Jasmine Smith – Living Our Ancestors’ Wildest Dreams, While Being the Voice of the Voiceless

Born of resistance, resilience, and ancestral strength, Indigenous women are rising, reclaiming leadership, re-aligning with nature, and challenging the imposed dysfunctions of colonial patriarchy. Jasmine Smith, 16, a citizen of the Eastern Band of Cherokee and founder and Chair of NAIWA Daughters, has lived this movement since birth, appearing before tribal and state legislatures all the way to the UN, embodying her refusal of the exclusion of Indigenous youth voices in the struggle for our collective future. She issues a bold call to restore Indigenous youth to their rightful place as valued leaders, knowledge-holders, and essential advocates for the living world.

This Young Leaders talk was delivered at the 2026 Bioneers Conference.

Jasmine Smith, 16, a citizen of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, is an internationally recognized Indigenous youth leader, poet, and Founder and Chair of NAIWA Daughters, a youth-led nonprofit advancing Indigenous young women’s leadership, advocacy, and civic power. Jasmine has delivered keynote addresses at the Model United Nations Conference, working with Italian ambassadors, spoken before the Tennessee State Senate, working with Knox County representatives, and introduced the nation’s first all-female, second youth-led Rights of Nature resolution. A two-time Tennessee Civic Essay Award winner, she is a guest lecturer at the University of Tennessee, United World College in Costa Rica, and other academic institutions. Through her work, Jasmine bridges Indigenous knowledge, youth leadership, and environmental justice.

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Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians Pass Historic Youth-Led Rights of Nature Resolution

An Eastern Band of Cherokee Tribal Council resolution affirms the rights of the stream system in the Great Smoky Mountains. Young Cherokee women representing the NAIWA Daughters testified before the Council about the challenges of witnessing the simultaneous erosion of culture and the decimation of the natural world, and urged the Council to trust the youth, who understand what is at stake.

The Restorative Revolution: How Indigenous Leadership and Allyship Catalyzed the Biggest River Restoration in US History

In this podcast episode, Yurok fisherman and tribal leader Sammy Gensaw and environmental scientist-turned-activist Craig Tucker share the epic story of how Indigenous leadership and non-Indian allyship made the impossible inevitable: the biggest-ever dam removal and salmon restoration in history.

Ferris Jabr – Becoming Earth: How Our Planet Came to Life

Introduction by Suzanne Simard, the Project Lead for The Mother Tree Project and Program.

Western science has long resisted and even ridiculed the idea that our planet is alive, but many scientists now recognize that Earth and life continually coevolve and that, together, they form a single, interconnected, living system. Ferris Jabr, NYT bestselling author and one of our most celebrated scientific writers, explains how, over billions of years, microbes, plants, fungi, and animals radically altered the continents, oceans, and atmosphere, transforming what was once a lump of orbiting rock into our cosmic oasis. Life breathed oxygen into the atmosphere, dyed the sky blue, made fire possible, converted barren crust into fertile soil, and perhaps even helped construct the continents. Over time, life became critical to the planet’s capacity to regulate its climate and maintain balance. Life is Earth and Earth is life.

This talk was delivered at the 2026 Bioneers Conference.

Ferris Jabr, a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine, is the author of the bestselling Becoming Earth, which reviewers have described as an “infectiously poetic” “masterwork” that “earns its place alongside the best of today’s essential popular science books.” Ferris has also written for The New Yorker, The Atlantic, National Geographic, and Scientific American and has received fellowships and grants from Yale, MIT, UC Berkeley, the Pulitzer Center, and the Whiting Foundation. His work has been anthologized in four editions of The Best American Science and Nature Writing series.

Learn more at ferrisjabr.com

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Nature’s Genius

A Bioneers podcast series exploring how the symphony of life holds the solutions we need to balance human civilization with living systems. We can learn from the time-tested principles, processes, and dynamics that have allowed living systems to flourish during 3.8 billion years of evolution. 

Coley Kakols Miller – Undam the Klamath: The Fight Isn’t Over Yet

After the largest dam removal project in U.S. history in which four out of six dams were removed from the Klamath River, an intertribal cohort of Indigenous youth became the first people in over a century to descend a 310-mile stretch of the river. In this talk, Coley shares her personal story of participating in that journey as one of the paddlers from the Klamath Tribes, while also raising the alarm about the imminent environmental issues facing her community, animal relatives, and sacred waters.

This Young Leaders talk was delivered at the 2026 Bioneers Conference.

Coley Kakols Miller, a citizen of the Klamath Tribes, is a Modoc and Klamath youth born and raised at the headwaters of the Klamath River watershed. A high school freshman living on her tribal territory in Southern Oregon and Northern California, Coley was among more than 30 young people who participated in the historic first descent of the Klamath River after the largest dam removal in history. She remains a passionate advocate for removing the last two dams on the Klamath River, working to ensure the Klamath Tribes’ treaty-protected resources are restored to provide for future generations.

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The Restorative Revolution: How Indigenous Leadership and Allyship Catalyzed the Biggest River Restoration in US History

In this podcast episode, Yurok fisherman and tribal leader Sammy Gensaw and environmental scientist-turned-activist Craig Tucker share the epic story of how Indigenous leadership and non-Indian allyship made the impossible inevitable: the biggest-ever dam removal and salmon restoration in history.

Amy Bowers Cordalis – The Water Remembers: Year Zero

Amy Bowers Cordalis highlights the Indigenous values and lessons from the Klamath dam removals, showcasing nature-based solutions that heal the land, waters, and people while benefiting the economy.

Cory Doctorow – The “Enshittification” of Everything

Introduction by Zephyr Teachout, Professor of Law at Fordham Law School.

Renowned science fiction author, activist and journalist Cory Doctorow coined the term “enshittification” in 2022 to describe the degradation of online platforms. Drawing from his most recent nonfiction book, Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It, he assures us that it’s not our imaginations: the internet does indeed suck now. And this isn’t the result of great historical forces or iron laws of economics: it’s caused by specific policy choices made in living memory by named individuals, but Cory argues that we aren’t helpless prisoners of the depraved foolishness of early 21st century policymakers. We can – and we must – break free of the prison they built for us, consigning their terrible ideas to the scrap-heap of history, so we can create a new, good internet that is fit to serve as the digital nervous system of this fraught young century.

This talk was delivered at the 2026 Bioneers Conference.

Cory Doctorow, a renowned, award-winning science fiction author, activist, and journalist, is the author of dozens of books, most recently, Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It, (nonfiction); and the novels Picks and Shovels and The Bezzle. His other notable books include the “solar-punk” novels Walkaway and The Lost Cause, and the tech policy books The Internet Con and Chokepoint Capitalism. Cory also: maintains a daily blog at Pluralistic.net; works for the Electronic Frontier Foundation; and is: an AD White Professor at Cornell University; an MIT Media Lab Research Affiliate; a Visiting Professor of Computer Science at Open University; a Visiting Professor of Practice at the University of North Carolina’s School of Library and Information Science; and a co-founder of the UK Open Rights Group.

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The Great Enshittening: How the Internet Got So Bad — and How We Can Fix It

Read an excerpt from Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It

This Will All Be So Great If We Don’t Screw It Up

In this 2019 interview, Cory Doctorow dives deep into how monopoly power and deregulation paved the way for Big Tech’s dominance — and why restoring fairness and pluralism in technology begins with reclaiming public control.

John Warner – Biomimicry at the Molecular Level—Inventing a Sustainable Future

Introduction by Kenny Ausubel, Bioneers Co-founder and CEO.

John Warner, one of the co-founders of the entire field of “Green Chemistry” who co-authored its defining text and co-articulated its core principles, works to create commercial technologies inspired by nature. An inventor with over 300 patents who has received countless prestigious awards, he has also been, with his wife, Amy Cannon, a thought leader and prime mover of green chemistry education. In this talk, he shares his vision of how we can draw from the molecular design genius of nature, which has been running countless rigorous chemistry experiments for nearly 4 billion years, to create benign products and technologies that provide for human needs without contaminating the biosphere and endangering our health.

This talk was delivered at the 2026 Bioneers Conference.

John Warner, Ph.D., one of the founders of the field of Green Chemistry who co-authored its defining text “Green Chemistry: Theory and Practice” (with Paul Anastas), is a chemistry inventor and entrepreneur who works to create commercial technologies inspired by nature consistent with the principles of green chemistry. He holds over 350 industrial chemistry patents, and his inventions have served as the basis for several new companies in photovoltaics, neurochemistry, construction materials, water harvesting, and cosmetics. John, who has received many prestigious awards from within the chemistry industry, government, academia and civil society organizations, has had a distinguished academic career, including as a tenured full-professor at UMASS Boston and Lowell. In 2007 he co-founded (with Amy Cannon) Beyond Benign, a non-profit dedicated to sustainability and green chemistry education. He holds academic appointments at Monash University in Australia, Chulalongkorn University in Thailand, Somaiya University in India, University of Birmingham in the UK, Rochester Institute of Technology in the US, and Technical University of Berlin in Germany where they have named the “John Warner Center for Start Ups in Green Chemistry.” John also currently serves as CEO and CTO of Technology Greenhouse.

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Nature’s Genius

A Bioneers podcast series exploring how the symphony of life holds the solutions we need to balance human civilization with living systems. We can learn from the time-tested principles, processes, and dynamics that have allowed living systems to flourish during 3.8 billion years of evolution.

Deep Dive: Biomimicry

Biomimicry celebrates our kinship with life, unearthing untold treasures from nature’s playbook that we can emulate for our technological and industrial recipe book. Explore our media collection of fascinating examples from leaders in the field.

Samantha Skenandore – Re-Evolving Indigeneity to Save our Planet

Introduction by Britt Gondolfi, Bioneers Indigeneity Special Programs Coordinator.

If we are to have a chance of reversing the destructive path our world is currently on and ushering in a genuinely nature-honoring era in which decisions will be made based on their effects seven generations in the future, we need to empower the extraordinary crop of young leaders, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, now emerging on the scene. Samantha Skenandore, of Ho-Chunk and Oneida ancestry, one of the nation’s leading practitioners of and experts in Federal Indian law and tribal law, delves into the living legacies of her people’s guardianship of water, springs, trails, portals, and burial and sacred sites to illustrate the types of values we need to ground ourselves in, and describes some of her legal battles to highlight some of the types of struggles we must wage. But, above all, she exhorts us to do everything we can to support a new generation of change-makers that is combining the deep wisdom of ancestral TEK (Traditional Ecological Knowledge) with the best of contemporary science and technology to address our complex modern problems.

This talk was delivered at the 2026 Bioneers Conference.

Samantha Skenandore, a member of the Ho-Chunk Nation who previously served as a Tribal Attorney for the Ho-Chunk Nation’s Department of Justice and clerked for the United States Department of Justice, Indian Resources Section, is a founding partner of Skenandore Wilson LLP with 20+ years’ multi-jurisdictional legal experience working with tribal governments and enterprises to build governmental and economic infrastructures across Indian Country. She works in a wide range of legal domains, including: tribal and corporate governance, business transactions, economic development, real estate, cultural resources, water rights, labor issues, and representing clients before members of Congress, congressional committees and federal agencies. Samantha has also been integral to the Bioneers Indigeneity Program, helping develop a toolkit to help frame legal considerations for tribal nations to consider adoption of “Rights of Nature” laws.

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Legalizing Nature’s Rights: How Tribal Nations are Leading the Fastest Growing Environmental Movement in History

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 podcast episode, 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. 

Rights of Nature in Indian Country

Honoring the Rights of Nature has always been essential to the worldview and cultures of First Peoples. The Rights of Nature movement simply puts into law what has always been a part of traditional laws: that the natural world must thrive if our Peoples and cultures are to survive.

As a coalition of Native and Native-descended authors, the Bioneers Indigeneity Program team wrote a guide by and for American Indian/Alaska Native community members who are interested in learning about how the Rights of Nature can bring Tribal values into contemporary law.

Performance by Deb Lane and Afia Walking Tree

For years, percussionists Deb Lane and Afia Walking Tree have helped kick off mornings at the Bioneers Conference, filling the main stage with rhythm, movement and energy before the day’s conversations begin. Their joyful drumming has become a beloved Bioneers tradition and one of our favorite ways to bring the community together.

This performance took place at the 2026 Bioneers Conference.

Deb Lane has been playing the drums for most of her life. Formerly a member of the Santa Cruz World Beat Band, Pele Juju, she performs with artists throughout the Bay Area and beyond. In addition to her musical endeavors, Deb is a leader in water-use efficiency and works as a Water Conservation Administrator.

Afia Walking Tree, M.Ed., a Jamaican-born feminist percussionist, educator, and facilitator working at the “crossroads of rhythm, land, and liberation,” is an adjunct professor at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS), an Artist-in-Residence with the African American Policy Forum, and One Billion Rising/V-Day’s Jamaica Coordinator. Afia has returned to Jamaica to steward a 25-acre regenerative land-based sanctuary and learning hub (Solidarity Yaad), where she curates nature-immersed healing journeys and eco-experiences rooted in ancestral wisdom, agroforestry, food security, and community care, prioritizing BIPOC women, and gender-expansive, queer, and trans-masculine people.

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Destiny Arts Youth Performance Company | Bioneers 2025

DAYPC’s extraordinary energy, brilliant choreography and inspired lyrics have been rocking the house at Bioneers for many years.

Performance by Destiny Arts Youth Performance Company

This performance took place at the 2026 Bioneers Conference.

The Destiny Arts Youth Performance Company (DAYPC) is a diverse group of teens that collaborates with professional artists to create dynamic, original productions. Combining hip hop, modern and aerial dance, theater, song, and rap, company members take the stage to tell stories that stem from their lived experiences and express their visions for a world transformed. Since 1993, DAYPC has performed original work for up to 25,000 audience members annually, garnering critical acclaim and widespread community support for both their technical prowess and their commitment to advancing inclusivity, equity, and justice.

Learn more at destinyarts.org

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Destiny Arts Youth Performance Company | Bioneers 2025

DAYPC’s extraordinary energy, brilliant choreography and inspired lyrics have been rocking the house at Bioneers for many years.

Nina Simons – Living Between Paradigms

In this talk, Nina Simons begins by acknowledging the extraordinarily challenging period we are traversing and the inevitable anxiety and fear it generates in all of us. She then shares a variety of strategies and perspectives from a range of sources, from ancient to new, from brilliant human thinkers to animal teachers, that help her re-center herself, reconnect to the web of life, and regain the ability to carry on the struggle for a better world.

This talk was delivered at the 2026 Bioneers Conference.

Nina Simons will be teaching a Bioneers Learning course in October 2026: EveryWoman’s Leadership: Liberating Ourselves for Full Flourishing. Learn more and register.

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

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

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Leading from the Feminine Newsletter

A vibrant resource in the flourishing world of leading from the heart, hands and spirit, from co-creators Nina Simons and Anneke Campbell. This newsletter exists to bridge divides and celebrate connections within the rich tapestry of trailblazers who are evoking the feminine to lead with courage, vulnerability, intuition and empathy.

Performance by Garth Stevenson

This performance took place at the 2026 Bioneers Conference.

Garth Stevenson is a renowned musician, composer and eco-activist who has appeared on some 50 albums, collaborated with leading musicians from all over the globe, and counts among his mentors the legendary biologist Roger Payne, the first to record humpback whales in the 1960s. Garth has played his double bass not only for people around the world but also among seals, penguins, icebergs, and in the bow of small boats where he imitates whale calls on his bass. He performs music based on those extraordinary interspecies exchanges accompanied by stunning video footage.

Learn more at garthstevenson.com

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A Double Bass, a Hydrophone, and a Conversation With Whales

Garth Stevenson reflects on improvisation, whale song, and his ongoing search for moments of connection between human and more-than-human forms of consciousness.

The Quest to Decode Whale Speak

When members of Project CETI (the Cetacean Translation Initiative) witnessed the birth of a sperm whale, they observed a breathtaking scene of cooperation and communication that few humans have ever seen. The extraordinary experience was a scientific milestone as well as one more strand in the web of sperm whale culture that this innovative project is studying.

Making Music with the More-Than-Human World: A Conversation with David Rothenberg

David Rothenberg is a groundbreaking figure in “the joys and mysteries of interspecies music-making.” Bioneers senior producer J.P. Harpignies invited Rothenberg to recount some of the key episodes in his career trajectory, unpack some of his guiding ideals and passions, and regale us with some anecdotes from an extremely full life.

Performance by Destani Wolf

This performance took place at the 2026 Bioneers Conference.

Destani Wolf, Berkeley’s own powerfully soulful, deeply original and inventive, genre-defying vocalist and improviser, has appeared on over 40 albums including 3 that were GRAMMY-nominated, been a lead vocalist for Cirque du Soleil, and is a Professor at SF Music Conservatory and a member of Bobby McFerrin’s MOTION.

Learn more at destaniwolf.com

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Performance by Rising Appalachia

Rising Appalachia, the brainchild of Atlanta-raised sisters Leah Song and Chloe Smith, rooted in the rich musical traditions of their family and region, is an internationally touring folk ensemble with a passionate global following.

Corrina Gould – We Are Nature

Corrina Gould, Tribal Chairwoman for the Confederated Villages of Lisjan Nation and Co-Director of Sogorea Te’ Land Trust, welcomes guests onto her ancestral homelands, inviting remembrance and return to right relationships in a time of societal change. Urging the audience to remember their ancestral calling and care for our world, Corrina Gould shares reflections drawn from decades of on the ground rematriation and land return work healing and transforming the legacies of colonization in the San Francisco East Bay.

This talk was delivered at the 2026 Bioneers Conference.

Corrina Gould, born and raised in the village of Huchiun (now known as Berkeley CA), is the Tribal Chairwoman for the Confederated Villages of Lisjan Nation and co-founded and is the Lead Organizer for Indian People Organizing for Change, a small Native-run organization; as well as of the Sogorea Te’ Land Trust, an urban Indigenous women-led organization within her ancestral territory.

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The Native American LandBack Movement Reaches Urban America

In this podcast episode, learn how Corrina Gould has helped forge a model for returning stolen land to Native American Tribes and restoring sacred sites in a defiant act of remembrance and resistance against cultural erasure.

California Genocide and Resilience with Corrina Gould

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