Erica Gies – The Slow Water Movement: How to Thrive in an Age of Drought and Deluge

This widely-traveled independent journalist and National Geographic Explorer drew from her masterful book, Water Always Wins: Thriving in an age of drought and deluge, to share both ancient and cutting-edge approaches to and philosophies of water management being implemented in a number of locales around the world that offer far more effective strategies to ensure a healthy, productive human-water relationship than the massive, failed attempts to impose our will on an element we cannot defeat we have long pursued.

This talk was delivered at the 2024 Bioneers Conference.

Erica Gies is an independent journalist, National Geographic Explorer, and the author of Water Always Wins: Thriving in an age of drought and deluge, published in the U.S., U.K., and China. She covers water, climate change, plants and wildlife for Scientific American, The New York Times, bioGraphic, Nature, and other publications. The honors she has received include the Sierra Club’s Rachel Carson Award, Friends of the River’s California River Award, the Renewable Natural Resources Foundation’s Excellence in Journalism Award, and the Harvey Southam Lectureship at the University of Victoria.

Learn more at ericagies.com

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Embracing Slow Water: Rediscovering the True Nature of Earth’s Lifeline

In Water Always Wins, Erica Gies sheds light on the essential role of water in shaping our world and offers hope for a more harmonious relationship between humanity and the planet’s most vital resource. Read an excerpt from the book here.

Deep Dive: Where Water Flows, Life Thrives

In this multimedia series, we focus on the water scarcity facing arid regions, highlighting innovative designs and far-sighted strategies based on principles drawn from conservation hydrology, permaculture, regenerative agriculture, and keystone species restoration that demonstrate that there are existing strategies and practices we can implement to sustainably steward our most precious resource and ensure water security for all life.

Welcome the Water: Climate-Proofing for Resilience

This podcast features Henk Ovink, a designer, the Principal of Rebuild by Design, and the first ever Special Envoy for International Water Affairs for the Kingdom of the Netherlands. He’s dramatically demonstrating on large scales how to shift our relationship to nature and to culture – and climate-proof our cities and coasts.

Taylor Brorby – Raising Hell: Censorship, Carbon Capture, and Being Gay on the Great Plains

Taylor Brorby grew in the dynamic shortgrass prairie of western North Dakota, a youth that coincided with the brutal physical and psychic scarring of his surroundings by the coal and oil industry, a fate not made any easier by being a young gay boy enthralled by classical music, art, fishing, and poetry. From here, Taylor became a brilliant poet, writer and dedicated activist, one of the most eloquent and profound critics of the fossil fuel industry in the nation, penning, among other works, the extraordinary memoir: Boys and Oil: Growing Up Gay in a Fractured Land, the powerful essays in Civil Disobedience, and co-editing: Fracture: Essays, Poems, and Stories on Fracking in America. He shares some of his life story, seeking to inflame us with the passion we will need to stop the carbon-burning Leviathans from destroying the biosphere.

This talk was delivered at the 2024 Bioneers Conference.

Taylor Brorby is the author of: Boys and Oil: Growing Up Gay in a Fractured Land; Crude: Poems; Coming Alive: Action; and Civil Disobedience; and is co-editor of: Fracture: Essays, Poems, and Stories on Fracking in America. Taylor’s work has appeared in many leading publications, including The NY Times, LitHub and Orion, and he has been supported by several prestigious fellowships, including from the MacDowell Colony and the National Book Critics Circle. He also serves on the editorial boards of Hub City Press and Terrain.org, is a contributing editor at North American Review, and teaches nonfiction writing at the University of Alabama.

Learn more at taylorbrorby.com

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Staying Alive: Reconciling Nature, Culture and Gay Rights

As a backlash against LGBTQ rights escalates into an authoritarian crusade, in this podcast episode acclaimed author and queer activist Taylor Brorby asks, how we can still be fighting this battle? As a writer addressing the fossil fuel industry’s acceleration in the midst of climate chaos, Taylor is forced to choose between the existential crises of the assaults on nature and on LGBTQ people. It’s all connected, he says, as he seeks to reconcile nature, culture, diversity and belonging.

Lessons of Resilience from Queer Movements for Liberation

Vanessa Raditz (they/them) is one of the guiding voices of Queer Ecojustice Project and the producer of the film Fire and Flood. In this conversation with Maya Carlson of Bioneers, they offer insights into the many forms of queer resilience as well as the importance of visibilizing the vulnerabilities queer and trans folks face while also uplifting the resistance, regeneration and power of LGBTQ+ people in movements for justice, care and liberation.

Corrina Gould – Rematriation: Indigenous Women’s Work to Recover, Remember and Heal

Returning to open the 2024 Bioneers conference, one of the leading figures in the East Bay Indigenous community and a longtime activist for First People’s rights and the protection of land and waters globally, Corrina Gould, focuses on the concept and practice of “Rematriation,” which involves reclaiming traditional land and sacred sites to help rebuild traditional cultures and heal the deep wounds inflicted by colonization and genocide and also prioritizes the unique role women play in that enormous undertaking. 

This talk was delivered at the 2024 Bioneers Conference.

Corrina Gould, born and raised in the village of Huichin (now known as Oakland CA), is the Tribal Chair for the Confederated Villages of Lisjan Nation and co-founded and is the Lead Organizer for Indian People Organizing for Change, a small Native-run organization; as well as of the Sogorea Te’ Land Trust, an urban Indigenous women-led organization within her ancestral territory. Through the practices of “rematriation,” cultural revitalization and land restoration, the Land Trust calls on Native and non-Native peoples to heal and transform legacies of colonization and genocide and to do the work our ancestors and future generations are calling us to do.

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Indigeneity Conversations: California Genocide and Resilience with Corrina Gould

California Indians have survived some of the most extreme acts of genocide committed against Native Americans. We discuss this brutal history and survivance with Corrina Gould, Co-Founder and Co-Director of the Sogorea Te’ Land Trust. We talk about the importance of addressing that historical trauma, which caused deep wounds that still affect Indigenous Peoples today.

Indigeneity Conversations: Returning to What Was Lost and Stolen with Corrina Gould

A riveting conversation about the challenges of defending land rights and preserving tribal culture with Corrina Gould, a celebrated leader and activist of the First Peoples of the Bay Area from the Lisjan/Ohlone tribe of Northern California.

Suzanne Simard – Dealing with Backlash Against Nature-Based Solutions to Climate Change

For decades, scientists have warned about the consequences of deforestation and fossil fuel burning that have led to today’s climate and biodiversity crises. They have also conducted careful research that has helped inform development of nature-based solutions. Despite the urgency of the interdependent crises and the agency we have in helping address them, there abound efforts to discredit peer-reviewed climate change science. Dr. Simard’s talk delves into recent backlash she has experienced over her science that informs climate solutions for the forests of western North America.

This talk was delivered at the 2024 Bioneers Conference.

Suzanne Simard, Professor of Forest Ecology at the University of British Columbia and author of the bestselling, Finding the Mother Tree, is a highly influential, researcher on the frontier of plant communication and intelligence, globally renowned for her work on how trees interact and communicate using below-ground fungal networks. Her work on forest resiliency, adaptability and recovery has far-reaching implications for how to manage and heal forests from human impacts, including climate change. Suzanne has published over 200 peer-reviewed articles, presented around the world and communicated her work to a wide audience through interviews, documentary films and online talks.

Learn more at suzannesimard.com

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Forest Wisdom, Mother Trees and the Science of Community

Suzanne Simard is a revolutionary researcher who is transforming the science of forest ecology and coming full circle to the wisdom held by First Peoples and traditional land-based cultures from time immemorial. In this podcast, we learn how the story Simard is uncovering can change our story for how we live on Earth and with each other – for the long haul.

Earthlings Newsletter

Bioneers is pleased to present Earthlings, a biweekly newsletter exploring the extraordinary intelligence of life inherent in animals, plants, and fungi. In each issue, we delve into captivating stories and research that promise to reshape your perception of your fellow Earthlings – and point toward a profound shift in how we all might inhabit this planet together.

Deep Dive: Intelligence in Nature

Cutting edge research is increasingly rediscovering what our ancestors understood, that the animal, vegetal and fungal realms are teeming with organisms making conscious decisions, responding intelligently to their surroundings. Leading figures in this burgeoning field are transforming the way science understands intelligence in nature, using modern science to help restore the kinship with the web of life we so desperately need if we are to have any hope of addressing the civilizational crisis we face.

Sage Lenier – Towards a Just Transition: Blueprint for a Green Economy

We spend a lot of time talking about the ecological crisis, and not nearly enough talking about real, workable solutions. If the ultimate goal is to keep fossil fuels in the ground, how must we transform our economy to make that possible? Award-winning activist and innovative educator, Sage Lenier, one of the most impressive young leaders to emerge in recent years, takes to the stage to shed light on what a realistic and just transition looks like, and the role we can each play in leading us towards a more circular and equitable economy.

This talk was delivered at the 2024 Bioneers Conference.

Sage Lenier is an activist working to build an education system that enables the next generation to become climate solutionists. She got her start teaching her own program at UC Berkeley, which broke records for largest-ever student-led class. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, The World Economic Forum, and Teen Vogue, and has brought her to speak at public forums around the world. TIME Magazine named her a 2023 Next Generation Leader for her work with Sustainable & Just Future.

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Bioneers Reader: Our Economic Future

Achieving a More Equitable Society by Radically Rethinking Our Guiding Economic Ideas

This Bioneers Reader is a collection of pieces presenting wisdom from leading figures in progressive economic thought and action, all dealing with strategies to radically restructure our ever more inequitable, racist and environmentally devastating economic system.

Bioneers Youth Leadership and Education Program

Over the last 20 years, the Bioneers Youth Leadership and Education Program has served as an incubator for thousands of youth and educators to deepen their passion and power through self-expression, skills development, mentorship and deep relationship building within the broader community of Bioneers. The program has produced some of the most dynamic, engaging, and cutting edge programming within the Bioneers kaleidoscope and it continues to shape the work of youth movements, activism and education.

Stacy Mitchell – Democracy vs. Big Tech: How We Can Win the Fight Against Monopoly Power

Most of us would like to live in a society accountable to people and the planet, one in which we exercise genuine agency over our lives and have a real say in the decisions that affect our communities, but the dramatic increase in corporate domination, especially the rise of giant tech companies that wield unprecedented levels of surveillance and control, is radically undermining our democracy and concentrating wealth and power in fewer and fewer hands. Stacy Mitchell, who has long been at the forefront of the national movement to rein in excessive corporate power and reinvigorate local self-reliance, is here to tell us that, as powerful as these immense companies and their political allies may seem, they’ve finally met their match. A broad grassroots alliance, together with a new generation of creative government leaders, is bringing long-dormant anti-monopoly laws and strategies back to life. This promising turn of events, Stacy explains, offers hope for reclaiming our rights and assuring a far more equitable and greener future.

This talk was delivered at the 2024 Bioneers Conference.

Photo by Brian Fitzgerald

Stacy Mitchell, a Maine-based writer, strategist, and policy advocate whose work focuses on dismantling concentrated corporate power and building thriving communities and a healthy democracy, has played a leading role in today’s growing anti-monopoly movement. She is Co-Executive Director of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR), a research and advocacy organization that for five decades has challenged the wisdom of neoliberalism and championed local, community-oriented models, from municipal broadband to distributed solar power, community banks, family farms, and local businesses. Stacy has written for The NY Times, The Atlantic, The Nation, The Washington Post, and many other outlets, and is the author of Big-Box Swindle: The True Cost of Mega-Retailers and the Fight for America’s Independent Businesses, and co-author of the influential report: Amazon’s Stranglehold. She has helped build a number of coalitions and win campaigns for policies that dismantle corporate power, level the playing field for independent businesses, and strengthen communities.

Learn more at stacymitchell.com

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Democracy v. Plutocracy: Behind Every Great Fortune Lies a Great Crime

In this first part of a two-part Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature radio program, we travel back and forth in time to explore the battle between democracy and plutocracy that goes back to the very founding of the United States. The extreme concentration of corporate power and the prevalence of monopoly are indeed inarguable. If the solution is once again to throw the tea in the harbor, what does that look like in the 21st century? 

In today’s new Gilded Age of rule by the wealthy, rising anti-trust movements are challenging the stranglehold of corporate monopoly. With: Thom Hartmann, Stacy Mitchell and Maurice BP-Weeks

Bioneers Reader: Our Economic Future

Achieving a More Equitable Society by Radically Rethinking Our Guiding Economic Ideas

This Bioneers Reader is a collection of pieces presenting wisdom from leading figures in progressive economic thought and action, all dealing with strategies to radically restructure our ever more inequitable, racist and environmentally devastating economic system.

Dolores Huerta – Organizing for Justice

Dolores Huerta, now 93 and still going strong, is a genuine living legend, one of the most influential labor activists in U.S. history as well as a foundational leader of the Chicano civil rights movement. Huerta’s 7 decades of activism have included co-founding the world-renowned United Farm Workers’ Union with César Chávez, leading major strikes and consumer boycotts, negotiating contracts, and tirelessly advocating for safer working conditions (including the elimination of harmful pesticides) and for unemployment and healthcare benefits for agricultural workers. Drawing from her decades of experience, she shares her thoughts on the critical importance of organizing unions in all sectors of the economy to fight for a fairer society, and on how to build more unity between labor, social, racial, gender, and climate justice movements.

This talk was delivered at the 2024 Bioneers Conference.

Dolores Huerta is a world-renowned civil rights activist and community organizer who has worked for labor rights and social justice for 50+ years. In 1962 she and Cesar Chavez founded the United Farm Workers union, in which she served as Vice President and played a critical role in many of the union’s accomplishments for four decades. In 2002 she received the Puffin/Nation $100,000 prize for Creative Citizenship that she used to establish the Dolores Huerta Foundation (DHF), which connects groundbreaking community-based organizing to state and national movements to register and educate voters; advocate for education reform; bring about infrastructure improvements in low-income communities; advocate for greater equality for LGBT people; and create strong leadership development. She has received numerous awards including The Eleanor Roosevelt Humans Rights Award and The Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the United States.

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Take This Job and Shove It: The Great Resignation or The Great Revolt?

In this podcast, labor organizer and Founder of One Fair Wage, Saru Jayaraman, takes us inside one of the fiercest labor struggles to challenge a mighty oligarchy: The food, beverage and restaurant industry. Workers are walking off the job and refusing historically low wages. She says if “we the people” stand with workers as they face this powerful lobby, they can win.

Transformative Solidarity for a Thriving Multiracial Democracy

In this Bioneers 2022 keynote address, Angela Glover Blackwell, a renowned civil rights and public interest attorney, longtime leading racial equity advocate, and founder (in 1999) of the extraordinarily effective and influential national research and action institute that advances racial and economic equity by “Lifting Up What Works,” PolicyLink, discusses transformative solidarity and why it’s necessary for a thriving multiracial democracy.

Casey Camp-Horinek: Walking the Red Road—It’s Elemental

In this talk, one of the most respected, beloved and impactful longtime activists on behalf of Indigenous rights and women’s leadership as well as a major figure in the “Rights of Nature” movement, delves deeply into how many Indigenous peoples view the human relationship to the natural world and what their ancestral wisdom teaches about how to harmoniously interact with nature’s fundamental components, aka the “elements”—Earth, Air, Water, and Fire. Casey explores how these incredibly sophisticated traditional Indigenous land, water and fire stewardship strategies, many of which are now being “rediscovered” by contemporary managers, have much to teach us as we grapple with the climate crisis. 

This talk was delivered at the 2024 Bioneers Conference.

Casey Camp-Horinek, a member of the Ponca Nation of Oklahoma, is a longtime activist, environmentalist, actress, and author. Her work has led to the Ponca Nation being the first tribe in Oklahoma to adopt a Rights of Nature statute and to pass a moratorium on fracking on its territory. Casey, who was instrumental in the drafting of the first International Indigenous Women’s Treaty protecting the Rights of Nature, works with Indigenous and other leaders and organizations globally and sits on the boards of WECAN, Movement Rights, and the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature.

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Indigeneity Conversations – Indigenize the Law: Tribal Rights of Nature Movements with Casey Camp-Horinek

In this two-part program with Matriarch Casey Camp-Horinek, we talk about how a burgeoning indigenous-led Rights of Nature movement has the potential to protect ecosystems from destruction by granting legal rights to nature itself, and how many tribes are uniquely positioned for leadership to institute and uphold the Rights of Nature because of their sovereign legal status.

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.

Nina Simons: Beyond Binaries, Towards Solidarity

The co-founder of Bioneers and its Chief Relationship Strategist, author most recently of Nature, Culture & The Sacred: A Woman Listens for Leadership, sets the stage for each year’s conference and did it on the occasion of Bioneers’ 35th anniversary by acknowledging the unusually intense anguish and pain underlying the pressing crises we are currently facing, but sharing her own need to balance activist engagement with self-care, inner exploration, and an honoring of our personal and collective grief.

This talk was delivered at the 2024 Bioneers Conference. Read a written version of this talk here.

Nina Simons, co-founder of Bioneers and its Chief Relationship Strategist is also co-founder of Women Bridging Worlds and Connecting Women Leading Change. She co-edited the anthology book, Moonrise: The Power of Women Leading from the Heart, and most recently wrote Nature, Culture & The Sacred: A Woman Listens for Leadership. An award-winning social entrepreneur, Nina teaches and speaks internationally, and previously served as President of Seeds of Change and Director of Strategic Marketing for Odwalla.

Learn more about Nina Simons and her work at ninasimons.com.

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Nature, Culture and the Sacred: A Woman Listens for Leadership

Now in its second edition, Nature, Culture and the Sacred offers practical guidance and inspiration for anyone who aspires to grow into their own unique form of leadership on behalf of positive change. Learn more about the book here.

As We Open Our Hearts with Nina Simons

The path to healing and restoration as a global community is built by the relationships we all have with ourselves, each other, and the ancient intelligence of the living Earth. We can change course by embracing the full spectrum of our intuitive gifts. All we have to do is listen.

This short video is part of the Seeding the Field: 30 Years of Transformative Solutions series, which celebrates some of the best moments of the Bioneers Conference through the years.

Charlotte Michaluk – Sailing into the Future: Weaving Tradition and Modernity

What can fiber arts and rotor sails have in common? How can we create sustainable technologies that can be implemented in the near future while balancing interests of profit with public health and climate change mitigation? Charlotte Lenore Michaluk, an extraordinary 17-year-old scientist, researcher, biomimetic inventor and passionate eco-activist and conservationist shares her hopeful vision informed by a deep respect of the natural world and powered by brilliant, clean green technologies. Pulling insight from her experiences ranging from cargo ship systems to a novel constructed writing script for greater freedom of expression, she shares the possibilities unleashed by an interdisciplinary mode of thinking that leverages common ground and societal and technological inertia.

This talk was delivered at the 2024 Bioneers Conference.

Charlotte Lenore Michaluk, 17, is a brilliant young, award-winning, multi-disciplinary engineer, scientist and linguistics researcher, passionate about engineering sustainable solutions. Her development of technology for a hybrid wind and fossil fuel powered cargo ship has been widely recognized. Charlotte, who has been certified in freshwater bioassessment for over a decade (!), has been collecting and analyzing field data working with her state’s EPA to preserve ecologically critical wetlands and wildlife corridors in Central New Jersey. Through her organization, Acnestis By Wind, she has been researching using wind power to clean remote shorelines, developing curricula, and protecting wetlands.

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Deep Dive: Biomimicry

With climate disruption upon us, transforming our food and water systems is paramount. Game-changing innovations in design and technology to address this crisis are surfacing constantly, as well as social innovations. At the forefront is biomimicry, the art and science of mimicking nature’s design genius. Explore our media collection of fascinating examples from leaders in the field.

Bioneers Youth Leadership and Education Program

Over the last 20 years, the Bioneers Youth Leadership and Education Program has served as an incubator for thousands of youth and educators to deepen their passion and power through self-expression, skills development, mentorship and deep relationship building within the broader community of Bioneers. The program has produced some of the most dynamic, engaging, and cutting edge programming within the Bioneers kaleidoscope and it continues to shape the work of youth movements, activism and education.

Kenny Ausubel – It’s the Corporations, Stupid

Bioneers’ founder (back in 1990!), has become renowned for his eagerly-anticipated yearly passionate orations that lay bare with ruthless analysis and humor specific sectors of malfeasance in our society that are seeking to derail progress to protect their wealth and privilege. This year he dissected the history and current machinations of corporations as they exert ever more dominance of our economy and political system and urged us to fully grasp their strategies and to resist and curb the power of these forces of inertia and reaction while we still can.

This talk was delivered at the 2024 Bioneers Conference. Read a written version of this talk here.

Kenny Ausubel, CEO and founder of Bioneers, is an award-winning social entrepreneur, journalist, author and filmmaker. Co-founder and first CEO of the organic seed company, Seeds of Change, his film (and companion book) Hoxsey: When Healing Becomes a Crime helped influence national alternative medicine policy. He has edited several books and written four, including, most recently, Dreaming the Future: Reimagining Civilization in the Age of Nature.

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Bioneers Reader: Our Economic Future

Achieving a More Equitable Society by Radically Rethinking Our Guiding Economic Idea

This Bioneers Reader is a collection of pieces presenting wisdom from leading figures in progressive economic thought and action, all dealing with strategies to radically restructure our ever more inequitable, racist and environmentally devastating economic system.

Democracy v. Plutocracy: Behind Every Great Fortune Lies a Great Crime

In this podcast episode featuring Thom Hartmann, Stacy Mitchell, and Maurice BP-Weeks, we travel back and forth in time to explore the battle between democracy and plutocracy that goes back to the very founding of the United States. In today’s new Gilded Age of rule by the wealthy, rising anti-trust movements are challenging the stranglehold of corporate monopoly.

Cindy Cohn – The Climate Fight is Digital

With climate advocates subject to surveillance and censorship and giant companies controlling the ways information and knowledge flow around the world, the fight to save our climate is now inextricably intertwined with digital rights. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), which has long been at the forefront of protecting those rights, has helped environmental activists protect their emails from Chevron, understand the surveillance they are under and develop “Security Self-Defense” practices to protect themselves. Cindy Cohn, EFF’s Executive Director, one of the nation’s leading civil liberties attorneys specializing in Internet law, explains why EFF’s push for open access to scientific information, for net neutrality, for open source/patents, “creative commons” licenses, and more, is critical in the fight to prevent climatic unraveling.

This talk was delivered at the 2024 Bioneers Conference.

Cindy Cohn, the Executive Director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation since 2015, served as EFF’s Legal Director as well as its General Counsel from 2000 to 2015. In 1993, she served as lead attorney in Bernstein v. Dept. of Justice, the successful First Amendment challenge to the U.S. export restrictions on cryptography. Among other honors, Ms. Cohn was named to The Non-Profit Times 2020 Power & Influence TOP 50 list, and in 2018, Forbes included Ms. Cohn as one of America’s Top 50 Women in Tech. In 2013, The National Law Journal named Ms. Cohn one of 100 most influential lawyers in America, noting: “If Big Brother is watching, he better look out for Cindy Cohn.”

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Electronic Frontier Foundation: Surveillance Self-Defense

Surveillance Self-Defense (SSD) is EFF’s online guide to defending yourself and your friends from surveillance by using secure technology and developing careful practices.