In addition to the yearly conference and since fall 2009 GLBD has become a year-round presence in Detroit. Our coordinator is an active participant in various networking collaboratives: Zero WasteDetroit (recycling education, closing the local incinerator), People’s Water Board (water affordability for all Detroiters), People’s Platform (issues determined by the community), Equitable Detroit (working on a Community Benefits Ordinance), Community Radio Station (providing a voice for Detroiters), Environmental Justice, Food Justice, Place-based Education and Uprooting Racism Planting Justice.
After attending Traverse City’s ‘satellite’ conference three years in a row; Paula Cathcart, IHM and Gloria Rivera, IHM wondered if it would be possible to sponsor a ‘satellite’ conference in Detroit. In 2004 they presented the idea to Great Lakes Bioneers (Traverse City) and to national Bioneers after consulting with 20+ Detroit organizations and colleagues who enthusiastically endorsed the idea and offered their support. The first GLBD conference took place in October 2005. GLBD will present its 11th conference this year.
The Whidbey Institute is a place of renewal and inspiration, and home to the bold seekers of positive change. We nurture and connect people who are doing uncommon work for the common good. Woven throughout our work is the spirit of the land. Our 100 acres of northwest woodland and historic farmstead, which we call Chinook, hold and energize everything that happens here. To learn more, visit: www.whidbeyinstitute.org. We became a network partner because our founders, Sarah Kelly and Tucker Stevens, were inspired by another BRCN event they attended and wanted to bring it to the Northwest!
Ecologistics, Inc., creating a resilient and healthy community for the residents of San Luis Obispo County, that is sustainable, both environmentally and economically. We became a partner site to bring the Bioneers Conference to residents of the Central Coast who could not travel to Marin, and to feature speakers and topics of local interest along with the National Bioneers keynote speakers.
Sustain Dane is a Madison, Wisconsin-based nonprofit organization that envisions the Madison Region as a national model for sustainability and sustainability innovation. They work toward this vision by fostering a rich and diverse network of sustainability champions.
Sustain Dane’s vision of sustainability holds a healthy planet, a just society, and a strong economy as equal and interrelated parts of a vibrant community. Their work is focused on bringing sustainability to people wherever they are – at work, in schools, in neighborhoods.
The centerpiece of all of Sustain Dane’s work is the sustainability champion — any individual, regardless of job title, who wants to effect positive change in their sphere of influence. Sustain Dane works with these champions to help them become leaders and inspire others to be sustainability champions. They are building a network of engaged change agents working toward a resilient future for the Madison Region.
That’s where Badger Bioneers comes in. Since 2009, Sustain Dane has hosted a Bioneers Resilient Communities Network event annually to connect and inspire our sustainability champions. The Badger Bioneers Conference provides the skills, networking and ideas needed to become more effective agents of change in our businesses, schools, and communities. Being part of the BRCN community shows Badger Bioneers participants that they are part of a larger, connected movement of communities across the country.
Aside from hosting the Badger Bioneers Conference, Sustain Dane offers year-round programs and events to support champions and promote sustainability to a broader audience.
At Bioneers, we believe that youth have the power to help shift the future for the better. Chloe Maxmin is one of those young people catalyzing change.
Maxmin, a graduate of Harvard University, became an activist when she was 12 and started a Climate Action Club in her high school, galvanizing a movement in her school and community. She then founded “First Here, Then Everywhere” to empower youth environmentalists, and then co-founded Divest Harvard, receiving national and international recognition for her activism.
Investing in the Future
“Divestment is the opposite of investment,” she says, introducing the Fossil Fuel Divestment Movement during her Bioneers talk.
Modeled after the anti-apartheid struggle of 1980s, divestment, which aims to stigmatize the fossil fuel industry and expose our colleges, universities, and other institutions investing in their stock as socially irresponsible, has achieved significant strides since its inception. Young people are playing a major role in building the movement.
Chloe’s insights hold special resonance for me. As a student at San Francisco State University when the call for fossil fuel divestment emerged, I watched the movement unfold and capture hearts and minds before my eyes.
“At our first meeting, we had only 10 people, and none of us knew what we were doing,” says Maxmin. “Now, in our third year, we have 70,000 people who have signed on to our campaign.”
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On June 20, 2015, I joined a Refinery Corridor Healing Walk led by Idle No More San Francisco Bay organizers. We marched 12 miles from my hometown of Benicia, California to Rodeo, California, crossing sights both monstrous and beautiful. What felt like a dream on this most remote side of the Bay was long overdue.
San Francisco Bay Area Oil Refineries Too Often Overlooked
The northeast corner of the San Francisco Bay Area is home to five refineries—Chevron, Shell, Valero, Tesoro, and Conoco Phillips—and a proposed Wespac oil terminal.
The Refinery Corridor Healing Walk began on the shores of the Carquinez Strait, several miles west of Benicia’s Valero Refinery, opening with a ceremony giving thanks to the waters that support all life on earth. From there, we took the healing walk west through local neighorhoods and south across the Carquinez Bridge, to Rodeo’s Conoco Phillips Refinery, the oldest of its kind in the Bay Area.
Walking within these communities provided an eye-opening experience, as places like Rodeo and Benicia are on the frontlines of the fossil fuel industry. Indeed, in recent years, Bay Area refineries have attracted national controversy with expansion projects to increase the amount of crude coming in and being refined. This, in a time when scientists agree that 80% of the world’s fossil fuel reserves should remain underground, unburned, to avert the worst impacts of climate change.
Idle No More Helps to Connect the Dots on Big Oil’s Impact
When people think of the Bay Area, they think of a dynamic, forward-looking region at the heart of social and environmental progress. The five large San Francisco Bay oil refineries and their enduring connection with our fossil fuel based economy are too often overlooked.
Last year, Bay Area activists joined Idle No More to create the Bay Area Refinery Corridor Coalition. Working together, the two groups have organized these Healing Walks along the refinery corridor of northeast San Francisco Bay to bring attention to the health risks and dangers that the refineries pose and the crude coming through the communities from the Alberta tar sands and the Bakken oil fields.
A grassroots movement of indigenous peoples in Canada, including bioneer Clayton Thomas Muller, Idle No More made headlines for opposing hazardous fossil fuel projects including the building of the Keystone XL pipeline over indigenous land in Alberta. For more about the Idle No More movement, check out Clayton Thomas Muller’s keynote from the 2014 Bioneers Conference:
Changing Our Mindset: Envisioning A Brighter Future
The Refinery Corridor Healing Walks are near and dear to me, where my multiple identities collide and manifest as a singular entity. I have been an environmental advocate for years and as a Benicia local, the Bay Area’s refinery corridor is literally my home—the place of my upbringing.
Growing up in the city of Benicia was a lesson in duality. A former state capital, not to mention an early contender for Metropolis of the West, Benicia, a sleepy town just shy of 27,000 people, remains hidden from public imagination. Visitors often describe the city as quaint and picturesque—a vision that runs counter to the reality that the eastern end of the city fronting Suisun Bay is the site of heavy industry.
While Benicia never became the commercial or political hub its founders envisioned it to be, the Valero Refinery at the center of its massive Industrial Park has been an important part of our fossil fuel based economy, along with the other four refineries in the area.
But now we have an opportunity to reimagine the future. As Pennie Opal Plant of Idle No More SF Bay said at the end of the Healing Walk:
“The people in the refinery are not our enemies. We have no enemies. We have no human enemies. It is the mindset that creates that,” she said, pointing to the Rodeo refinery smokestacks, “that is our enemy. We are here to change that mindset.”
Learn more about the Refinery Corridor Healing Walks and how you can get involved at Pennie Opal Plant’s workshop at the 2015 Bioneers Conference.
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Thursday June 18th was a study in contrasts and cognitive dissonance – saints and sinners from Charleston to the Vatican.
A Tragedy Unfolds in Charleston
I woke up very early, and when I flipped on MSNBC TV as I made my tea, I first learned of the horror of the Charleston murders the night before. I broke down weeping. Not again – and again and again. The anguished faces, the enduring suffering of our African American brothers and sisters, the weary rituals of needless death and destruction. Mass murder in a storied African American church by the hand of an angry, unemployed young white man, a white supremacist with a recently purchased handgun. His stated intention was to start a new Civil War. In truth, the Civil War never really ended, has it?
The shock of watching both the US and South Carolina flags at half-mast, while the Confederate flag flapped at the top of the pole. And we wonder how these acts can continue?
One of these times, something’s gotta give. No one can say when that tipping point will occur, but it cannot be far off. What’s very different about the media coverage is the degree of discussion calling this an act of domestic terrorism. Our original terrorism laws were written for exactly these kinds of acts — by the Ku Klux Klan, at that time. How about turning some of our terrorism resources to arresting domestic terrorism? Toward stopping the chronic murders and terrorizing of African Americans and other people of color? Toward shutting down the bombing and threatening of abortion clinics? Toward preventing violence against women?
In 2001, September 11th happened just weeks before the Bioneers conference. We feared that few people would show up out of concerns about travel and further terrorist acts. Instead it was the biggest turnout ever. J.L. Chestnut, the legendary civil rights leaders and first African American attorney to practice law in Selma, gave one of the most powerful talks ever. He connected the monstrous terrorist act to centuries of domestic terrorism against African Americans, people of color, women and the Earth.
J.L Chesnut said this:
“Fighting on behalf of women, on behalf of minority people of color, fighting on behalf of the environment and the planet are all one big battle. It is all about a struggle for the soul of America.”
This cathartic talk could hardly be more relevant 14 years later.
But over the past decade and a half, the NRA has morphed into a front group for the firearms industry, whose profits are increasingly dependent on the sale of military-bred weapons like the assault rifles used in the massacres at Newtown and Aurora, Colorado. “When I was at the NRA, we said very specifically, ‘We do not represent the firearm industry,'” says Richard Feldman, a longtime gun lobbyist who left the NRA in 1991. “We represent gun owners. End of story.” But in the association’s more recent history, he says, “They have really gone after the gun industry.”
And when will we start to talk seriously about Restorative Justice? We have to break out of the paradigm of revenge and punishment to get to the root causes. Some serious truth and reconciliation is in order. Only then can we truly begin healing the deep wounds of racism and economic violence if we want to end this kind of atrocity.
The Pope’s Astonishing Climate Encyclical
The other huge news of the morning was the Pope’s astonishing climate encyclical. My immediate reaction was, “There is a God.” It’s Liberation Ecology – the explicit convergence of ecology and justice, put on moral, ethical and spiritual footings. Someone who tells it like it is and acknowledges the end of human civilization as we know it, if we don’t act as if the house is burning.
What an incredible relief to ditch the spin and political maneuvering and just call it “filth” and “ecological sin.” To tie climate change and the decimation of our ecosystems to the bottomless greed of the 1%, the structural concentration of wealth, and the pathology of consumerism that’s devouring planet and people. It’s all one issue. The Pope got it right.
The implications are almost unimaginable. This slow-motion lightning bolt is going to reverberate among the world’s 1.2 billions Catholics and electrify countless other millions and billions of people of faith. The Pope will visit the US in September and speak at the UN. This is just the beginning.
So, a day of saints and sinners, of light and shadow, of a deep knowing that change is gonna come — and it’s greatly up to us what directions it takes.
We will be covering these issues in depth at the 2015 Bioneers Conference. Sister Simone Campbell, a founder and spokesperson for Nuns on the Bus, will keynote about Creation Care and the mounting role the faith community is going to play in years ahead in merging ecology and justice. Oakland’s luminous Fania Davis will share her wise perspectives on Restorative Justice, which she believes must also extend to the natural world – our relatives — in a relationship of kinship and interdependence.
Keep the faith.
Kenny Ausubel,
CEO & Founder, Bioneers
Photo Credits: David Yan via Flickr, Creative Commons / Creative Commons,Catholic Church England and Wales
“Attending Bioneers is like receiving learning bundles and going home with them. Bioneers is always ahead of the curve…it’s always at the epi-center of the nature movement…full of people centered around nature, indigenous elders and innovators…it syncs my learning calendar for the whole year.”
Henry Jake Foreman embodies what it means to be a bioneer. He is brave, bold and helping youth find their passion. He first came to Bioneers five years ago at the invitation of Cara Romero, our Indigenous Knowledge Director, as part of the Youth Scholarship program.
Read Cara’s interview with Henry Jake below to learn about how Bioneers helped bring him to where he is today.
When did you attend the Bioneers Conference? What or who brought you?
I first attended Bioneers Annual Conference in 2010 and haven’t missed a year since. I was working with Arturo Sandoval (past presenter) in New Mexico and was aware of the Dreaming New Mexico Bioneers Initiative and radio programs. Then one day, I met Indigenous Knowledge Director Cara Romero at an Indigenous Sustainability Conference in Santa Fe, she offered me a scholarship and I brought my whole family (mom, sister, brother) up to San Rafael.
Describe your first conference experience.
It was just really amazing as a Native youth from New Mexico to travel all the way to the Bay Area/California and attend Bioneers for the first time. I couldn’t believe the synergy between the Southwest and the Bay Area. I found myself networking with amazing and wonderful like-minded people and it opened my eyes and my mind to all of the progress people are making with their environmental solutions and movements. I wanted to take them all back to my community.
Can you pinpoint the most impactful experience that you had at the conference?
I know you probably get this a lot, but it was first hearing Paul Stamets speak. The work he does just really spoke to me as I was studying micro-biology at the time. What he’s doing in terms of mycology…it was so much deeper than anything I was learning. But I didn’t just hear him talk, I bought his book and got to meet him and he signed my book– I instantly knew that I wanted to take that body of work back to New Mexico and look at our desert soil…that talk and introduction to Paul took me on a whole journey around soil for many years.
Did you make any connections at the conference that you still have that are important to you?
I can think of two right away. Ras K’Dee (Dry Creek Pomo) and Chief Oren Lyons (Onondaga). With Ras, it was about meeting someone my own age that was already doing something totally inspiring and like what I wanted to do in my community with native media. He changed my life. And then there was the man — the legend — the honored elder Chief Oren Lyons. It’s a dream come true for any young Native youth activist to meet Oren in person. I was able to honor him. I was able to gift him. I was able to tell him that his work and his messages are coming full circle and that I am continuing his work as a young person. It was a pure moment of spiritual reciprocity.
In general, what do you feel is the value of attending Bioneers? How has it affected your life?
Attending Bioneers is like receiving learning bundles and going home with them. Bioneers is always ahead of the curve…it’s always at the epi-center of the nature movement…full of people centered around nature, indigenous elders and innovators…it syncs my learning calendar for the whole year.
Did your Bioneers experience as a Native Youth Scholar shape what you’re doing now? What do you do now?
Yes, it profoundly influenced my life and direction. I came back to New Mexico and got my teaching certificate, so I could inspire kids with what Bioneers seeded in me. I’m now a high school teacher at the Native American Community Academy in Albuquerque, New Mexico where I use Bioneers media in my classroom. Indigenous Director, Cara Romero and I are going to work together to bring a group of kids from NACA this year.
Additionally, I came away with the inspiration and network to support creating a campaign called Cycles of Life. Cycles of Life creates a space that supports, encourages, and strengthens youth to realize their innate potential as compassionate leaders for the 21st century through bicycling, gardening, and art. The goal of the program is provide the background of the complex and interconnected nature of elements that determine our health that is interconnected to the health of our planet. The aim for providing this foundation is to encourage students to take action to create positive changes that support healthier people, communities and bioregions.
Is there anything else you want to say about your experience at Bioneers?
I love that Bioneers explicitly values the contribution and scholarship of Indigenous peoples and other underrepresented groups. The hegemony of Western philosophy does not reflect the changing demographics nor adequately addresses the complex and interconnected issues that we collectively face.
The Bioneers Indigenous Forum offers a leading edge in re-visioning education that can reframe our perception of who we are and how we relate to the World around us.
Much has been made in the media about U.S. income inequality and the widening gap between rich and poor. But often missed is that there are two troubling gaps.
“One is the gap between the very rich and everyone else. Another is the gap between people of color and their white counterparts. What needs to be explored is the relationship between the two,” said Haas Institute Director john a. powell during the recent Color of Wealth Summit in Washington DC.
john spoke on a panel during the event which featured many members of Congress and community leaders working on wealth inequality.
powell was also one of four 2015 recipients of the Asset Builders Champion (ABC) award given at the Summit. The award honors those who have helped make national progress toward addressing racial wealth disparities.
A Practical, Compassionate Approach to Create Equitable Community
Conversations about race, equity and inclusivity have long been a part of the Bioneers conference. We're honored that john has brought his voice to these conversations as a past keynote speaker and panelist.
Check out his 2014 keynote below, in which he offers incisive analysis on the evolution of public and private space, and visionary yet practical ideas for how we can build a truly inclusive, beloved community. And be sure to pass it along to others!
We'd love to have your voice as part of conversations about race, justice, economy and more at the 2015 National Bioneers Conference this October. Take a look at the speakers and schedule and register to join us!
“The coming climate encyclical of Pope Francis, coupled with his visit to Washington D.C., might ensure a global agreement in Paris this December and transform environmentalism into a movement based on social justice. The Pope’s message also might ignite a greater spiritual awakening and an opportunity to challenge the foundations of a global order which forces billions of people to survive amidst poverty and pollution.”
So writes Tom Hayden in his first-rate report on the Pope’s forthcoming climate encyclical this summer that might be called Liberation Ecology by its marriage of environment and social justice. The article in Tom’s Democracy Journalis an in-depth and genuinely brilliant analysis that’s a must-read.
Climate Encyclical a Shift to Theology of Kinship?
As a polymath, Tom is a bit of a scholar on faith and the environment, including his landmark book The Lost Gospel of Earth (read an excerpt here).
The Pope’s recent statements connecting caring for Creation and caring for the poor suggest a shift to what Tom identifies as a “‘kinship’ model embodied by the original Francis, many native people, environmental biologists and the counter-culture.”
A concern for climate solutions that engage those most impacted by climate disruption is also a hallmark of California’s climate policy leadership. In 2014, Tom collaborated with Bioneers on a pre-conference California Climate Leadership Intensive that brought together leaders from a wide range of sectors.
It’s extremely rare that opportunities like the Bioneers Indigenous Forum come along. In 2014, we saw the largest-ever attendance by indigenous youthbecause of the collaboration with our community partners.
Our Native youth hold a sacred role for the health of our planet, yet come from underserved communities. With the help of San Manuel, we help foster new Native leaders by creating opportunities at the conference to participate, network and feel empowered. Paired with wise cultural mentors, they’re inspired to stay in school and become cultural, environmental and social justice leaders in Indian Country and beyond. We provide healthy meals and clean transportation from inner city locations for passionate young people who would not otherwise be able to attend.
Our esteemed Indigenous Knowledge program director Cara Romero (Chemehuevi) partners with Native organizations such as the The Cultural Conservancy, San Francisco Unified School District’s Indian Education Title VII Program, the Native American Health Center and The Intertribal Friendship House. The Native youth receive free transportation and healthy meals and snacks, as well as 3-day VIP passes, art and hands-on activities, and a Youth Talking Circle.
We believe that “If you can’t see it, you can’t be it.” California Indian educators have underscored the importance for Indigenous youth (especially K-12) to attend the Indigenous Forum because seldom are they are able to engage with leaders with whom they can closely identify. The high school dropout rate for Native American youth in public schools in 2013 was more than double that of all public school students in the US.
Inspirational Feedback
The Bioneers experience for Native youth has been transformative and helped inspire and shape future Indigenous leaders by placing them at the center of a growing movement. Thank you for helping us make it flourish. Please give generously.
“The Bay Area Indigenous youth have been impacted deeply by the experience of attending the Bioneers Conference 2014. From the moment of hearing about the conference, to being present/attending for three days, the youth and their families have expressed extreme gratitude for having been afforded such an opportunity.”—Paloma Flores, Director of SFUSD Indian Education
Make Indigenous Youth Scholarships Part of Your Legacy!
This year, we are looking to grow the number of full scholarships offered to Indigenous youth to 75 – or more with your support! Please visit our donate page today to make a tax-deductible contribution to the Youth Scholarship project.
Our 2014 radio series recently won a whopping 11 Communicator awards and the series as a whole is a finalist in the prestigious New York Festivals “World’s Best Radio Programs.”
We’re deeply grateful to share these honors with our incredible radio series sponsors, Organic Valley and Mary’s Gone Crackers, and all of you!
Use the links below to listen to the award-winning episodes, and be sure to share your favorites with your community.
Like what you hear? Subscribe to our podcast to get the latest episodes directly. Our 2015 Radio Series will be released July 13 and it’s going to be one of our best yet (though we may be a little biased).
Not an online listener? Find a radio station where you can listen or encourage your local radio station to air the series.
In addition to the yearly conference and since fall 2009 GLBD has become a year-round presence in Detroit. Our coordinator is an active participant in various networking collaboratives: Zero Waste Detroit (recycling education, closing the local incinerator), People’s Water Board (water affordability for all Detroiters), People’s Platform (issues determined by the community), Equitable Detroit (working on a Community Benefits Ordinance), Community Radio Station (providing a voice for Detroiters), Environmental Justice, Food Justice, Place-based Education and Uprooting Racism Planting Justice.
The Whidbey Institute is a place of renewal and inspiration, and home to the bold seekers of positive change. We nurture and connect people who are doing uncommon work for the common good. Woven throughout our work is the spirit of the land. Our 100 acres of northwest woodland and historic farmstead, which we call Chinook, hold and energize everything that happens here. To learn more, visit: 
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Sustain Dane’s vision of sustainability holds a healthy planet, a just society, and a strong economy as equal and interrelated parts of a vibrant community. Their work is focused on bringing sustainability to people wherever they are – at work, in schools, in neighborhoods.
