Karen Washington – 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 on 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.

The simple truth is that we can’t talk about a fair, just, and equitable food system without radical new thinking and putting in a lot work. What sort of work needs to be done and who will be the people to do it? Karen Washington, one of the most renowned and influential food activists of our era shares her wisdom and her analysis of why the food system doesn’t need to be fixed but has to be dramatically transformed.

This talk was delivered at the 2022 Bioneers Conference.

Karen Washington, co-owner/farmer at Rise & Root Farm in Chester New York, is a renowned activist and food advocate, who, among her many achievements, in 2010 co- founded Black Urban Growers (BUGS) an organization supporting growers in both urban and rural settings. In 2012, Ebony magazine voted her one of their 100 most influential African Americans in the country, and in 2014 she was the recipient of the James Beard Leadership Award. Karen also serves on the boards of the New York Botanical Gardens, the Mary Mitchell Center, SoulFire Farm and the Black Farmer Fund.

Learn more about Karen Washington at her website.

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Malik Yakini – Food, Race and Justice

In this Bioneers 2015 keynote address, Malik Yakini, Executive Director of the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network, explores how the current industrial food system that supplies most of our food creates inequities and shares wise perspectives on addressing racism, thinking beyond the logic of capitalism and how we might create a more just, sustainable food system.

The Food Web Newsletter

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 like 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.

Alexandria Villaseñor – Working Together: Building Coalitions of Power in the Global Youth Climate Movement

Building power and achieving success in the global youth climate movement require international solidarity, communication, and organizing. Relationships with allied groups and organizations are key to making change. An international youth organizer since the age of 13, Alexandria Villaseñor shares the unique ways in which a multicultural, geographically distributed youth movement is building trust, negotiating compromises, distributing decision-making and centering the stories, experiences and leadership of those most impacted in each action and campaign. From grassroots movements to national organizations, Alexandria shows us how youth intend to win the climate fight by working together.

This talk was delivered at the 2022 Bioneers Conference.

Alexandria Villaseñor co-founded the U.S. Youth Climate Strike movement (part of the youth-led international Fridays for Future movement) at age 13. Now 16, Alexandria has become an internationally-recognized, prestigious award-winning activist, speaker, author and founder of several initiatives, including Earth Uprising International. A contributing author to All We Can Save, an anthology of women climate leaders, and a child petitioner for the groundbreaking international complaint to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, Children vs. Climate Crisis, Alexandria serves on the advisory board of Evergreen Action, is a youth spokesperson for the American Lung Association, and is the youngest Junior Fellow of the World Academy of Arts and Sciences. 

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Alexandria Gordon – The Power of Young People

In this Bioneers 2021 keynote address, Alex Gordon, a winner of the prestigious Brower Youth Award for her organizing prowess on the “Break Free from Plastic Pledge,” voter registration drives and other student power initiatives, shares her experiences as a young person working to create a world that can work for everyone. 

Bioneers Youth Leadership and Education Program

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

Clayton Thomas-Müller – Reparations, Healing and Reconciliation—A Battle Against the Winter Spirit, Witigo’

Cree legends talk about the nefarious winter spirit Witigo’ and how it can possess you to such an extent that you become an all-consuming cannibal stricken with insatiable greed and hunger. 350.org‘s Cree Campaigner and best-selling author of Life in the City of Dirty Water: A Memoir of Healing, Clayton Thomas-Müller, discusses how this sort of possession offers us an excellent metaphor for the mindset that has brought us the ravages of ruthless extractive capitalism and the oppression of First Peoples and other historically disenfranchised groups; and he proposes some answers to the question: What is it going to take for us to move through and heal from the violence of colonization?

This talk was delivered at the 2022 Bioneers Conference.

Clayton Thomas-Müller is a member of the Treaty #6 based Mathias Colomb Cree Nation also known as Pukatawagan located in Northern Manitoba, Canada. Based in Winnipeg, Clayton is a senior campaign specialist with 350.org. Clayton is a campaigner, award winning film director, media producer, organizer, facilitator, public speaker and best selling author on Indigenous rights and environmental & economic justice.

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Excerpt: Life in the City of Dirty Water

The mass Indigenous-led movement against oil pipelines has made a permanent impact in the fight against climate change. Indigenous nations are leading the movement to protect water and hold governments accountable to treaty laws that preserve Indigenous relationships with the environment. In this excerpt from Life in the City of Dirty Water: A Memoir of Healing, Clayton Thomas-Müller shares the power and wisdom of Indigenous climate advocacy. 

Indigenous Activism NOW: Talking Story With Clayton Thomas-Muller and Julian NoiseCat

In this Bioneers 2021 panel, Clayton Thomas-Müller and Julian Brave NoiseCat share the story behind the story about how their lives intersect with their activism and discuss their new projects and their hopes for the future. Moderated by Alexis Bunten (Unangan/Yup’ik), Co-Director of the Bioneers Indigeneity Program. 

Nina Simons: Navigating the Nexus – Nature, Culture & the Sacred

“If you’re at all like me, you may be having trouble finding your way through the challenging confluence of crises we are facing these days.” Bioneers Co-founder Nina Simons explores how we can support each other to make our way through the maze we’re currently facing.

This talk was delivered at the 2022 Bioneers Conference. Read a written version of this talk here.

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

Kevin J. Patel – Our Collective Ecosystems

Kevin Patel, a 21-year old LA-based Climate Justice activist extraordinaire who passionately demands that youth be listened to right now, not marginalized as “leaders of tomorrow,” recounts his own health challenges growing up in heavily polluted South Central Los Angeles and insists that climate action and ending racial and class disparities have to be inseparably linked in our movements.

This talk was delivered at the 2022 Bioneers Conference.

Kevin J. Patel is a social entrepreneur from Los Angeles, CA. He founded OneUpAction International, an organization that supports and empowers youth to implement climate solutions. Kevin has created the first-of-its-kind Youth Climate Commission in LA County to amplify youth voices on the climate crisis. Kevin is a UN Togetherband Ambassador for Goal 7, 13, & 14. He is a National Geographic Young Explorer. He also serves on the Youthtopia_World : Circle of Youth Council, the Ikea Ingka Young Leaders Forum, ClimatePower Creative Advisory Board and the Environmental Media Association’s Activist Board. Kevin is currently pursuing his undergraduate degree in Political Science at Loyola Marymount University.

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Nalleli Cobo – On the Frontlines of Environmental Injustice: Standing up to Urban Oil Drilling

In this Bioneers 2021 keynote address, Nalleli Cobo, an extraordinarily effective Environmental Justice activist since she was 9, shares the story of her trajectory and challenges in fighting an oil drilling site in her neighborhood, and how local struggles relate to the larger global fight for Climate Justice.

Bioneers Youth Leadership and Education Program

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

Samuel Myers, MD – Planetary Health: Protecting Nature to Protect Ourselves

Samuel Myers, a leading figure in the study of the impacts on human health of the accelerating disruptions to Earth’s natural systems, shares the guiding principles and implications of this newly emergent, rapidly growing field, recently dubbed “Planetary Health.” Every dimension of human health and wellbeing is under threat from our ongoing degradation of Earth’s life-support systems. Planetary Health research is providing rigorous evidence that urgently stabilizing our planet’s natural systems is essential if we are going to have any chance of safeguarding a livable future for humanity. Dr. Myers explains the goals and work of the broad global coalitions around The Planetary Health Alliance (of which he is the founding director) coming together to drive home the inextricable links between human and environmental health and to develop policies and actions to protect our biosphere.

This talk was delivered at the 2022 Bioneers Conference.

Samuel Myers, MD, MPH, studies the human health impacts of accelerating disruptions to Earth’s natural systems, a field recently dubbed “Planetary Health.” A Principal Research Scientist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, he is the founding Director of the Planetary Health Alliance, the author of roughly 100 peer-reviewed research articles, and the lead editor of Planetary Health: Protecting Nature to Protect Ourselves (Island Press, 2020).

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Kenny Ausubel: The Coming Age of Ecological Medicine

Read an excerpt from Ecological Medicine, Healing the Earth, Healing Ourselves (2004, Sierra Club Books), a collection of writings from the world’s leading health visionaries, showing how human health is inescapably dependent on the health of our environment.

Deep Dive: Ecological Medicine

Whether we call it “Ecological” or “Planetary” or “Holistic” medicine, or “One Health,” the effort to expand our understanding of health and to bring into being a new form of far more effective and equitable healthcare is more critical than ever. In this collection of Bioneers media, we feature some of the leading lights of this movement, both early visionaries and contemporary luminaries, approaching this imperative from a wide range of perspectives.

Helena and Nina Gualinga – #EndAmazonCrude: A Call to Action with Amazonian Indigenous Forest Protectors

California is the world’s largest consumer of oil from the Amazon rainforest. This extraction contributes to climate change, causes deforestation, pollutes the oceans, displaces Indigenous peoples stewarding the Amazon Forest’s last remaining biodiversity, and harms people at every end of the supply chain, including the marginalized communities living in the shadow of toxic refineries right here. We honored to be able to offer our main stage to two leading Indigenous Amazonian forest-protectors, sisters Nina Gualinga and Helena Gualinga, who work closely with our friends at Amazon Watch as they appeal to Californians (and all of us) to #EndAmazonCrude and demand corporate responsibility for people and planet.

This talk was delivered at the 2022 Bioneers Conference.

Nina Gualinga is an Indigenous woman defender of the Amazon from the Kichwa community of Sarayaku in the Ecuadorian Amazon who advocates for women’s rights and climate justice. She is an international spokeswoman for Mujeres Amazonicas and the Women Defenders Program Coordinator at Amazon Watch.

Helena Gualinga is an Indigenous youth environmental and climate justice advocate from the Kichwa community of Sarayaku. She is a co-founder of Polluters Out and is a Young Women Project Lead with WECAN. Her work and story is featured in the recently released documentary, “Helena from Sarayaku,” which premiered at the DC Environmental Film Festival.

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Nemonte Nenquimo – Indigenous Guardianship is Key to Halt the Climate Crisis

In this address to the 2021 Bioneers Conference, Nemonte Nenquimo, a leader from the Waorani community in Ecuador and a founding member of Indigenous-led nonprofit organization Ceibo Alliance and its partner, Amazon Frontlines, discusses why respecting Indigenous people’s internationally recognized rights to decide the future of their territories, cultures and lives is critically urgent for the protection of our world’s most important rainforest, our climate, and life on our planet.

The Amazon at a Tipping Point: Can We Turn It Around?

For thousands of years, Indigenous peoples have protected their sacred ancestral territories in the Amazon. In this keynote address to the 2019 Bioneers Conference, Leila Salazar López, Executive Director of Amazon Watch, urges us to stand with them to protect and restore the bio-cultural integrity of the Amazon, because our collective future depends on it.

Kenny Ausubel – Dancing on Thin Ice

In this talk delivered at Bioneers 2022, Bioneers Co-Founder & CEO Kenny Ausubel outlines some of the issues we face and the movements growing from marginalized communities opening spaces for authentic metamorphosis.

Read a written version of this talk here.

Kenny Ausubel, CEO and founder (in 1990) of Bioneers, is an award-winning social entrepreneur, journalist, author and filmmaker. Co-founder and first CEO of the organic seed company, Seeds of Change, his film (and companion book) Hoxsey: When Healing Becomes a Crime helped influence national alternative medicine policy. He has edited several books and written four, including, most recently, Dreaming the Future: Reimagining Civilization in the Age of Nature.

Jason McLennan – From Reconciliation to Regeneration

Sixteen years ago Jason F. McLennan launched the Living Building Challenge, the world’s most progressive and advanced green building program, to show that our buildings could serve as one of the key paths toward a regenerative future. Since then, numerous Living Buildings that demonstrate a better, more inspiring way of living and working have been built around the world. Although these projects create ripples of change and are living proof of regeneration in action, and in spite of these and other great models, we continue to build and live in ways that degrade the planet. Why? Jason McLennan explores why physical demonstrations of better solutions are not enough to create change when society has not grappled with its deeper systemic trauma. If we are to participate fully in regenerating the conditions for life on the planet, a deeper process of reconciliation is necessary. To heal the planet, Jason argues, we must fundamentally heal our culture.

This talk was delivered at the 2022 Bioneers Conference.

Jason McLennan, one of the world’s most influential visionaries in contemporary architecture and green building, is a highly sought-out designer, consultant and thought leader. A winner of Engineering News Record’s National Award of Excellence and of the prestigious Buckminster Fuller Prize (which was, during its 10-year trajectory, known as “the planet’s top prize for socially responsible design”), Jason has been showered with such accolades as “the ‘Wayne Gretzky’ of the green building industry and a “World Changer” (by GreenBiz magazine).

Learn more about Jason McLennan and his work at McLennan Design.

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Planting Buildings: The Living Building Challenge

In this podcast, visionary architect Jason McLennan describes nature’s blueprint for building a better world. He designed the Living Building Challenge 2.0 to raise the bar on green building: meet or exceed what nature provides. While the standards seem impossibly high, it may be simpler than we imagined.

Biophilic Infrastructure: Letting Nature Lead the Way

In this panel from the 2021 Bioneers Conference, Ben Goldfarb, Dr. Crystal Kolden, Ariel Whitson, and moderator Teo Grossman dive into what a more enlightened, effective, biophilic and biomimetic infrastructure conversation needs to look like. What will it take to turn our attention towards the rebuilding of our natural infrastructure, for the benefit of all life and human society? How can built infrastructure elegantly and respectfully engage with and support nature? The answers are not easy, but we know enough to get started – and, unsurprisingly, it often begins with letting nature lead.

Performance by Jason Nious

This performance took place at the 2022 Bioneers Conference.

Jason Nious, a performing artist and creative director whose background with high school step teams and NCAA gymnastics launched his career, has traveled extensively with Cirque du Soleil, Usher, Stomp, Step Afrika, and numerous theatre and film productions. As founder and Director of the Las Vegas, NV-based, award-winning body percussion ensemble, Molodi, Jason designs new touring productions and facilitates Molodi’s arts education program, reaching over 20,000 students per year. He also serves as an arts integration consultant with Focus 5, Cirque du Soleil, Cleveland Playhouse, and The Smith Center; and is an Artist-In-Residence with the Museum of Dance, Education Chair of the LAB LV Theatre Company, and regularly conducts in-school residencies through the Nevada Arts Council.

Closing Performance by Oakland’s own Thrive Choir

The Thrive Choir, the musical voice of Thrive East Bay and the global Thrive Network (a community and movement devoted to love in action by building equitable social systems), is an Oakland, California-based highly diverse group of vocalists, artists, activists, educators, healers, and community organizers who seek to celebrate the confluence of their many cultures and identities through their music. They have shared the stage with many nationally-acclaimed “engaged” artists and leading progressive figures and inspired thousands at marches, conferences and festivals. The Choir lifts up the house at Thrive Sundays in downtown Oakland.

This performance took place at the 2022 Bioneers Conference.

Performance by Jason Nious and Antwan Davis of Molodi

This performance took place at the 2022 Bioneers Conference.

Jason Nious, a performing artist and creative director whose background with high school step teams and NCAA gymnastics launched his career, has traveled extensively with Cirque du Soleil, Usher, Stomp, Step Afrika, and numerous theatre and film productions. As founder and Director of the Las Vegas, NV-based, award-winning body percussion ensemble, Molodi, Jason designs new touring productions and facilitates Molodi’s arts education program, reaching over 20,000 students per year. He also serves as an arts integration consultant with Focus 5, Cirque du Soleil, Cleveland Playhouse, and The Smith Center; and is an Artist-In-Residence with the Museum of Dance, Education Chair of the LAB LV Theatre Company, and regularly conducts in-school residencies through the Nevada Arts Council.

Antwan Davis, a multi-percussionist specializing in body-percussion, improv actor and stand-up comedian, co-founded the Las Vegas based performance arts company, Molodi, and has performed with the Las Vegas and North American productions of Stomp and toured nationally with Step Afrika. Antwan has been performing and teaching workshops in the U.S. and internationally for 14 years.

Learn more about Antwan Davis and his work at his website.