As we continue to face unprecedented environmental and social challenges, it is more important than ever to empower students — from kindergarten to graduate school — with the knowledge and skills necessary to create a viable and equitable future. Innovative leaders and organizations are finding ways to incorporate place-based learning and environmental education into curriculums while still honoring essential standards. The result? Classrooms and labs that feel more intuitive, make better use of real-word situations, and make students more excited to learn.
In this newsletter, we will explore how biomimicry, green chemistry, and environmental literacy are being incorporated into education programs in schools across the world.
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Beyond Benign Is Changing How Chemical Products Are Made Through Green Chemistry Education
From life-saving pharmaceutical drugs to high-performance materials, chemicals and chemical products are essential in providing society the products it requires to survive and thrive. But the creation and use of many chemical products is hazardous to people and the environment. In order to ensure a habitable future planet, the field of chemistry must adapt and find new ways to be sustainable as well as economical.
Beyond Benign’s cofounders, Dr. Amy Cannon and Dr. John Warner, are challenging educational institutions and the chemical industry at large to adopt green chemistry practices. Green Chemistry is defined as the design of chemical products that reduce the use or generation of hazardous substances. By supporting educators and students to teach and learn green chemistry and sustainable science, Beyond Benign is equipping the next generation of scientists and citizens with the tools required to design and select products that support human health and the environment.
Bioneers 2023 Conference Highlight: Beyond Benign’s John Warner
John Warner, Ph.D. is a co-founder of the field of green chemistry. With 300+ patents and 100+ publications, he has designed and created technologies inspired by nature with the principles of green chemistry. After working at the Polaroid Corporation, John served as a tenured full professor at UMASS Boston and Lowell (in Chemistry and Plastics Engineering). In 2007 he co-founded (with Jim Babcock) the Warner Babcock Institute for Green Chemistry and (with Amy Cannon) Beyond Benign, a non-profit dedicated to sustainability and green chemistry education. John has won many prestigious awards for his research, inventions and policy advocacy and has served as a sustainability advisor for several major firms.
Sign up for Bioneers 2023 Conference to hear his Keynote address, “The Materials Metabolism – Rethinking our Molecular Relationship with Nature.”
Bioneers 2023 Conference Media Partner: KPFA 94.1 FM
Bioneers welcomes KPFA 94.1 FM as a 2023 Conference media partner — the first listener-supported, non-commercial radio station in the United States. KPFA first went on the air in Berkeley, California in 1949 and the station is still going strong. You can listen to Nina Simons talk about the upcoming Bioneers 2023 Conference on Kris Welch’s show “The Talkies” here.
Ten Strands Empowers California’s Schools to Lead the Way in Environmental Education
While climate change and environmental instability will impact people of all ages in the coming years, our planet’s youngest citizens will shoulder the heaviest burdens. As the environment influences nearly all of today’s pursuits — from the stories we tell to the chemicals we use in labs to the products we create, consume, and throw away — providing young students with an education that incorporates environmental literacy has never been more important.
Ten Strands is a California–based nonprofit established in 2012. Their mission is to build and strengthen the partnerships and strategies that will bring environmental literacy to all of California’s K–12 public school students. They operate with a small, diverse, and nimble staff and strategic partners throughout the state. Ten Strands utilizes the largest and most diverse institution in California—the public school system—to impact 58 county offices of education, more than 1,000 school districts, approximately 10,000 individual schools, over 300,000 teachers, and 5.8 million children.
The Bioneers Indigeneity Program is the go-to source for accurate and contemporary information about Indigenous science, media, and curriculum for social change.
To support the use of Bioneers’ original content in the classroom, we’ve developed thematic discussion guides and curriculum bundles aligned with national standards for grades 9-12+. Each bundle includes teacher instructions, activities, assessment, and additional materials for a week of instruction around a set of themes. All lesson plan objectives and activities are aligned to high school standards for science, social studies/history, and English.
“For most of human existence, we’ve always mimicked nature. That’s just how we survived.” -Beth Rattner, Executive Director at the Biomimicry Institute
In this short film, get a sneak peek into a professional development training for educators hosted by the Biomimicry Institute, Bioneers, and Ten Strands. Hear from participants and instructors and see how biomimicry offers an effective, engaging, and inspiring framework for STEAM education while empowering the next generation of problem-solvers to think differently about nature, engineering, and a sustainable future.
Calling all innovative nonprofits and social entrepreneurs: Apply for the 2023 J.M.K. Innovation Prize, awarding $175,000 for early-stage projects with transformative potential. This year, 10 Prizes will be awarded to innovators in the environment, heritage conservation, and social justice. Apply by April 28th!
Enter below by April 30 at midnight PT for a chance to win an incredible bundle of books!
A long, violent legacy of colonization has inflicted oppression on Indigenous communities worldwide. Today, leaders and tribes are organizing, resisting and leading local and global movements to to revitalize their cultures and institutions.
Indigenous activists, writers and culture bearers are leading efforts to preserve and further Indigenous knowledge. Broader society has much to learn from many of these sophisticated, Earth-honoring worldviews — wisdom too long ignored by modern society..
With our Indigeneity Book Giveaway, we celebrate the literary revelations of some of the world’s foremost indigenous storytellers and researchers.
Entry Form
One randomly selected winner will receive:
Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Kimmerer | As a botanist, Robin Wall Kimmerer has been trained to ask questions of nature with the tools of science. As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she embraces the notion that plants and animals are our oldest teachers. In Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer brings these two lenses of knowledge together to take us on “a journey that is every bit as mythic as it is scientific, as sacred as it is historical, as clever as it is wise.”
There There by Tommy Orange | A wondrous and shattering award-winning novel that follows twelve characters from Native communities: all traveling to the Big Oakland Powwow, all connected to one another in ways they may not yet realize.
Keepunumuk: Weeâchumun’s Thanksgiving Story by Danielle Greendeer, Anthony Perry, Alexis Bunten | In this Wampanoag story told in a Native tradition, two kids from the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe learn the story of Weeâchumun (corn) and the first Thanksgiving. The Thanksgiving story that most Americans know celebrates the Pilgrims. But without members of the Wampanoag tribe who already lived on the land where the Pilgrims settled, the Pilgrims would never have made it through their first winter. And without Weeâchumun (corn), the Native people wouldn’t have helped.
The Round House by Louise Erdrich | From one of the most revered novelists of our time, an exquisitely told story of a boy on the cusp of manhood who seeks justice and understanding in the wake of a terrible crime that upends and forever transforms his family.
The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee by David Treuer | In The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee, Treuer melds history with reportage and memoir. Tracing the tribes’ distinctive cultures from first contact, he explores how the depredations of each era spawned new modes of survival. The devastating seizures of land gave rise to increasingly sophisticated legal and political maneuvering that put the lie to the myth that Indians don’t know or care about property. The forced assimilation of their children at government-run boarding schools incubated a unifying Native identity. Conscription in the US military and the pull of urban life brought Indians into the mainstream and modern times, even as it steered the emerging shape of self-rule and spawned a new generation of resistance. The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee is the essential, intimate story of a resilient people in a transformative era.
Original Instructions: Indigenous Teachings for a Sustainable Future by Melissa K. Nelson | Original Instructions evokes the rich indigenous storytelling tradition in this collection of presentations gathered from the annual Bioneers conference. It depicts how the world’s native leaders and scholars are safeguarding the original instructions, reminding us about gratitude, kinship, and a reverence for community and creation. Included are more than 20 contemporary indigenous leaders.
Click Here for the Indigeneity Book Giveaway Official Rules
NO PURCHASE NECESSARY TO ENTER OR WIN. PURCHASE OR PAYMENT OF ANY KIND WILL NOT INCREASE YOUR CHANCES OF WINNING. VOID WHERE PROHIBITED OR RESTRICTED BY LAW. THE SWEEPSTAKES IS SPONSORED BY BIONEERS/COLLECTIVE HERITAGE INSTITUTE, 215 LINCOLN AVE #202, SANTA FE, NM 87501.
Entry Period: “Indigeneity Book Giveaway” (the “Sweepstakes”) commences at 12:01:01 AM (PST) on February 29, 2023, and ends at 11:59:59 PM (PST) on April 30, 2023 (the “Sweepstakes Period”).
Eligibility: To take part in the Sweepstakes, participants must be legal residents of the United States or Canada (excluding Quebec, where the promotion is void), and at least 18 years of age at the time of entry. Employees (and their immediate families, i.e., parents, spouse, children, siblings, grandparents, stepparents, stepchildren and stepsiblings) of Bioneers and its giveaway affiliated partner companies, sponsors, subsidiaries, advertising agencies and third-party fulfillment agencies are not eligible to enter Sweepstakes. By participating in this Sweepstakes, entrants: (a) agree to be bound by these Official Rules and by the interpretations of these Official Rules by the Sponsor, and by the decisions of the Sponsor, which are final in all matters relating to the Sweepstakes; (b) to release and hold harmless the Sponsor and its respective agents, employees, officers, directors, successors and assigns, against any and all claims, injury or damage arising out of or relating to participation in this Sweepstakes and/or use or misuse or redemption of a prize (as hereinafter defined); and (c) acknowledge compliance with these Official Rules.
To Enter: Enter required information in the Giveaway Signup form above during the eligible period. Contestants may only enter the Sweepstakes once. If multiple entries connected to a single person or email address are received, only one entry will be eligible. All entries submitted in accordance with these Official Rules shall be hereinafter referred to as “Eligible Entries.”
Prize Winner Selection: 1 winner will be randomly selected from among all eligible entries received at the end of the stated period, or within a reasonable time thereafter. Winners will be responsible for all U.S. and State taxes and/or fees. No transfer, substitution or cash equivalent of prizes permitted. Winners will be notified by email. Sponsor is not responsible for any delay or failure to receive notification for any reason, including inactive account(s), technical difficulties associated therewith, or winners’ failure to adequately monitor any email account. The winners must then respond to Sponsor within 48 hours. Should a winner fail to respond to Sponsor, Sponsor reserves the right to disqualify that winner and select a new one in a second-chance random drawing.
Prize list and estimated retail value:
One paperback print copy of Braiding Sweetgrass book. One paperback print copy of There There book. One hardcover print copy of Keepunumuk book. One paperback print copy of The Round House book. One paperback print copy of The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee book. One paperback print copy of Original Instructions. Total value: $94.53
General Prize Terms: The value of Prizes may be taxable to Prize Winner(s) as income. All federal, state and local taxes, and any other costs not specifically provided for in these Official Rules are solely the Winners’ responsibility. Sponsor shall have no responsibility or obligation to a Prize Winner or potential Prize Winner who is unable or unavailable to accept or utilize the Prizes as described herein. The odds of winning the Sweepstakes depend on the number of Eligible Entries received. Noncompliance with any of these Official Rules may result in disqualification. ANY VIOLATION OF THESE OFFICIAL RULES BY A PRIZE WINNER OR ANY BEHAVIOR BY A PRIZE WINNER THAT WILL BRING SUCH PRIZE WINNER OR SPONSOR INTO DISREPUTE (IN SPONSOR’S SOLE DISCRETION) WILL RESULT IN SUCH PRIZE WINNER’S DISQUALIFICATION AS A PRIZE WINNER OF THE SWEEPSTAKES AND ALL PRIVILEGES AS A PRIZE WINNER WILL BE IMMEDIATELY TERMINATED.
The Sponsor assumes no responsibility for incorrect or inaccurate entry information whether caused by any of the equipment or programming associated with or utilized in this Sweepstakes or by any human error which may occur in the processing of the entries in this Sweepstakes. The Sponsor is not responsible for any problems or technical malfunction of any telephone network or lines, computer online systems, servers, or providers, computer equipment, software, failure of any email or players on account of technical problems or traffic congestion on the Internet or at any Web site, or any combination thereof, including, without limitation, any injury or damage to participant’s or any other person’s computer related to or resulting from participation or downloading any materials in this Sweepstakes. The Sponsor is not responsible for any typographical or other error in the printing of the offer, administration of the Sweepstakes, or in the announcement of the Prizes and Prize Winners. If, for any reason, the Sweepstakes is not capable of running as planned, including, without limitation, infection by computer virus, bugs, tampering, unauthorized intervention, fraud, technical failures, or any other causes beyond the control of the Sponsor which corrupt or affect the administration, security, fairness, integrity or proper conduct of this Sweepstakes, the Sponsor reserves the right in their sole discretion to cancel, terminate, modify or suspend the Sweepstakes. Should the Sweepstakes be terminated prior to the stated expiration date, notice will be posted on the Sponsor’s Web site and the Prizes may be awarded to winners to be selected from among all Eligible Entries received up until and/or after (if applicable) the time of modification, cancellation or termination or in a manner that is fair and equitable as determined by the Sponsor. All interpretations of these Official Rules and decisions by the Sponsor are final. No software-generated, robotic, programmed, script, macro or other automated online or text message entries are permitted and will result in disqualification of all such entries. The Sponsor reserves the right in its sole discretion to disqualify any individual they find to have tampered with the entry process or the operation of this Sweepstakes; to be acting in violation of these Official Rules; or to be acting in an unsportsmanlike or disruptive manner, or with intent to annoy, abuse, threaten or harass any other person or to have provided inaccurate information on any legal documents submitted in connection with this Sweepstakes. CAUTION: ANY ATTEMPT BY ANY INDIVIDUAL TO DELIBERATELY DAMAGE ANY WEBSITE OR UNDERMINE THE LEGITIMATE OPERATION OF THE SWEEPSTAKES IS A VIOLATION OF CRIMINAL AND CIVIL LAWS AND SHOULD SUCH AN ATTEMPT BE MADE, SPONSOR RESERVES THE RIGHT TO SEEK DAMAGES FROM ANY SUCH INDIVIDUAL TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW. Entrants agree to indemnify and hold harmless the Sponsor from any and all liability resulting or arising from the Sweepstakes, to release all rights to bring any claim, action or proceeding against the Sponsor.
Privacy Policy: Bioneers and giveaway partners may collect personal data about participants when they enter the sweepstakes/when a winner is selected. Personal data may include: Name, email, address, home and office phone numbers and other supplied demographics-related information. All entrants will be automatically added to the Bioneers email list. They may opt out of emails at any time.
SPONSOR: THE SWEEPSTAKES IS SPONSORED BY BIONEERS/COLLECTIVE HERITAGE INSTITUTE, 215 LINCOLN AVE #202, SANTA FE, NM 87501.
While climate change and environmental instability will impact people of all ages in the coming years, our planet’s youngest citizens will shoulder the heaviest burdens. As the environment influences nearly all of today’s pursuits — from the stories we tell to the chemicals we use in labs to the products we create, consume, and throw away — providing young students with an education that incorporates environmental literacy has never been more important.
Ten Strands is a California–based nonprofit established in 2012. Their mission is to build and strengthen the partnerships and strategies that will bring environmental literacy to all of California’s K–12 public school students. They operate with a small, diverse, and nimble staff and strategic partners throughout the state. Ten Strands utilizes the largest and most diverse institution in California—the public school system—to impact 58 county offices of education, more than 1,000 school districts, approximately 10,000 individual schools, over 300,000 teachers, and 5.8 million children.
Bioneers talked to Karen Cowe, the CEO of Ten Strands, about the start of the nonprofit organization and her personal journey toward merging her interest in the environment with her professional life.
Bioneers: Tell us a little bit about the beginnings of Ten Strands.
Karen: Ten Strands was founded in mid-2012 by Will Parish. I first met Will in November of that year and joined him to launch Ten Strands in January 2013 fully. You can read my ten-year reflection here, which includes our origin story. When Will founded Ten Strands, he was finishing up a decade of teaching at Gateway High School in San Francisco. In 2009, the State Board of Education (SBE) appointed him to the Instructional Quality Commission (IQC). The IQC is responsible for advising the SBE on matters related to curriculum and instruction. In 2009, the Education and the Environment Initiative (EEI) Curriculum was evaluated by the IQC, and Will taught many units in his school as a pilot teacher in both environmental science and civics. The IQC recommended to the SBE that it approve the EEI Curriculum for use in all schools, which it did in 2010. The EEI Curriculum is a model curriculum that demonstrates to teachers how to integrate California’s Environmental Principles and Concepts (EP&Cs) into standards-based instruction, with a focus on science and history-social science. Will was eager to see it used all over California, but he couldn’t see how that was going to happen unless he established a nonprofit to work in partnership with the state agency responsible for disseminating the curriculum. He founded Ten Strands to partner with the Office of Education and the Environment at CalRecycle (a branch of CalEPA) and later worked closely with the California Department of Education.
Karen Cowe
As Will was getting started working with the Office of Education and the Environment, I was finishing up a long-term commitment to a STEM publishing company. I was the CEO of an innovative math and science education company based in Emeryville, California, and we had just sold the company to McGraw Hill Education. During the transition of the company to McGraw Hill, I had time to think about what I wanted to do next. I was eager to stay in the education sector, and I was also interested in seeing if I could move my personal interest in the environment closer to my professional life. I was exploring this intersection of education and the environment when I was introduced to Will. We often talk about the serendipity of that moment.
By the time we launched Ten Strands, I had already spent over 20 years working with teachers in the UK, Greece, and the US to introduce them to locally published, engaging, student-centered, place-based instructional materials, so our first initiative at Ten Strands was a very natural fit for me. However, only representing one curriculum wasn’t enough for me, and I said to Will very early on that I needed to make sure there was more we could take on for greater impact. I won’t go into the details here, but in my ten-year reflection I list our top ten accomplishments, so there clearly was plenty to do!
We didn’t particularly think about this at the time, but on reflection, it was a good time to launch Ten Strands because California had adopted the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) in 2013, and there is a lot of content in the standards related to the environment, including climate change. Also, California was in the process of revising a number of content frameworks in the few years after we started Ten Strands. Through a partnership with Dr. Gerald (Jerry) Lieberman from the State Education and Environment Roundtable (SEER), we were able to integrate California’s EP&Cs into five frameworks – science, history-social science, health, art, and the upcoming math framework. Finally, the California Department of Education worked with the environmental education sector and in 2015 published the Blueprint for Environmental Literacy. Those three things combined – the promotion of the EEI Curriculum, the integration of EP&Cs into content frameworks, and the publication of the Blueprint – gave us the foundation and momentum we needed in those first few years.
I’m not sure Will and I were the “right ones” to take it on but we were at career crossroads, interested in the intersection of education and the environment, had relevant experience, were eager to make an impact, and were willing to take a leap. There’s a quote I love by Elizabeth Alexander, “Anything can be made, any sentence begun.” I pretty much start every day with that in mind, and it was that sentiment that started Ten Strands – for me, anyway. Will and I meet every Wednesday evening for dinner. Those dinners give us a chance to reflect, look over the horizon, and feel grateful for the amazing support we’ve received over the years from our staff, board and advisory board, partners, and donors.
Bioneers: In what ways have you seen environmental education change since Ten Strands started?
Karen: After a publishing career focused first on English as a second language and then on mathematics, I was surprised by how small the environmental education sector felt when I first joined it. I was used to large numbers of teachers at conferences, such as the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, and giant trade show booths by publishing companies. In California, the STEAM Symposium was just getting started, and they even had Kareem Abdul-Jabbar as a keynote! The environmental education conferences felt a little quiet compared to my prior experience, and I did wonder if there was sufficient interest in the topic by teachers.
Three things changed my mind. The first was a conversation with Dr. Gerald Lieberman. Jerry explained the focus of his work to me. He believed that we would never get the traction needed for education in, about, and for the environment unless we could bring these ideas closer to the day-to-day work happening in classrooms and on school campuses. Otherwise, environmental education would be relegated to an occasional field trip for some students some of the time in some places. Jerry’s work on the EP&Cs and the EEI Curriculum exemplified his approach.
The second was the publication of the Blueprint for Environmental Literacy led by Craig Strang from the Lawrence Hall of Science and Elizabeth Babcock who, at the time, was at the California Academy of Sciences. The Blueprint provides a definition of environmental literacy that made a lot of sense to me, especially the part I’ve bolded: “An environmentally literate person has the capacity to act individually and with others to support ecologically sound, economically prosperous, and equitable communities for present and future generations. Through lived experiences and education programs that include classroom-based lessons, experiential education, and outdoor learning, students will become environmentally literate, developing the knowledge, skills, and understanding of environmental principles to analyze environmental issues and make informed decisions.” I strongly felt that this was something I could get behind and advocate for.
The third was the realization of the value of community-based partners to the environmental education movement. This is not something I had paid much attention to when I was focused on English and math. I first met educators working in this sector at early ChangeScale events in the Bay Area. Also, when Jerry Lieberman and I first worked with the San Mateo County Office of Education, we asked community-based partners from the region to join us to work with teachers shoulder-to-shoulder. I think intentional partnerships between teachers in the formal education system and educators in the nonformal education system can be the “secret sauce” for this work to grow and thrive in communities.
I do think we’ve seen progress in the last ten years. We mostly experience that progress through the partnerships we’ve forged. Our main mechanism for that is the California Environmental Literacy Initiative (CAELI). CAELI is a collective action network that we’ve provided backbone support to since 2016. It was originally set up to support the implementation of the Blueprint. Within the network, we focus on capacity-building activities related to community-based partners, county offices of education, districts, equity, green and blue careers, policy, and professional learning. Also, since 2019, we’ve been working with the University of California (UC) and California State University (CSU) systems to support the Environmental and Climate Change Literacy Projects (ECCLPs). ECCLPs has adopted an upstream approach with a focus on infusing climate change education into pre-service and in-service teacher professional learning, research, and relationships with community-based partners.
We’re fortunate to be doing this work in California where we have supportive policies related to environmental literacy within our statute from our teachers’ unions and district board policy recommendations from the California School Boards Association (CSBA). There’s no question that a lot of the current momentum and motivation is coming from concerns related to climate change. In 2021, California was the first state in the nation to commit to creating resources for teachers focused on climate change and environmental justice. Our project, the Climate Change and Environmental Justice Program (CCEJP), is now underway, and the resources will be made available for free to teachers when they’re ready.
Bioneers: Ten Strands is challenging educators and educational institutions to change and grow. How has that challenge been received? Has there been pushback?
Karen: The biggest challenge is access to instructional minutes, and it’s why, from the beginning, we’ve promoted environmental literacy as something you can integrate into standards-based instruction in the subjects you’re already teaching. The state’s model curriculum demonstrated this for science and history-social science. Also, our content frameworks give guidance on how to do this not only for science and history-social science, but also for health, arts, and mathematics. The English Language Arts (ELA) framework has not been revised yet, but we’ll focus on that, too, when it comes up. Importantly, the frameworks give guidance to publishing companies too.
Having said that, I think this is a particularly challenging time for educators and students. The pandemic had a devastating impact on teaching and learning. At a recent PACE Conference in Sacramento, Kevin Gee, an associate professor from UC Davis, compared the percentage of students meeting or exceeding standards in ELA and math in 2018-19 to 2021-22. In ELA, there were declines at every grade level with the biggest drop in third grade (6.4 percentage point decline). English learners and Black students were impacted the most. In math, again, there were declines at all grade levels with the biggest drop in eighth grade (7.4 percentage point decline). Again, English language learners and Black students were impacted the most.
Beyond academics, in that same session, Kevin shared data from the ACLU and CSU Center to Close the Opportunity Gap where, of the students surveyed in 2022, 77 percent reported experiencing a lack of motivation, 72 percent reported feeling overwhelmed, and 63 percent reported having experienced an emotional breakdown during the prior year. In answer to the question, “In the past year, where did you get help from a counselor or therapist?” 57 percent of students said “Nowhere.”
It’s a very delicate time for educators and students. As we move forward with our plans and aspirations, it is essential for us to fully appreciate this and only ever show up in ways that demonstrate an authentic interest in the issues they are grappling with, and contribute in ways that are supportive, generative, and helpful.
Bioneers: Which projects or initiatives are you most excited about looking ahead to the next few years?
Karen: I’m excited about all our projects because they either build on prior work and therefore further strengthen the contribution we’re making to the field, or they take us in practical new directions. We currently have six core initiatives. Three are focused on teaching and learning, two are focused on school grounds and school buildings, and one is focused on creating a dashboard to help school districts understand the current status of their “whole school sustainability” progress. You can learn about our current work on our website. Our two latest initiatives aren’t on our website yet, so I’ll describe them briefly below.
We are partnering with UndauntedK12 to focus on decarbonizing school buildings and ensuring school buildings and grounds are resilient to support student health, safety, learning, and development in a time of rapidly increasing extreme weather. Current efforts include the launch of the Climate Ready Schools Coalition, which supports California policymakers, agencies, and district leaders to adopt, resource, and implement nation-leading policies, as well as an advocacy campaign to raise funds for a Statewide Master Plan that will coordinate county, district, and local actions to align with state decarbonization and climate resilience goals.
Our partnership with UndauntedK12 has also resulted in the launch of the Data Initiative for Environmental and Climate Action in California’s TK–12 Schools. Currently released in beta, this database and service supports scaling implementation of environmental and climate action in California’s schools by using an equity-informed and data-driven approach. The initiative identifies key demographic indicators related to need, as well as tracks readiness and progress on high-impact leverage points for change such as school board policies, bond measures, and investments in environmental and climate initiatives and staff to lead these initiatives.
Bioneers: What gives you hope in the work you’re doing?
Karen: I was in the room at a Bioneers conference when David Orr said, “Hope is a verb with its shirtsleeves rolled up.” I’ve never forgotten it, and it’s why I love the Elizabeth Alexander quote I referenced above too. It’s the action orientation in both quotes that mean the most to me. I’ve met some incredible people in the last ten years of being focused on this work. Also, there are a good number of people who were previously involved in other professions who, in the last five years or so, have quit that work to “focus on climate.” That gives me hope. Also, there are amazing teachers in classrooms and educators in community-based organizations who really do the day-to-day heavy lifting, inspiring students to learn and to care about the Earth.
Finally, I’m grateful to all the students in California, around the country, and around the world who are creating youth-led organizations focused on climate change and environmental justice. They fill me with hope. Read the latest story we published in our Youth Voices series by Rishi Gurjar, a youth activist, here.
Bioneers: Can Bioneers readers get involved?
Karen: As an advocacy organization, we often seek letters of support to advance our work. It would be great if we could reach out to the Bioneers community during those times. Also, if anything we’re doing seems relevant to the Bioneers community, it would be great to be able to share that through your network. We’re 100 percent philanthropy run, so a donation would be much appreciated too! Sign up for our newsletter to receive updates, and check out the stories our friends and partners share about the work they do in environmental education.
I’ll end by saying I’m a huge fan of Bioneers, and I attended my first of many conferences as far back as 2001. Thank you for everything you do.
From life-saving pharmaceutical drugs to high-performance materials, chemicals and chemical products are essential in providing society the products it requires to survive and thrive. But the creation and use of many chemical products is hazardous to people and the environment. In order to ensure a habitable future planet, the field of chemistry must adapt and find new ways to be sustainable as well as economical.
Beyond Benign is challenging educational institutions and the chemical industry at large to adopt green chemistry practices. Green Chemistry is defined as the design of chemical products that reduce the use or generation of hazardous substances. By supporting educators and students to teach and learn green chemistry and sustainable science, Beyond Benign is equipping the next generation of scientists and citizens with the tools required to design and select products that support human health and the environment.
Bioneers met with Beyond Benign Co-Founder Dr. Amy Cannon to discuss the organization’s progress and plans for the coming years.
Bioneers: Tell us a little bit about the beginnings of Beyond Benign.
Amy: Beyond Benign was founded in 2007 at a time when green chemistry was not widely accepted in chemistry education and research. It was an exception, rather than the rule. Having spent time in both industry and academia, my co-founder, John Warner, and I had a unique perspective on the state of the chemical enterprise. We saw an opportunity to address a clear gap in how educational institutions teach and train chemists: arming them with the knowledge and skills needed to address hazards and environmental impacts through the practice of their trade. The field of chemistry has a history of contributing to environmental impacts and human hazards. But it also has a central role in addressing these impacts through how we use and approach the design and implementation of chemicals and chemical products. This duality can be confusing but also empowering for chemists.
Dr. Amy Cannon
As a fundamental science, chemistry has tremendous power to address sustainability at the molecular level. This is something that needs to be included in the teaching and training of chemistry, which is why it’s the main focus of Beyond Benign: empowering educators to bring green chemistry into their teaching and practice to better train chemists with green chemistry skills.
Bioneers: Have you seen chemistry education morph throughout the past 10 years?
Amy: Yes, there has been a growing awareness of green chemistry and an expansion in the implementation of green chemistry in chemistry education. Although we would have liked to have seen more progress in the past 10 years, green chemistry is generally much more accepted by the academic community. For example, of the higher ed institutions that are involved with our Green Chemistry Commitment program, more than 75% have enacted significant changes at their institutions.
While I do think we have had a part to play in the changes over the years, I think that one of the biggest motivators is seeing the results of green chemistry in practice. When chemists can see real results from implementing greener chemistry in the design and use of chemical products, they can see the tremendous power of chemistry to address sustainability challenges.
Bioneers: Beyond Benign is challenging educators and educational institutions to change and grow. How has that challenge been received?
Amy: Generally, educators are up for the challenge and see the value of bringing green chemistry into their teaching and practice. The pushback has mostly been from the barriers that come from enacting any type of curricular changes. When educators look to make changes to their curriculum, they are faced with resource constraints, and they also might see some resistance from peers or administrators, usually arising from misconceptions about green chemistry. Once educators and administrators see the benefits of including green chemistry in their teaching and practice – hazard reductions, cost savings, increased student interest – they then seek to do even more.
At Beyond Benign, we work to help educators overcome the real and perceived obstacles that go hand-in-hand with curricular changes. We provide resources, funding, and peer support that empowers educators to incorporate green chemistry in a way that works for their courses and institutions.
Bioneers: Why is working with chemical industry leaders such an important part of what Beyond Benign does?
Amy: The goal of green chemistry is to become the way that chemistry is practiced. Therefore, the chemical industry needs to have a key role in implementing and inventing greener processes and products and also advocating for and hiring a workforce that has the skills to implement these practices. The chemical industry creates the molecular building blocks of our global society. When green chemistry is implemented in the manufacturing and design of chemical products, the impacts are tremendous. For example, in an industrial setting, one chemical industry saw a 97% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions after switching to a biobased solvent in one of its manufacturing processes.
However, it isn’t only chemical companies that can address sustainability goals by utilizing green chemistry. Companies across sectors are seeing the advantages of utilizing green chemistry for safer, healthier products. We’ve seen job postings from companies including Apple, Microsoft, Lululemon, and Pfizer, all looking for scientists with green chemistry knowledge and skills.
Bioneers: Which projects or initiatives are you most excited about looking ahead to the next few years?
Amy: Over the past few years, we have been working on expanding our reach to foster a global, diverse community of green chemistry educators and leaders. To support this community, we have embarked on creating a web-based platform that will house community green chemistry education resources, and also include interactive components that support networking, mentoring, and peer-to-peer interactions. The Green Chemistry Teaching and Learning Community (GCTLC) is anticipated to launch in August of this year, and we are really looking forward to launching the platform in partnership with the American Chemical Society’s Green Chemistry Institute. We are hopeful that this platform will further catalyze the implementation of green chemistry globally.
Bioneers: What gives you hope in the work you’re doing?
Amy: I have met numerous students over the years who have brought such passion into their work. Many of them have also led initiatives to bring green chemistry to their departments and their communities. One example is the University of Toronto’s student-led group called the Green Chemistry Initiative. Over the years, they have built awareness within their own department and also served as inspiration for other institutions and student groups to get involved with green chemistry. It is these current and future leaders that will bring change to the chemical enterprise. Students are tremendously powerful change agents.
Bioneers: Can Bioneers readers get involved?
Amy: Yes, we would love readers to get involved. Advocating for green chemistry in schools and universities is always welcome. Beyond Benign hosts a suite of open-access resources available to educators from K-12 through college level. Readers are welcome to share these resources with educators to bring to their classrooms and laboratories.
In addition, we have an ambitious goal of reaching 25% of graduating chemists (in the U.S. we graduate 22,000 chemists annually at all levels) by 2025 through the Green Chemistry Commitment. This goal includes engaging with Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs) in the U.S. and beyond to ensure a more diverse and inclusive community. Our current signers represent just over 10% of graduating chemists. Readers are encouraged to share this program with university chemistry departments to help us reach a critical mass of graduating chemists trained with green chemistry skills.
Grace Wicks grew up in an environment where locally grown, organic, fair trade food and respectful rural-urban relationships were the ingredients for success for one of the first farm-to-table restaurants in the country – the White Dog Café in Philadelphia. White Dog was where Grace’s mother, Judy Wicks, established her roots as an activist and entrepreneur engaging the community to build a more compassionate, regenerative and regionally-based economy.
Grace went on to follow her passion for horticulture and founded Graceful Gardens driven by a vision of creating beautiful edible landscapes in urban niches that would form a connected web of gardens across the city. That expansive vision was implemented with modest means; she started her company with $1,500, most of it invested in a bicycle with a trailer to haul around tools and plants. From those humble beginnings, Grace developed a thriving business employing 13 people, instilling in her 200 clients – including chefs for whom she has developed rooftop gardens – an ecological ethos and a deeper appreciation for gardening.
Tragically, the lives of Grace and Judy have been disrupted drastically when Grace contracted West Nile Virus in 2022. The virus initially left her with brain damage, partially paralyzed and in severe chronic pain, unable to speak or feed herself and she still requires 24-hour care at home, which is predominantly provided by Judy.
After a long stay in the hospital and having been confined to bed and a wheelchair for 5 months, Grace is making steady progress. She is able to wheel herself around in a wheelchair, and she is spending some therapy time in a swimming pool and getting in-house physical, occupational and speech therapies.
But Grace’s insurance company abruptly dropped her health insurance coverage and the costs for tests, medications, therapy, and equipment – estimated at $250,000 per year – have created a financial crisis for both Grace and Judy. In addition to medical expenses, funds are needed to help pay for Grace’s mortgage and other living expenses until she can work again.
Judy Wicks is a long-time cherished member of the Bioneers community whose life and accomplishments are a continuing inspiration. Among the many awards that she has received for her work in creating standards and a model for sustainable businesses is the James Beard Humanitarian Award given to an organization or individual, “who has given selflessly and worked tirelessly to better the lives of others and society at large.”
In a recent update Judy described how she is adapting to her family crisis, “As to my repurposed role as caregiver, I am still practicing patience and establishing a new relationship with time. I no longer rush here and there, packing my days with meetings and tasks, but rather am appreciating the many small wonders of the day, being with my beautiful daughter and witnessing her blessed recovery. ”
That recovery needs the generosity of a compassionate community to help Grace through these heartbreaking, arduous times. We urge you to visit the gofundme page and learn more. Please give what you can.
In the circumpolar north, where temperatures are historically colder than in any other regions of the world, climate change’s effects have taken hold far more rapidly and dramatically than anywhere else. “Because Alaska is colder than most places, it’s melting faster than most places,” says Dune Lankard of the Native Conservancy. “The permafrost, the sea ice, the glaciers are melting at unprecedented rates.”
Melting glaciers and warming waters are having dire impacts on local economies and ways of life. The ecological health of these regions is also crucial to the overall climatic integrity of the entire planet. As we work to tackle climate change, we must pay close attention to the unique challenges faced by these northern regions and the vital work being done to protect and preserve them.
This week, we explore the effects of climate change in the north and Indigenous perspectives on how to change course while there’s still time.
Want more news like this? Sign up for the Bioneers Pulse to receive the latest news from the Bioneers community straight to your inbox.
3 Indigenous Leaders Offer Solutions to Climate Change in the Arctic
Indigenous Peoples in the north have been feeling the disastrous effects of climate change for far longer than the rest of the planet’s population. According to NASA record sets, the Arctic is warming up to four times faster than the rest of the planet, disturbing terrestrial and marine ecosystems, destroying villages, and disrupting healthy ways of life.
Innovative solutions to the climate crisis born from the ingenuity rooted in Native knowledge systems are emerging from the circumpolar north. In this conversation, leaders at the Native Conservancy, Indigenous Climate Action, and Native Movement share their strategies for addressing climate change in the policy, civil society, and economic sectors.
Indigenous Peoples and Climate Change: Report from the Arctic
“We came a long ways, we’re going to go a long ways together. For our children that’s not born today yet, and for our elders that’s not here today with us.”
Sarah James, the revered Gwich’in Elder from Alaska, who has won many awards for her work to protect the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge from oil drilling, including the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize, depicts how her people are being severely impacted on the front lines of rapid climate change, and how they are responding in this presentation.
Bioneers 2023 Conference Speaker Highlight: Indigenous Forum
The Bioneers Indigenous Forum serves as a platform for Indigenous activists, scientists, elders, youth, culture-bearers and scholars to share their knowledge and frontline solutions in dialogue with a dynamic, multicultural audience. The Indigenous Forum recognizes the vital role that Indigenous Peoples play in protecting the Earth and its resources and seeks to support their efforts to maintain their traditional ways of life, cultures, and values. Join us at Bioneers 2023 to take part in the Indigenous Forum.
“Unfortunately, we’re going to have to think about this type of work more and more in the coming years as we see the effects of climate change reach so many other communities.”
Melting permafrost, flooding rivers and shifting land have made Newtok, Alaska’s water and sewage systems unusable. The estimated cost to move the community nine miles up the Ninglick River is $120 million. The federal government has announced a $25 million grant and sees the move as a demonstration project for future rural Indigenous communities facing similar issues.
“The economy in Kiruna has relied on mining for more than a century, but new extraction activity will need to be balanced with other interests including preserving areas of natural beauty and safeguarding reindeer herding in the region by the Sami people, Mr. Hognelid said.”
The transition to clean energy and electric vehicles is upon us. The only questions are the pace of the transition and whether society can avoid making the same mistakes developing the clean energy economy as we did in the dirty energy era. Where and how we extract, process and (hopefully recycle and reuse) the mineral resources necessary for the electric age remains an enormous challenge. The new discovery of Europe’s largest known deposit of coveted rare earth metals brings these challenges to the sub-arctic region.
Season two of Threshold’s podcast takes listeners on a journey to the Arctic. With the region warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet, it’s crucial that we understand its significance and the impact that it has on all of us.
Through this circumpolar journey, Threshold delves into the lives of the four million people who call the Arctic home and hear about their experiences with the effects of climate change. By traveling on various modes of transportation and visiting all eight Arctic countries, Threshold provides a comprehensive look at what is happening in the far north.
As you know, Bioneers is committed to making our events accessible to all. Our full-price registration is significantly subsidized below the true cost of producing the event, and we are so grateful to be able to offer ample further scholarship options to ensure that the event is as inclusive as possible.
In order to access our scholarship rates, simply register for the conference, and follow the instructions for scholarship support (you’ll see our scholarships referred to as Student, Educator, Activist and Limited-Income Senior Rates). We ask that you sincerely consider what rate you register with, understanding that purchasing a ticket at a higher rate and/or donating to our scholarship campaign allows us to offer access to those who need the support.
with Frank Bibeau, Thomas Linzey, Samantha Skenandore
The Rights of Nature movement launched internationally in 2006 and is growing fast. Driven primarily by tribes and citizen-led communities, more than three dozen cities, townships and counties across the U.S. have adopted such laws to create legally enforceable rights for ecosystems to exist, flourish, regenerate and evolve.
In this program, Native American attorneys, Frank Bibeau and Samantha Skenandore, and legal movement leader Thomas Linzey report from the front lines how they are honing their strategies to protect natural systems for future generations.
Featuring
Frank Bibeau, an enrolled member of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, is an activist and tribal attorney who works extensively on Chippewa treaty and civil rights, sovereignty and water protection.
Thomas Linzey, Senior Legal Counsel for the Center for Democratic and Environmental Rights (CDER), an organization committed to advancing the legal rights of nature and environmental rights globally.
Samantha Skenandore (Ho-Chunk/Oneida), Attorney/Of-Counsel at Quarles & Brady LLP, has vast knowledge and experience in working on matters involving on both federal Indian law and tribal law.
Credits
Executive Producer: Kenny Ausubel
Written by: Kenny Ausubel
Senior Producer and Station Relations: Stephanie Welch
Program Engineer and Music Supervisor: Emily Harris
This is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. Visit the radio and podcast homepage to find out how to hear the program on your local station and how to subscribe to the podcast.
Subscribe to the Bioneers: Revolution from The Heart of Nature podcast
Transcript
Neil Harvey (Host): When you fight nature, you lose.
That simple truth is coming home to roost with unprecedented frequency, intensity and ubiquity. Today, a sobering morning-after awakening is stirring worldwide. Humanity is getting an environmental education the hard way: What we do to the Earth, we do to ourselves.
But what if, by extension, when you own nature, you lose?
The ground truth is that we don’t own nature – nature owns us. In reality, we are a part of nature – and we’re decidedly a very junior partner in that relationship. We’re also an expendable one, if we don’t abide by nature’s operating instructions.
These are ancient worldviews held closely by Indigenous peoples – the world’s old-growth cultures. It helps explain why First Peoples are now in the vanguard of an authentic legal revolution.
In practical reality, the global Rights of Nature Movement is simply affirming the existential truth that Nature has its ways and will have its way, whether we recognize that or not. Codifying these rights into enforceable law may give us the best chance to protect and restore the web of life on whose wellbeing our own lives depend.
Frank Bibeau(FB): Wild rice, manoomin, has been around my life all my life. Ever since I was a kid, my grandfather always made sure we had wild rice. It was important for my father to make sure we understood how to go out and harvest and things. Wild rice is mentioned in our 1837 treaty. It says that we have the right to hunt, fish, and gather wild rice on the rivers, lakes and lands that we’re relinquishing or ceding, and so that meant all of the same territory, not just the reservation, but all of the same territory that we were relinquishing, we still had the right to hunt, fish and gather.
White Earth tribal member Frank Bibeau and his father ricing. Photo: Frank Bibeau
Host: Frank Bibeau is a tribal attorney and enrolled member of the Minnesota Chippewa tribe in northern Minnesota where tribal waters have been under severe threat including from oil pipelines such as the notorious Line 3. His legal work has focused on the Treaty rights of tribes and members to help protect natural resources for future generations.
Treaties are internationally binding nation-to-nation agreements that the Constitution refers to as, “the supreme law of the land.”
Enter Manoomin, the tribe’s treaty-protected wild rice that grows in the abundant waters under threat.
While working at the 1985 Minnesota Legislative Session, Bibeau met lifelong Indigenous activist Winona LaDuke.
In trying to figure out a novel way to protect the watersheds of the Great Lakes basin, LaDuke and Bibeau realized that the treaty protecting manoomin could also protect the entire ecosystem under tribal law. They went in a new direction – in part because water law is so complex, and in part because corporations were trying to appropriate the wild rice for genetic engineering.
In consultation with attorney Thomas Linzey, they decided to use a Rights of Nature legal framework in tribal court against Minnesota’s Department of Natural Resources, or DNR, to oppose the Line 3 pipeline.
Frank Bibeau spoke at a Bioneers conference…
FB: So in reality by using rights of manoomin, for me, it’s a water protection strategy. Manoomin, wild rice, grows in the water. Water is necessary for all living life, and where we live, because of all the fisheries and the flyways for the water fowl and everything that’s there, it’s very important to have a lot of pristine water.
And as I started looking through some of our treaty journals, interestingly enough, our treaty journals talk about maple – being maple syrup, maple sugar – and fish being our two primary treaty source foods besides wild rice that’s expressly in our treaty. So you’re talking about maybe three of the most high-demand water quality, you know, natural elements in nature that we relied upon as our primary treaty foods. And if it’s a primary treaty food, there is an obligation for us to be able to access that food. That was part of the deal.
Part of the problem is as you’re trying to develop these defenses, you’re in competition with a lot of other attorneys, and those attorneys, they don’t see this very well. It’s new to them. They didn’t learn it in law school. They haven’t practiced with it, and so when I look at rights of nature, I think it displaces things in a way from Indian Country standpoint that the state and the federal and the non-Indians can’t do. And so what we’ve done in Minnesota at White Earth Reservation in particular, we’ve adopted the rights of nature into rights of manoomin, and we’ve used that in tribal court. They didn’t contemplate that Indians were going to be around today, and so they didn’t really pay attention to the laws that they left in place with us.
And so I think treaty rights are—you’re going to see a lot more use in the environment and a lot more use in the legal playing field. It is growing. It is a new approach, and I think you’re going to find that working with tribes is going to make the difference.
Host: This historic case was first brought in a tribal court to enforce the rights of nature, and the first rights of nature case brought to enforce Treaty guarantees.
Samantha Skenandore is an enrolled citizen of the Ho-Chunk Nation in Wisconsin, and an attorney of counsel at Quarles & Brady.
In 2018, the General Council – the “fourth” branch of government represented by the “People” of the Ho Chunk Nation – voted overwhelmingly to amend its tribal constitution to broadly enshrine the Rights of Nature. The Ho-Chunk – a word which means “People of the Big Voice” – was the first tribal nation in the U.S. to take this landmark leap.
The proposed amendment to the Nation’s Constitution established this:
“Ecosystems, natural communities, and species within the Ho-Chunk Nation territory possess inherent, fundamental, and inalienable rights to naturally exist, flourish, regenerate, and evolve.”
The Amendment further prohibits fracking, fossil fuel extraction, and genetic engineering as violations of the Rights of Nature.
Procedurally, the proposed Rights of Nature amendment was the first bold step in an ongoing process to become tribal law.
The voice of the People of the Big Voice was clear – Rights of Nature should be recognized in the highest law of the land.
But where and how could tribal sovereignty and political status be deployed to draft and pass the right type of laws for that jurisdiction? In collaboration with the Rights of Nature project of the Indigeneity Program, Samantha Skenandore entered into a complex process: to assess a crazy quilt of legal entanglements in order to develop a blueprint for action for other tribes – a legal toolkit.
One top goal for any such law is to be genuinely enforceable. Another goal is that these laws would apply to other jurisdictions, including state and local governments in order to effect change both upstream and downstream from tribal lands.
Samantha Skenandore…
Samantha Skenandore (SS): What’s the lay of the land? Where have tribes passed these Rights of Nature laws? Where have they fallen short? Where have they just been symbolic? What are ways maybe that we should look at to help tribes with a toolkit to look at this opportunity for them to kind of flex their sovereignty muscle and see if they can perhaps advance this new area of what I think in American jurisprudence would call environmental law, so 2.0, of having a whole new viewscape on how we see our resources around us.
We have more precedents, we have more information from Frank and Thom’s cases now that we know what to do, what not to do, and how to do things better.
We have sliced and diced all of the case work from water law, other environmental law, international law, and we’ve looked at things from all angles to say we have tried to think of everything, and we have organized a toolkit that says, alright, if you’re a tribe that is Indian Reorganization Act Tribe, when you’re recognized as a federal tribe, a federal entity, a federal government, how your constitution structured you, how you function as a government, does that make it better for you to pass a Rights of Nature law, or are you from Frank’s neck of the woods; do you have treaty rights. Right? Is there a special rule, rights, privileges that you might have that might allow you to pass a Rights of Nature law that would fit and be better upheld under those circumstances?
And then we looked at some of the newer constitutions, some very modern forms of tribal governance, and then we looked at all of the case law, right, and we identified all of the challenges. So any attorney, it’s basically a blueprint to say here’s all the things you’re going to face and you’re going to need to discuss with your client to say, hey tribe A, I think we can pass a Rights of Nature law. We checked most of the boxes here. These are the three or four big issues that we’re going to have to tackle, and I’m going to be your counsel. I’m going to help you work through those three or four things, and then advise you accordingly to US tribal counsel to pass this law or that law, or do whatever you choose to do.
So that’s really how we get tribes in a position to consider doing this. And that’s really been my role with Rights of Nature is to create that blueprint and also to take that feedback we’re hearing from the tribal leaders, from their council, their community members, and we’ve even talked to local and state DNR, so non-native allies that say, hey, we’ve been waiting for tribes to do this for some time, what can we do to help.
And so part of the strategic vision and plan will have to be so inclusive to bring that to the table to tribal governments so that they really can do this.
Host: Realistically, although tribes can have a seismic legal impact, Rights of Nature governance, by definition, requires multi-stakeholder coalitions. It’s necessary to weave together diverse bodies of law and jurisdictions in a specific place or region. In many cases, it requires that tribes work withmunicipal and state agencies, as well as with allied communities and citizens, which is generally where it all starts.
Attorney Thomas Linzey developed the world’s first Rights of Nature laws in 2006 working with conservative communities in Western Pennsylvania to face down unwelcome corporate harms such as factory farming and quarries. He is the Senior US Counsel at the Center for Democratic and Environmental Rights, which he co-founded with attorney Mari Margil in 2019 to advance democratic rights and rights for nature worldwide.
Thomas Linzey (TL): Rights of nature work is not a spectator sport. It can happen anywhere. It can happen in any community. Any community has elected local officials who can pass Rights of Nature laws, but in the US, about half of the states have ballot initiative processes so that you can write Rights of Nature laws yourselves at the local level and then put it on the ballot and campaign for it and pass it, and then begin to enforce it. Sometimes I think sometimes rights of nature feels like it’s 30,000 feet in the air; it’s way up here and it’s something for the lawyers to talk about. It’s not. The lawyers are only relevant if there are people in the community who are moving forward to protect a particular ecosystem with this new approach. And, again, I think without this new approach, we’re kind of screwed in a variety of different ways because you’re relegated back to industry-written environmental regulations which keep you running around like a hamster through a wheel, endlessly exhausting your resources and energy until you eventually disband yourself as a community organization.
So wherever you are, it can be done. It’s possible. And I think safeguarding major ecosystems this way is the next really major paradigm shifting evolution of the law in the US, but it’s being done by communities and by tribes. Those are the folks on the frontlines.
Host: When we return, how tribes are building environmental law 2.0, and how the shift to a rights of nature legal paradigm is challenging the very concepts of ownership and property that underlie Western law.
I’m Neil Harvey. You’re listening to The Bioneers.
Host: After first arising in 2006, by 2022 the Rights of Nature movement had become the fastest growing environmental movement in history.
Driven primarily by citizen-led communities and tribes, more than three dozen cities, townships and counties across the U.S. have adopted such laws and created legally enforceable rights of waterways and other ecosystems.
In parallel, by 2022, six tribes in the US had voted on diverse iterations of rights of nature resolutions, while numerous other tribes were preparing for similar actions.
But, says Samantha Skenandore, each tribe comprises its own community with a unique history, culture and governance structure. She looks to the Ho-Chunk nation’s traditional court on customizing Rights of Nature law. She served as legal counsel on matters before the tribe’s clan leaders and elders, who hold the Traditional Ecological Knowledge of their place going back countless generations, including their cosmology and first principles.
In her own role protecting cultural resources and sacred sites, this precious ancient knowledge provided a road map for how her people had successfully sustained themselves in regenerative ecological cycles over the long haul. It revealed the basis for how to begin to construct culturally appropriate Rights of Nature governance.
SS: Nature, all nature, right, not any subspecies, not any group, subgroup, all of nature was to be included in our constitution and be afforded the bill of rights just like we, us human beings, have within our tribal constitution. So if we passed a law over here to save the salmon or on a very extreme version of rights of nature, we’re protecting all nature and giving it a bill of rights like personhood, that’s the strongest way we can protect nature. And that’s what passed with over, I believe, 1200 votes, 1200 human beings in a room, tribal members, passed that law. So it was beautiful. I mean…[APPLAUSE]
And it was great to be in the room. We all stopped and took a picture. We put a bannerout. But we are very proud of that law. But that’s only phase one. We have to go back and that law has to be taken to the legislature. It goes through a process with the feds, and then it becomes law. Right? And then we have to have these cases in tribal court. We have to litigate them. So we are not quite there yet, but that’s really my contribution to say, you know, I’ve been a part of this since before it was passed, and it’s in the process, watch what happens for this tribe as they move that law forward.
Host: This kind of Indigenous leadership is global, such as in Ecuador which became the first country to put Rights of Nature into its federal constitution. Similarly, Indigenous leadership was paramount in Bolivia, New Zealand, India and Uganda in passing laws that protect everything from a river to glaciers and savanna.
Nor is the Rights of Nature movement boxed into the left-right political dichotomy. Witness Orange County, Florida, the thirtieth-largest county in the US and home to Orlando and Disneyworld – not exactly a progressive bastion.
Known as the “Right to Clean Water Initiative,” it empowers any resident to enforce the rights of waterways and the rights of people to clean water. Thomas Linzey and Mari Margil worked with the community coalition to get the Rights of Nature initiative on the ballot.
TL: So at any one time in the U.S., about a dozen efforts are underway in rights of nature work. Perhaps the most exciting stuff that I see today in the office are Florida, of all places. Orange County, Florida became the largest municipality in the United States to pass a Rights of Nature law back in November of 2020, initially to protect the Wekiva and Econlockhatchee Rivers with certain rights. That was broadened out to give all waterways, all waters within Orange County certain rights. The ballot initiative passed in November with 89% of the vote.
So folks that work on ballot initiatives know that you’re lucky to get 51% of the vote most times, let alone 89% of the vote—And so Floridians argue and differ on every other issue apparently other than protecting the water there, which is under crisis. And in Orange County you had Trump supporters who had “Vote Yes” on the initiative in their windows, with posters and signs. And so it was an interesting mix of these kind of different political ends to come together for this water protection law.
Host: Another initiative is led by the Sauk-Suiattle Tribe which has sued the city of Seattle on behalf of the rights of salmon against dams impeding their migration up the Skagit River.
The lower courts had previously found that numerous road culverts blocked salmon access to habitat to an extent that violated treaty rights and necessitated the culverts’ removal. The Supreme Court affirmed that decision.
Once again, says Frank Bibeau, treaty rights can be decisive as the law of the land…
FB: They estimated it might cost something like two to three billion dollars to remove all of those culverts and change them so that they’re passable for the fish, which to me is interesting because it costs two to three billion dollars to build the pipeline that we’re fighting, and we haven’t even started on the problems that it’s creating. That’s just building the pipeline. So when you try to figure out these value systems, it’s a little odd.
But the thing that I like about the rights of salmon, and this is just for me simply, the rights of manoomin I think is important because wild rice is in the treaty itself. That’s the supreme law of the land under the Constitution of the United States. And so I think that’s going to help us in that way with our litigation. But if we didn’t have wild rice written into our treaty, you know, we’re people of the river, we’re people of the canoe, the woods, we would be doing fish, and that’s what the salmon is.
And so what I tell people is, you know, a lot of people haven’t even heard of wild rice. And so if I’m trying to describe wild rice as essentially what might look like a grain crop in a field across the water, people can be standing beside it and not know it; people can have it on their plate and not know it. So it’s not really the model in my mind. But the fish is the model, because everybody knows what a fish looks like. Everybody knows what a dead fish looks like, and if you see a thousand dead fish, you know there’s something wrong with the water. You don’t have to have a scientist come up and tell you that. And so that gives you, I think, a big leap in terms of what your barometer is in the environment and what’s going on with the water, because we look at protecting the water where I live, and we believe if we can protect the water, then we’re protecting almost everything else.
And so it’s very interesting how the different cultures look at their relationship with maybe what we might call the most significant part of our culture and what we would want to guard and protect for our future generations as much as for ourselves now.
And I think that’s what’s going to make it work also better for us as tribal members because it is spirituality. It is freedom of religion. You know, they only passed the Indian Religious Freedom Act back in 1978, otherwise we were being prevented from practicing it and doing these things. So we have a lot of things that are helping us right now that’ll help everybody else.
Host: For Frank Bibeau as for many Indigenous Peoples, the natural world is a gift from the Creator, not property to be owned. Yet paradoxically, tribes must use property law to defend their lands while transforming Western systems of law.
Thomas Linzey points out that Rights of Nature laws are evidence that a cultural sea change is roiling society. Despite long odds, he says, Indigenous value systems are starting to displace Western systems of law that are anchored in the Constitutional exaltation of private property and hyper-individualism.
So… if we don’t own nature, and nature owns us, what could that mean for the future of our systems of law?
Thomas Linzey and Samantha Skenandore say we’re living through a radical paradigm shift – a ‘tween time into uncharted legal territory. And of course, nature bats last…
TL: I think what’s starting to happen now is people are thinking beyond rights of nature in some ways, that rights of nature is really a platform to have these other conversations. But what does it look like, for example, when we get rid of private ownership of ecosystems? What does it mean for a forest to own itself, for example? What does it mean to get rid of this concept of a deed
And we don’t pretend to have all the answers, but we have a couple projects going that are going to talk about and create legal instruments and structures for that to happen, because after all private ownership of ecosystems is kind of all made up. You know? The English came over, they chopped up the indigenous land, put it into numbered parcels, and then we all kind of have bought numbered parcels over the years, but it’s all artificial. It’s not according to any bioregions, it’s not according to any ecosystems, it’s just lines drawn that somebody said you can now own this and have dominion over it.
So the question is from perhaps a more radical standpoint is how do we begin to unravel that. And I think rights of nature is a start because you begin to take a couple of those bundles, those sticks out of the bundle of rights when you talk about nature having rights, but in addition when you talk getting rid of private ownership, what does it look for a guardianship model to emerge that actually has legal standing, not just something we talk about. But what happens if a forest—ownership of a forest is able to return to the forest itself? And that’s an exciting new concept, I think, that is being wrapped in to some of the Rights of Nature work that is being done today.
SS: If we’re actually looking for the paradigm shift in the law, the cultural shift, so that those laws in Indian jurisdictions, splattered from East Coast to West Coast, really take off, not just within the United States, but internationally. Right? We need our brothers and sisters north and south of us and east and west of us to also play into this value shift to really make it meaningful.
Because the alternative is the rights of nature will come after you one way or another, right? [LAUGHTER] We can’t sit here and not say there’s a doomsday coming because that’s why you’re all interested. Right? There’s a doomsday coming where we run out of things, or we’ve poisoned things, and where our own well-being is absolutely threatened, because the rights of nature will come for you. And they have.
I mean, we talked about earlier, we’ve talked about flooding, we’ve talked about global warming, global impact. If we don’t shift and have this shift from property to pro-value of nature, rights of nature, it’s going to happen anyway. So whether we get in front of the problem and do it this way, and how we do it strategically is probably, for me, the most important.
And right now, Frank is absolutely right, we have to save property. We have to go with—Tribes have our property. We’re done letting it go to crap. We’re done letting you—permitting activities that there are not resources to permit. And we’re done doing that game. Right? And so there’s a whole strategy behind going from that property concept and that game into the rights of nature game, and that’s really the shift we’re talking about here for Rights of Nature law.
Host: Samantha Skenandore, Thomas Linzey and Frank Bibeau. “Legalizing Nature’s Rights: How Tribal Nations are Leading the Fastest Growing Environmental Movement in History”.
In the 1980s Jo Ann Baumgartner worked on a research project growing vegetables with reclaimed waste water that became the forerunner for the use of treated recycled water to irrigate farms in the California Central Coast and Salinas Valley. The experience was formative for her in two ways: she met her lifelong partner, Sam Earnshaw, and her eyes were opened to the profligate use of toxic chemicals to grow food.
Jo Ann and Sam became part of the cadre of pioneering farmers in the emerging organic movement and helped develop California Certified Organic Farmers and the Ecological Farming Association, and when they moved on from farming, they developed parallel careers conserving and enhancing biodiversity. Sam became the foremost advocate of hedgerows on California farms to provide habitat for wildlife and beneficial insects that prey on pests that feed on crops, while Jo Ann became the Executive Director of the Wild Farm Alliance, which promotes agriculture that protects and restores wild nature.
Rachel Carson’s book, Silent Spring, had a defining influence on Jo Ann’s passion for nature, especially birds. As ED of the Wild Farm Alliance, Baumgartner has been working to show organic farmers how nature can be their ally and how being stewards of biodiversity can actually benefit their farming operations.
Jo Ann Baumgartner was interviewed by Arty Mangan of Bioneers.
Arty Mangan: Aldo Leopold, considered by many to be the father of wildlife ecology, in his seminal work, A Sand County Almanac, wrote: “Only the mountain has lived long enough to listen objectively to the howl of the wolf.” How do you Interpret that quote?
Jo Ann Baumgartner: Wild Farm Alliance helps growers understand how to integrate nature into their farming, but I often think that humans haven’t been around long enough to fully understand nature. I think that quote is talking about how it takes a really long time to understand the nuances of just one organism, much less all its influences on a mountain. It could take the lifetime of a mountain to fully understand it.
Arty: Most farming is a disaster when it comes to how it affects nature around and downstream from the farm. You help educate and work with farmers to create conditions that increase biodiversity in ways that can actually benefit the farm. How do you define biodiversity?
Jo Ann Baumgartner
Jo Ann: I define it as a community of organisms with species and genetic diversity engaged in ecosystem processes. Not everybody includes ecosystem processes, but I think it’s key because functions can’t be separated from species. A community of organisms and their functions are intertwined. For example, as I get to know birds more, I get a better understanding of how they are shaping our world. Wild Farm Alliance has a new project in which we’re helping growers understand how field-edge habitats support insects that are beneficial to farmers. Both insects and birds are in rapid decline, so providing habitat for them is really important. Insects are the feedstock for many bird species. Different species shape our world. If many of the species that are currently threatened or endangered had already become extinct, our world would be profoundly different. Many of these species have a profound effect on how ecosystems function.
Arty: Can you explain a bit more about why biodiversity is important to agriculture?
Jo Ann: Having a diversity of species of bees, insects and even some birds is a huge boon to pollination. In tropical situations even some mammals have a role in pollination. Biodiversity also helps with pest control. As I mentioned, our work has shown that birds provide pest control and that field-edge habitats attract beneficial predator insects and arthropods. Coyotes help control rodent populations. Some birds also prey on rodents. Those predators are an asset to agriculture. And biodiversity in the vegetation on or around a farm helps prevent erosion; it holds the soil in place. On California farms, fields are often bare, causing valuable topsoil to wash away during rainstorms.
But more farmers are starting to put cover crops on their fields, which helps hold soil in place and enrich it. Biodiverse vegetation on farms also filters out fertilizers from runoff before they pollute waterways, and plants store carbon. Those are just a few examples of why biodiversity is so important in agriculture.
Arty: You mentioned the decline of insects. Why should we worry about having fewer insects?
Jo Ann: Many species of birds feed on insects, and insects are part of the diet of many reptiles and amphibians such as snakes, lizards and salamanders. Insects even constitute a significant portion of the diet of foxes and bears. And, sadly, we are losing so much of the beauty in the world as butterflies disappear. I spoke to an amazing native plant and butterfly scholar, and he said that when he was younger, in the sixties and seventies, he saw all kinds of butterflies that he now very rarely if ever sees. We are losing part of what makes our world so wonderful to live in.
Photo By Joe Kritz
Wild Farm Alliance put up about 250 nest-boxes on farms in the Monterey Bay area. One of those nest boxes had a chickadee in it whose beak was packed full of insects as it was feeding seven little chicks. That chickadee feeds those kids 150 times a day for a couple of weeks. They need to eat a huge number of insects in order to survive. To keep birds alive, we need native plants around farms to provide habitat for insects.
A study on the East Coast that looked at the relationship between birds, caterpillars and native plants found that Carolina Chickadees need a landscape of at least two thirds native plants in order to have a successful brood. Diverse native plants support insects that support birds, and those birds often help farmers by eating Codling Moths and other pest insects that live in fruit and nut trees and damage crops. Native plants are part of our wild farm story. We encourage farmers to put in native plant hedgerows and to conserve their native plant riparian areas and wind breaks.
Arty: Is it hard to convince farmers that birds can be a benefit to them when they see birds eat their seeds or crops?
Jo Ann: Yes, for many years when we spoke to farmers about birds, they only saw them as pests, but since we published the booklet, Supporting Birds and Managing Pest Birds, I don’t hear that as much. And when I do, I try to help the farmer understand that not all birds and not all insects are bad. I ask them which birds they’re having problems with, because often it’s just one species that’s transient, only there for a little while before heading somewhere else. If we want an agricultural system that does not use a lot of toxic materials to grow food, then we need to rely more on nature and birds and beneficial insects to help with pest control.
Chestnut-backed chickadee. Photo by Doug Greenberg
There is solid evidence that many bird species help reduce crop damage and/or increase yields, so why not support the birds if they’re going to help you economically? But for me, it’s more than just about economics, as important as that is. We need, as Leopold wrote back in the 1930s, an ecological conscience. We can’t just assume that everything that’s good for us is good for all the other organisms on the planet. We have to consider the needs of other species as well.
Arty: Dan Imhoff, one of the co-founders of Wild Farm Alliance, has said that the more monocultural and intensive a system is, the more nature seems to be the enemy. How has mainstream agriculture been antagonistic to wild ecosystems?
Jo Ann: Industrial agriculture uses really toxic pesticides. We know that one seed treated with a neonicotinoid pesticide can kill a bird, and birds dig up seeds, right? And we know that those “neonics” also translocate, so those toxins get into flower pollen and can kill bees or affect their nervous systems, and birds have been disoriented and killed by neonics and organophosphates getting into water. Farmers also use a lot of herbicides, so there are no viable habitats on the edges of farms anymore. There are fewer places for birds and other animals to coexist. Things would improve even if farmers just left some weeds, because quite a few weeds have flowers that support pollinators and beneficial insects and provide bird food.
Pollution that runs off of farms ends up in waterways and harms aquatic species. Many of our rivers are now just small ribbons of polluted water with hardly any habitat. Natural riparian areas should be the corridors for wildlife, especially as the planet warms and animals need to move more, but, in most places, there just aren’t enough flowers or shrubs or sufficient connectivity for wildlife to survive.
Why is there a biodiversity crisis? To a large extent, the answer is that our methods of food production destroy it. The industrial food system doesn’t value biodiversity. It’s hard to change the industrial agricultural way of thinking, but we know there’s a better way. Organic and regenerative farmers can grow food in ways that are less harmful and can even be beneficial to nature.
Hedgerow of deergrass, ceanothus, toyon, coyote brush, manzanita, and sugar bush. Photo by Sam Earnshaw
Arty: Organic farmers are theoretically required to conserve biodiversity and maintain or improve natural resources, including soil, water, wetlands, woodlands and wildlife. How would you assess the enforcement of and the compliance with that requirement?
Jo Ann: That’s tricky to answer because we believe strongly in organic, and we want to support the organic community as best we can, but the fact is that some organic farmers support biodiversity more than others. Several years ago, the Wild Farm Alliance surveyed the majority of organic certifiers in the country and found that there were some certifiers that did nothing in regards to evaluating farms for biodiversity while others did a great job. The organic community is starting to understand that this is part of the regulation and needs to be addressed, but more work has to be done.
The reality is that some organic certifiers’ applications only have one question about how biodiversity is encouraged on the farm, and there’s no real evaluation of it in the certification process. Other certifiers we’ve worked with have expanded their inspection reports to be more comprehensive about evaluating biodiversity. It’s an educational process because some growers are clueless about biodiversity. Certification inspectors can’t tell growers what to do, but, if they’re knowledgeable, they can initiate conversations about biodiversity. They can talk about what they have seen on other farms.
Arty: When you talk to farmers, what are some of the main principles and practices that you are encouraging them to adopt?
Jo Ann: There are four things: 1. Keep the soil covered with plants. 2. Add native flowering plants. 3. Add structure, not just grasses and forbs, but shrubs and trees. 4. Make it your intention to support the wildlife in our world as much as you can.
Wild Farm Alliance has three major campaigns: Farmland Flyways, Farmland Wildways and Farmland Waterways. We want to see a million nest-boxes and perches put up on farms in the U.S., and we want to see hedgerows to the moon and back, which is equivalent to the 500,000 miles of hedgerows that were once in the UK (sadly, they’ve lost half of them). And Farmland Waterways is about restoring and conserving 100,000 miles of riparian habitat, which is 10% of the river frontage on farms.
Food plays an essential role in preserving cultural identity and promoting health and wellness. In Black communities, food is a celebration of the rich cultural heritage and culinary traditions of the African diaspora. To commemorate Black History Month, we are paying homage to the Black chefs, farmers, and food activists who have made significant contributions to the food industry and continue to shape the way we eat today. Join us in honoring their legacy and learning more about the delicious dishes and sustainable practices that make Black Food a true celebration of diversity and resilience.
This week, we share presentations, podcasts, interviews, and recipes from food activists, community garden visionaries, and leaders in the Bioneers community.
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VIDEO: 911 Our Food System Is Not Working
Many of us have reached a point in our work at which we realize the food system is not working. Leaders keep relying on Band-Aid solutions, autocratic jargon and political hypocrisy to tackle the problems of hunger and poverty. Yet our society’s way of feeding and treating people just isn’t sustainable, especially when the United Nations predicts that by 2050 we will have an additional 2 billion people on this planet, most ending up in urban areas.
Karen Washington, one of the most renowned and influential food activists of our era, shares her wisdom and analysis of why the food system doesn’t need to be fixed but has to be dramatically transformed.
VIDEO: Seeding Food Sovereignty: Black and Indigenous Farming Leaders Share Their Strategies
A food sovereignty movement is sprouting on the trail of colonialism and white supremacy, which have unknowingly planted the seeds of their own unmaking. This multigenerational movement is being led by colonized people uprooting global systems of privatized land ownership and environmental degradation. In confronting this system of exploitation, we can transform the underlying relationship of extraction to one rooted in kinship and reciprocity.
In this panel conversation, BIPOC leaders share food sovereignty strategies rooted in cultural knowledge, as well as the rematriation of land and dignity to colonized people who overwhelmingly represent the number of exploited laborers working on stolen land.
Bioneers 2023 Conference Speaker Highlight: Bryant Terry
Bryant Terry, an award-winning chef, educator and author renowned for his activism to create a healthy, just, and sustainable food system is Editor-in-Chief of 4 Color Books (an imprint of Penguin Random House and Ten Speed Press), Co-Principal and Innovation Director of the Zenmi creative studio, and Chef-in-Residence at the Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD) in San Francisco. Register for the Bioneers 2023 Conference to hear Bryant’s presentation this April.
PODCAST: Liberation, Food Justice, and Stewardship
“Our liberation is embracing our cultural foods. I think that’s a very important part spiritually, physically and otherwise.” The influences of Africans and Black Americans on food and agriculture is rooted in ancestral African knowledge and traditions of shared labor, worker co-ops and botanical polycultures.
In this podcast episode, we hear from Karen Washington and Bryant Terry on how Black Food culture is weaving the threads of a rich African agricultural heritage with the liberation of economics from an extractive corporate food oligarchy. The results can be health, conviviality, community wealth, and the power of self-determination.
ARTICLE: Urban Farming and the Wonders of Nature In a Food Desert
“Our farm is a sanctuary for life. It’s also a place where people can step out of the pressures of an everyday city life and be able to step into a new world.”
Chanowk and Judith Yisrael are farmers in the suburban South Oak Park neighborhood of Sacramento, which has been designated as a food desert. On their half-acre property, they grow 40 fruit trees and raise bees and chickens in what they refer to as a “home grown revolution.”
All life depends on food. It is that commonality that connects diverse species and is the basis for a relationship with our environment. From the microorganisms in the soil food web such as the mycorrhizal fungi that exchange nutrients with plant roots to the woke gourmand at Chez Panisse ordering roasted, pasture chicken and local organic greens, all species depend on the cooperative interactions of the web of life to eat.
Dive into the Food Web with Bioneers and learn more about how a transformed food system can be a source of community wealth, creative culture, and individual health, as well as a way to fulfill our sacred calling as humans for environmental stewardship.
Now in its 34th year, the Bioneers Conference, viewed by many as the leading independent environmental and social-justice themed annual gathering in the U.S., will be held in Berkeley, California, on April 6-8, 2023. Featuring hundreds of inspiring and visionary leaders, Bioneers 2023 will bring thousands of engaged and civically active attendees to Zellerbach Hall on the UC Berkeley Campus and to venues across downtown Berkeley for three days of riveting talks, movement building, and connections.
The theme for 2023 is “Transformation, Regeneration, Celebration,” and speakers include writer Rebecca Solnit; Chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus Rep. Pramila Jayapal; energy policy leader Dr. Leah Stokes; writer and teacher Joanna Macy; Indigenous Policy and Climate Justice expert Jade Begay; activist chef, writer and educator Bryant Terry; National Geographic Explorer and whale behavior expert Dr. Shane Gero, journalist Laura Flanders; science fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson; Othering and Belonging Institute Founder john a. powell; clean energy entrepreneur Danny Kennedy; chef and food activist Alice Waters; labor organizer Saru Jayaraman; and Indigenous scholar Dr. Yuria Celidwen, alongside hundreds of afternoon panelists and speakers.
According to Bioneers CEO & Co-Founder Kenny Ausubel, “The big wheels of massive change are turning. Climate disruption bears down daily, and there’s a widely felt morning-after awakening that it’s going to crash the economy and bring civilization to its knees. Although the shift to renewables is now an accelerating inevitability, it’s going to take relentless political action. Meanwhile, movements of the past decade for liberation, justice and multicultural democracy are swelling to challenge right-wing populist and neo-fascist forces underwritten by cynical plutocratic elites. Especially in these darkest of times, we come together to celebrate. We invite you to join forces with the Bioneers community of leadership in this time when we’re all called upon to be leaders.”
“Berkeley is a city of innovation and at the vanguard of new ideas, especially when it comes to the environment,” says Mayor Jesse Arreguín, “I am honored to have Berkeley be the host city for this important conference during a critical time for addressing climate change, and look forward to the exchange of ideas from trailblazing leaders across the country.” For the past three decades, Indigenous knowledge, participants, and partners have fundamentally shaped and guided Bioneers. The annual Indigenous Forum is a Native-led sovereign conference-within-a-conference — a unique cross-cultural and invitational platform. Regularly attracting representatives from dozens of tribal nations, it remains the only gathering of its kind, bringing together Indigenous activists, scientists, elders, youth, culture-bearers, and scholars to share their knowledge and frontline solutions in dialogue with a dynamic, multicultural audience.
Organizers also invest in the potential of youth and educators, with a bustling youth scholarship program bringing upwards of 500 youth and mentors to experience the Bioneers Conference annually.
Described by Bill McKibben as “a crucial organizing principle,” the Bioneers Conference has long served as an annual focal point for the progressive community. The gathering strives to feature well known figures as well as emergent leaders who are engaged in exemplary work in their communities. It’s not just the speakers who make a difference. Bioneers attendees are sophisticated and active leaders in their own right, leveraging inspiration and connections built at the event to return to their communities and fields with new energy and momentum for change.
With the move to the East Bay, Bioneers is excited to be located in such a thriving, progressive, and accessible new home. (The entire event will be within easy walking distance of the Downtown Berkeley BART Station.) For those interested in learning more about cutting-edge work taking place in the region, Bioneers is offering two pre-conference tours on April 5, one focused on urban farming and food production and one exploring the vibrant cultural history and ever-developing landscape of the East Bay as a hub of social justice activism.
Featuring engaged arts, musical performances, and ample opportunities for connection, Bioneers 2023 will bring hope, inspiration, and movement building to the East Bay. Registration is open now, with discounted rates available for youth, educators, activists, and seniors. More at: conference.bioneers.org. Contact press@bioneers.org for specific inquiries.
–– About Bioneers: Bioneers is an innovative nonprofit organization that highlights breakthrough solutions for restoring people and planet. Founded in 1990 in Santa Fe, New Mexico, we act as a fertile hub of social and scientific innovators with practical and visionary solutions for the world’s most pressing environmental and social challenges. Bioneers is inspiring and realizing a shift to live on Earth in ways that honor the web of life, each other and future generations.
Indigenous Peoples in the north have been feeling the disastrous effects of climate change for far longer than the rest of the planet’s population. According to NASA record sets, the Arctic is warming up to four times faster than the rest of the planet, disturbing terrestrial and marine ecosystems, destroying villages, and disrupting healthy ways of life.
Innovative solutions to the climate crisis born from the ingenuity rooted in Native knowledge systems are emerging from the circumpolar north. In this conversation, leaders at the Native Conservancy, Indigenous Climate Action, and Native Movement share their strategies for addressing climate change in the policy, civil society, and economic sectors.
Featuring: Dune Lankard (Eyak), Native Conservancy; Eriel Deranger (Athabaska Chippeweyan First Nation), Indigenous Climate Action; Ruth Miller (Dena’ina Athabaskan/Russian Ashkenazi Jewish), Native Movement. Moderated by Alexis Bunten (Aleut/Yup’ik), Co-Director of the Bioneers Indigeneity Program.
The following is an edited transcript from a live panel discussion.
Alexis Bunten
ALEXISBUNTEN (BIONEERS): When I was a very young kid, my grandfather pointed out that the Earth was getting hotter. Some scientists in very small circles were talking about it, but lots of Natives were talking about it. Even non-Natives who lived in the North were observing changes in the glaciers over a 60-year time span. People who lived up there knew it.
As people who’ve grown up in the North, what have you observed in terms of climate change?
DUNE LANKARD (NATIVE CONSERVANCY): When I was 5 years old, the Good Friday 1964 earthquake happened in Prince William Sound in our backyard, and that turned our fisheries and our way of life upside down. Before that, we were the razor clam capital of the world. It was like climate change happened to us overnight.
Dune Lankard
Then on the 26th anniversary of the ’64 quake, we had the Good Friday 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill. Again, our ecosystem took a major hit, our fisheries were disrupted, and everything was turned upside down again.
Then 25 years later, we have climate change, we have ocean acidification, we have ocean warming and ocean rise. About five years ago, we only had 44,000 sockeye salmon return home to the Copper River Delta. The following year, only 85,000 sockeyes found their way home. The next year, the ocean heated up to 76 degrees for over three weeks down to 20 feet below the surface, 40 feet at low water. Millions of krill, wild mussels, wild kelp forests, salmon, and birds died.
Sockey Salmon in the Copper River.
The ecosystem is changing before our very eyes. Because Alaska is colder than most places, it’s melting faster than most places. The permafrost, the sea ice, the glaciers are melting at unprecedented rates. Even two-and-a-half years ago, you could walk right off the shoreline onto Sheridan Glacier, which is right near Cordova, and walk for miles. Now it’s a mile away.
Ruth Miller
RUTH MILLER (NATIVE MOVEMENT): It’s really difficult to answer a question about when I first got started in climate advocacy, because for an indigenous person, I would say I got started 30,000 years ago, when my ancestors began their deep relationship with our lands. Our traditional subsistence practices were first developed to honor and respect and live in reciprocity with the lands. That was the beginning of our environmental advocacy, when we first learned 30,000 years ago that our survival was interdependent with the survival and the well-being of our non-human relatives.
In this lifetime, I think that my advocacy was first initiated when I was about 14 or 15. My very first job was working for United Tribes of Bristol Bay against the proposed Pebble Mine, which would have been one of the largest copper and gold mines in the country: an open-pit mine that would have devastated one of the last great salmon fisheries in the world.
We were meant to be supporting fishermen to testify to the EPA proceedings about why we didn’t want the mine. But as I sat there starting to talk with people about what their stories might say, how they might articulate why they didn’t want the mine, I got nowhere. And at 14 years old, I was frustrated. I was like, “What do you mean you don’t know what to say? Doesn’t this sound scary enough?” But I realized, very early on, that I was asking for the wrong story. Instead of asking, “Why are you against the proposed Pebble Mine?” I began asking, “What do our salmon mean to you?” Suddenly the stories began to flow like the fish through our streams.
Mist settles on Cook Inlet, not far from Illiamna, Alaska, and the proposed Pebble Project seeking to mine gold, silver, and molybdenum.
Coming back to Anchorage, I slowly came to an understanding that the environmental justice issues we’re fighting aren’t far out in these rural places. Just last summer, almost 10 years since that first experience in Bristol Bay, I learned that the creek that runs right near my house carries a Dena’ina name that means King Salmon Creek. In this tiny little stream that I blindly walked past almost every day of my life, king salmon used to run. In fact, we have stories of our biggest city, our gathering place, being home to thousands upon thousands of traditional fish camps lining the shores. Now we have the Port of Anchorage. We have 50,000 people, settlers mostly, guests on our homelands that have polluted our lands beyond recognition. There are no king salmon that flow in that river anymore.
So when I think about climate change, it’s not just a matter of the thawing permafrost, and the melting sea ice, and the threat to our infrastructure, and the increasing threat from shipping and militarization throughout the Arctic. It’s an intertwining dialogue that has to address both the roots of our people and our lifeways, the ways that our livelihoods continue to reflect our subsistence and cultural need for interdependency with the other species that will also be impacted by climate change. It is also a question of where we want to go from here as we face this existential threat that we are feeling in Alaska and in the north more than any other place in the world. What kind of future will we choose? What kind of Anchorage will we choose? What kind of pathway will leave us any future at all?
We are living this reality now. But we also have 30,000 years of experience of what right relationship can look like.
Anchorage skyline on a winter evening.
Eriel Deranger
ERIELDERANGER (INDIGENOUS CLIMATE ACTION): My people come from the Peace Athabaska Delta, which is in the Subarctic and the Arctic. It straddles both, and it is a really precarious place to be when we talk about Arctic impacts and northern impacts, because there’s this imaginary line. Are we Arctic, are we not Arctic? Do we get Arctic subsidies and supports like folks from the Arctic or do we not? We experience the same level of impacts that folks 80 kilometers north of us do, and some of those impacts are food.
Food is the first place where we see deep impacts to our culture due to climate change. We’re river people. We relied on fish and caribou and muskrats and birds and waterfowl. These keystone species weren’t just about food for us, but also clothing. The biggest change that our people have seen is in the cultural ceremony of harvesting these species. It was about bringing the community together. For a lot of elders, when they talk about climate change, they talk about the loss of community.
For us, climate change started with colonization. That’s when the climate changed for us, not just politically and culturally, but there were massive changes to the lands from ripping out those resources and treating them as something to be dominated and taken, and replacing them with consumerism and capitalism and hyper-individuality, and disconnecting us from those places. That led to this disconnected relationship with those keystone species. That led to this destabilization of our environments.
With the imposition of colonial extractivism and the largest industrial project on planet Earth, the Alberta tar sands, which lies about 200 kilometers south of my community, we saw massive changes to the river system, from the dewatering of that river system to support the extraction of the Alberta tar sands to the contamination of those very same rivers. These are the rivers that fed into our community. These rivers not only fed the muskrat and the caribou and the bison and the waterfowl, but they fed our community. And as that river got lower, it got hotter, it got contaminated, and the muskrat stopped going into our river systems.
Caribou used to migrate in the hundreds of thousands through my territory. We are down to less than 20,000 caribou that migrate through our territory today.
It’s not just climate change. Climate change is exacerbating the impacts that we’re feeling from extractivism, from the imposition of capitalistic values that have put a dollar amount on our species, that put a dollar amount on how we live.
The tar sands oil refinery, Alberta, Canada.
ALEXIS: All of you are working with organizations and constellations of networks and incredible people to address climate change. What are some of the initiatives and projects that you’re working on?
ERIEL: I think first and foremost is bringing visibility to the fact that Indigenous Peoples at large globally are experiencing the impacts of climate change first and most intensely, and that’s because of the intimate relationships that we have with the land. Our community is already experiencing in some places more than two degrees in changes in temperatures.
But beyond that, our knowledge is so critical to building solutions that aren’t just going to help our communities combat the crisis by building regional solutions, but that can be replicated at large to support regional solutions that are aligned with relationships with the lands and territories. Indigenous Climate Action is an organization based out of so-called Canada, and we’re really looking to skill up, empower, inspire, and inform indigenous leaders in our country to recognize that they have the knowledge and the power and the moral and legal frameworks to lead climate solutions – not just in Canada, but the world over.
We have legal rights, as dictated under the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, that allow us to self-govern, to decide how our lands and territories are managed, to give free prior and informed consent to projects that happen on our land, and to form our own systems of governance and education, and we need to start flexing those rights. We need to start advocating for them, and we need to understand the importance that they hold in advancing solutions.
We do that through amplifying the beautiful solutions that we’re already seeing, whether that’s the cultural revitalization in our communities through language, artisan work, or indigenized economies.
At Indigenous Climate Action, we are doing indigenous climate leadership training; we are building an indigenous just transition guide; we are working on having indigenous-led divestment movements; and we are also working toward looking at the suite of climate policies and what it means to decolonize them.
This is the work that we see as critical, not just to ensure that folks in the Arctic can continue to thrive for this generation and the seven generations beyond us, but so all Indigenous Peoples can be recognized in the communities and for the values that our knowledge holds in driving solutions for tomorrow.
RUTH: In Native Movement, yes, we’re a nonprofit, but we work in a variety of ways to undermine the kinds of systemic rules that have been fed us. We have a variety of programs in addition to the climate justice work that I support. We have an environmental justice program that works at community invitation to intervene toward environmental justice and against extractive development across our state. But we also have a gender justice and healing department, where we work towards LGBTQ and two-spirit rights, where we work against police brutality, where we work toward the protection of our indigenous women and girls and two-spirit peoples, because we know that all of these issues are intertwining. They all create the fabric of what a healthy indigenous society can look like.
We also fiscally sponsor several community initiatives so that community members can bring their localized, home-grown solutions to us and be incubated to get strategic support, campaign support, and fiscal support to then grow and take on a life of their own.
One of our primary tactics is truth-telling. We do a lot of training and capacity building, working with our own community members to talk about the harms and the hurts that we’ve been through; what have we gone through to arrive at this moment of intertwining crises? Then we work to heal, because we deserve to be whole, we deserve to be healed and healthy as we advocate for our own dignity and our own human rights. When we build capacity, we are also elevating our local leaders into positions of power and supporting them to be able to articulate their expertise so that we are ever-growing, constantly replaceable, and our movement is sustainable.
We do a ton of trainings, one of which is a decolonization training. (As if that can be achieved in a training, right?) But it is a very intensive, long training that we offer that tells the truth about the history of Alaska and the history of the US. Through these trainings, we’re doing that healing work, we’re doing that truth-telling work, and we’re also creating space for imagination and creativity to show us a path forward that is visionary and brighter than what we have been given.
We also work on a lot of policy, but it’s not just bringing policy to our communities. It is a two-way reciprocal relationship of translating complex English policy on climate into language that we recognize and that resonates with us. Then we apply our values-based framework to see if that policy reflects us.
We also engage with a lot of storytelling and narrative work. When most people think of the climate crisis, they still see a polar bear stranded on an ice flow. Our story of climate crisis is emotional. It describes deep interdependency that goes back 30,000 years. Our climate crisis is my moment of heartbreak when I realize that the knowledge I was guided in by an elder about the time to harvest fiddleheads is wrong for the first time. That elder is wrong because the seasons have changed so drastically. By empowering greater narrative sovereignty from our community members, we are able to shift what the climate crisis looks like and what the story of climate solutions looks like.
DUNE: My mother decided that when I was 10, I was “the one.” I said, “The one what?” And she said, “You’re the one who’s going to save our salmon and our people and our language and our way of life.” And I said, “I’m 10, Mama, what about Debbie, Linda, Don, Pam, Bruce and Joe?” And she said, “No, you’re more stubborn and you have more will power, and I know that you will never sell us out.” And I said, “So you’ve cursed me.” And she said, “I’ve gifted you.”
She and grandma started teaching me about the seasons of animals and berries. I remember we were out blueberry picking one time, and grandma said, “The pink salmon run is coming to a close.” We weren’t anywhere near a stream, so I said, “Grandma, did that just come out of the blue?” She said, “No, the fireweed is almost flowering at the top. When it’s close to the top, the run is over.” I was like, “Oh my god, from this flower you can tell that the run is dwindling?”
Then I grew up with hatchery fish, “computer fish.” They’re remote release, so they have nothing to do with those flowers. They have nothing to do with reality. So whenever I see those fireweeds now, I know that things are not the same because I can’t tell time by the flowers anymore.
Thousands of salmon spawning in August in the Solomon Gulch Fish Hatchery near Valdez in Southeastern Alaska
We need to change our relationship with our traditional food sources and at the same time practice our subsistence way of life. In Alaska, 90% of the people who live in rural communities still practice a subsistence lifestyle. They’re still connected to the land and the sea and those seasons of animals. But already we can see huge changes happening.
But here’s the thing: It’s not just a matter of climate change; it’s a matter of law and policy and the extermination of our resources and our way of life. And I’m not in the mood for this anymore. We’ve put up with this nonsense for way too long.
We have to fight back. And how that happens isn’t by luck because we want it to, it happens because we file lawsuits, we block roads, we jump off of buildings with banners, we get CDQs for mariculture for the service of the ocean for Indigenous Peoples around the world. The people who are getting permitted are Indigenous Peoples on their ancestral land, in front of their ancestral waters, where they’ve lived for thousands and thousands of years. We’re the original stewards, the original guardians, so we should be leading the way, not following somebody else who doesn’t have a plan.
This is an opportunity to change the way that not only we live on the ocean but to change our relationship with our food source. We scale up by scaling down. We build local processing facilities, so we can process our own foods. We take care of our own people. We figure out how to sell our excess. We put ourselves in a position so we’re able to lead this industry by example. Because the fishermen are going to get their share, industry is going to get their share, the bigs, as we call them – the processors, the canneries, the hatcheries, the big seafood corporations – everybody’s going to get their share. But I’ll tell you what, if Indigenous Peoples don’t organize and don’t figure out how to overcome these barriers to entry, then they’re not going to be a part of this “emerging industry” that happens to be thousands of years old.
Our Native Conservancy is addressing the dozen or so barriers to entry. We’re starting an indigenous ocean farmer’s loan and grant fund. We’re starting the Native Kelp Cooperative. We’re starting the Native Kelp Alliance. We’re starting to build our own boats. We just bought our own boat company and we’re about ready to buy another. We’re going to try to figure out how to drive this economy that is about sustainability and being regenerative. We can do it ourselves by leading the way.
I feel like we’re at one of those pivotal times in history. With these modern-day land claims, if the Indigenous Peoples organize and lead, they’re going to be able to feed their people, they’re going to be able to be a part of a regenerative economy that’s actually good for the ocean.
Our goal is to put our Indigenous Peoples in a position to take things back into their own control. To be able to live in their villages and know that they’re a part of something greater than just themselves.
ERIEL: This is why listening to the people from the North is so important, because Northern people, we don’t take food for granted. We’re so far north we don’t have the luxury of just picking and choosing at the grocery store. Our people are connected to where our foods come from. It’s part of our identities. My people are called caribou people because of the vast caribou that existed there. We know what it means to build sustainable food systems, and we know that it requires stable ecosystems.
It’s critical to listen to those who have those connections and understandings and relationships about what we can do to pave a better future. It’s all dependent on ecosystem health.
The delicate relationships that allow the natural world’s relatives — from microbes to mountain lions — to thrive are a reminder of our reliance upon one another. While Earth’s inhabitants literally can’t live without each other, recent reports have shown that global wildlife populations have declined by 69% since 1970. That loss of biodiversity not only affects the animals and plants that call these ecosystems home, but also the millions of people who rely on them for their livelihoods, food, and medicine.
As Justin Winters writes in an article below, “The only way to thrive is together.”
It is our responsibility to take action and protect these vital ecosystems by supporting conservation efforts, reducing pollution and habitat destruction, and implementing sustainable land-use practices. By conserving biodiversity, we ensure the survival of countless species and the continuation of vital ecosystem services that support life on Earth.
This week, we share interviews, articles, and news covering efforts to conserve and improve the biodiversity of our planet.
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“We Can’t Give Up Anything”: 3 Experts on Protecting Biodiversity
“It’s not just about protecting or conserving. It’s also about governing these territories from a life-centric view. It’s a community-collective vision articulated through many, many participatory activities that help define the future vision for the territory.” -Atossa Soltani
In 2020, the United Nations published an alarming report, stating that in the last two decades — despite all of the global conferences and initiatives that took place to set agreements to stop the destruction of the natural world and to protect biodiversity — not a single goal was met. In these interviews, activists and scientists Atossa Soltani, Rod Fujita, and Carly Vynne describe promising methods for protecting wildlife and wildlands across the world.
From Childhood Fascination to Frog Conservation: An Interview with Robin Moore
“At school, when you’re really into this kind of thing, you’re sort of a weirdo. What I realized later in life is that the weirdos who hold onto that fascination are the most interesting.”
Robin Moore, the Vice President of Communications and Marketing for Re:wild, turned his childhood fascination with frogs into a career in conservation. In this conversation with Bioneers’ Teo Grossman, he talks about growing up in Edinburgh and spending his summers in the Highlands, where he had a passionate connection with the frogs and other wildlife in his backyard. He went on to study zoology and ecology, eventually earning a Ph.D. and studying a species of frog in Majorca, Spain. After realizing the extent of the threat facing amphibians, he became more involved in frog conservation efforts and spearheaded a project called The Search for Lost Frogs at Conservation International.
Protecting Cultural and Biological Diversity Is Central to Solving Climate Change
“Representation is key. The solution to tackle the climate crisis is, at its core, intersectional. By protecting cultural diversity, we protect biodiversity. The only way to thrive is together.”
The Amazon rainforest is home to over 16,000 different tree species and 40,000 plant species, making it one of the most biologically diverse locations in the world. Without the Amazon, our global climate system would collapse, and it is now more important than ever to respect and support the diverse cultures that have helped to preserve these priceless ecosystems that have enabled humanity to evolve.
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. Register for the Bioneers 2023 Conference to hear Casey’s presentation this April.
Amazon Rainforest Defender Marina Silva Named Brazil’s New Environment Minister
“Brazil will return to the protagonist role it previously had when it comes to climate, to biodiversity.”
Brazil’s President-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva announced that Amazon activist (and former Bioneers speaker) Marina Silva will be the country’s next minister of environment. This announcement indicates the new administration will prioritize cracking down on illegal deforestation in the Amazon, even if it means conflicting with powerful agribusiness interests.
A resplendent rainbow fish, a frog that looks like chocolate, a Thai tarantula, an anemone that rides on the back of a hermit crab, and the world’s largest water lily are among the new species named by science in 2022. In this well-trodden world, finding a new species is a glimpse of the uncharted riches of biodiversity still hidden around the globe.
