Proofing for Resilience
In the face of global climate disruption, two billion people worldwide will be challenged by too much water, and nearly another two billion by not enough. When you fight nature, you lose, says Dutch water wizard and designer Henk Ovink. He’s dramatically demonstrating on large scales how to shift our relationship to nature and to culture – and climate-proof our cities and coasts.

Rinku Sen
Rinku Sen

Raced and Classed: The Journey From Diversity to Equity
What we do to each other, we do to the Earth. To protect our common home, we’re being called upon to bridge our differences to create beloved community and peaceful coexistence. A new generation of visionary change-makers is reframing the race conversation, and designing new tools to transform our unconscious biases and create justice. With: Racial justice pathfinders Rinku Sen, Saru Jarayaman, and Malkia Cyril.

Spirit in Action: Three Virtues for the 21st Century
When we allow our hearts to be broken open by hearing the stories of our fellow human beings, we build community and compassion. That is the passionate message of Sister Simone Campbell, one of the most renowned figures in contemporary faith-based progressive activism. She and the other rebel Nuns on the Bus are touring the country, bridging divides, transforming politics and keeping the faith.

Dr. Barbara Sattler
Dr. Barbara Sattler

Climate Health, Your Health: Prevention is Protection
Climate disruption is harmful to your health. Dr. Linda Rudolph and Dr. Barbara Sattler are showing how our success or failure as a civilization may well hinge on how ingenious, nimble and socially just our public health systems can become in restoring the ecosystem health on which all health depends. And doing the right thing is good for our health.

Cultural Mindshift: Full Spectrum Sustainability and Resilience
Climate is the trip wire for every other foundational ecological and biological system – as well as the basis for human civilization. As we face the long climate emergency, fortunately, skillful pathfinders are banding together to transform our ways of living and bring resilience from the ground up into widespread practice. With Berkeley’s Chief Resilience Officer, Timothy Burroughs, Professor David W. Orr, and financial adviser Tom Van Dyck.

Spirit in the Air: Reform, Revolution and Regeneration
In times of massive social change, personal biography can coincide with historical epochs to produce leaders who embody the spirit of the times. Lifelong activist, author, politician, and visionary Tom Hayden shares the long view of social change movements. He traces the arc of struggle that has led to this epic moment when the climate crisis and the crisis of inequality are colliding with global civilization – and survival is the mother of invention.

Fania Davis at Bioneers 2015 Conference, Photo by Nikki Richter
Dr. Fania Davis at the 2015 Bioneers Conference, photo by Nikki Richter

Restorative Justice: From Harm to Healing
Oakland, California, has had the reputation of being one of the most dangerous cities in the country. Then the Restorative Justice movement started boldly showing how quickly that reputation can be turned around by arresting the cycle of youth violence and incarceration early: in schools and juvenile justice policies. With: Restorative Justice leaders Fania Davis and Cameron Simmons.

Fire in the Belly: Women Leading Social Change
Harm to one is harm to all—and prevention is a question of human survival. From oil refinery accidents in California to the aftermath of the BP oil disaster in the Gulf South, leaders Pennie Opal Plant and Colette Pichon Battle are on the frontlines, organizing their communities to stop the harms of the extraction economy and climate disruption. Activist-attorney Adrianna Quintero is making sure the voices of those most affected are heard helping awaken the “sleeping giant” of Latino voters.

Cara Romero
Cara Romero

The Path Home: Restoring Native Lands and Traditional Ecological Knowledge
Although colonial systems of oppression have radically damaged relationships between tribal communities and their traditional lands, a new generation of First Nations activists is working to restore those connections and safeguard Indigenous identity for future generations. They’re protecting traditional territories and sacred sites from harm, and renewing Indigenous land stewardship. With: Eriel Deranger of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation, Valentin Lopez, Amah Mutsun Tribal Band, and Cara Romero, from the Mohave-based Chemehuevi Tribe.

Nourishing the Future: Creating a Just and Healthy Food System for All
Communities around the country are working to create a new food future founded in health, justice and ecological wellbeing. Community activists Malik Kenyatta Yakini and Oran Hesterman are transforming Detroit through urban agriculture and helping low-income and working families access healthy food. Cathryn Couch works with young people to cook and deliver healthy meals to people who are ill and struggling to put food on the table with a model program using food as medicine.

Justice Technologies: Biomimicry, Citizen Science and Online Democracy
A new wave of tools designed to regenerate people and planet is emerging fast. Designers are creating living buildings that mimic nature, aerial-imaging kits for communities to hold extractive industries accountable, and online software for group decision-making that weaves diverse perspectives into a coherent whole. With: Citizen scientist Shannon Dosemagen of Public Lab, designer Eric Corey Freed of the Living Building Institute, and democracy technologist Ben Knight of Loomio.

Awakening the Genius in Everyone: When the Calling Keeps Calling
Renowned storyteller, performer, author, activist and scholar Michael Meade weaves threads of timeless wisdom traditions into myths for today’s global crisis. Meade says each of us is woven into the soul of the world, and we’re uniquely needed at this mythic moment to become active agents in the co-creation, re-creation and re-imagination of culture and nature.

Nikki Silvestri
Nikki Silvestri

Leading From the Feminine: Shifting Guidance From Head to Heart (One-hour Special)
What does it mean to bring the “feminine” forward in leadership from diverse cultural and ethnic perspectives? How might a spectrum of views help us to integrate relational intelligence into all our leadership? With poet Noris Binet; Nikki Silvestri, former Executive Director of Green for All and The People’s Grocery; Pat McCabe, or Woman Stands Shining, a Navajo teacher working on Indigenous nook, cranny and watershed across this planet is waking up frameworks for gender and all of life, and Nina Simons, co-founder of Bioneers and director of Bioneers Everywoman’s Leadership.

Growing Up With Climate Change

What is it like to grow up with this new climate reality? Chloe Maxmin, who delivered a passionate youth keynote about divesting from fossil fuels at Bioneers in 2015, spoke to six young people who have been working on climate change from a young age and know what it’s like to grow up with this crisis. Her piece Growing Up With Climate Change was featured in The Nation this month.

The common thread she found when speaking with these young activists is their commitment to self-determination in the face of crisis:

They refuse to be defined by the world they inherited. Instead, they define climate change as the opportunity to create a different world. They choose to protect what they love, to create the kind of life that they want, to fight with all their souls for a better future. They define their own fates. They declare that agency, power, and possibility can exist amid crisis.

Included in the article are two fellow Bioneers youth keynote speakers Junior Walk and Alex Loorz. Watch their inspiring Bioneers talks below:

That’s the only way you’re going to stop any kind of extraction: make it too costly for them to keep doing it. – Junior Walk

At the core of it all, our revolution is about sustainability, which I define as this: living as if the future matters. – Alec Loorz

A lot of the rhetoric I see around the climate movement is about anger and frustration toward the government, Exxon, the fossil fuel industry – and these emotions are warranted! We should be! But why exactly are we angry and frustrated? It’s because these entities are threatening everything we love, everything we care about it. We have to go down to that deeper level and make that love more explicit, bringing it to the forefront of our work. – Chloe Maxmin

Just Us For Food Justice – Interview with Verenice Portela

Bioneers and Rooted in Community National Youth Network (RIC) convened the annual Just Us for Food Justice program to fuel the mind, body, and spirit of youth activists, as well as strengthening their skills in creative messaging, holistic leadership, and movement building practices.

Facilitated in 2015 by Gerardo Marin, Beto Fuentes, and Verenice Portela of RIC, the program worked with the theme “Resilient Roots, Rising Action” using the 5 Elements of Hip-Hop as a vehicle for social change.

In this interview, Verenice Portela shares her views on food justice:

One of my biggest concerns is access to healthy foods. The people that are growing the food are the people that don’t really have access to them. And on top of that, they are inhaling all these toxic pesticides and fumigants and it’s affecting not just our health but our ecosystem and everything around us.

Bioneers Radio Wins Gold at New York Festivals

Bioneers radio show host Neil Harvey accepts the Gold Medal at the New York Festivals. Photo credit: Christina Fleming

In competition with the big dogs worldwide, Bioneers has taken the Gold Medal in the NY Festivals, considered the “Oscars” of radio, for the show “Nature’s Intelligence: Interviewing the Vegetable Mind,” from our 2015 series.

Competition included all the major players in media from around the world including BBC, the US networks, Canadian Broadcasting Company and other international outlets.
We are doubly pleased because this show is pure Bioneers. It had its deep origins when Michael Pollan got in touch to recommend Monica Gagliano as a speaker. Michael had just published his landmark piece on “Plant Intelligence” in The New Yorker. He told me much of the article was based on Monica’s scientific research, which showed not only intelligence in plants, but something akin to sentience.

I contacted our longtime colleague and Board member Melissa Nelson of the Indigenous Cultural Conservancy. She suggested teaming Monica up with Robin Kimmerer, an indigenous scientist who combines botany with traditional ecological knowledge of First Peoples. As often happens through Bioneers, these two remarkable pathfinders met, and the sparks flew at their panel in this extraordinary convergence of perspectives.

Then, of course, we made it into a radio show, and here we are at the NY Festivals. We deeply thank each of you who support Bioneers and Bioneers radio and podcasts! You are making it possible to bring these living lights to the wider world and to continue to spread consciousness of the genius of nature and of our kinship with the intelligence and the sentience of life.

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Huge props to my radio team partners Stephanie Welch and Neil Harvey, whose artistry and passion shine through in every magical radio show.

We’re almost ready to launch our 16th season of shows, so stay tuned in July for the release.