Suzanne Simard – Dispatches From the Mother Trees

Suzanne Simard is one of the planet’s most influential, groundbreaking researchers on plant communication and intelligence. As Professor of Forest Ecology at the University of British Columbia and the author of the bestselling book, Finding the Mother Tree, she has revealed the highly complex ways trees interact and communicate, including using below-ground fungal networks that contribute to forests’ resiliency, adaptability and recovery. Her research has far-reaching implications for how to manage and heal forests from human impacts, including climate change. In this dynamic presentation, she discusses the dire global consequences of logging old-growth rainforests, and nature-based solutions that combine Western science and Indigenous knowledge for preserving and caring for these invaluable forest ecosystems for future generations.

This talk was delivered at the 2021 Bioneers Conference.

Professor of Forest Ecology at the University of British Columbia, one of the planet’s leading experts on the synergies and complexities of forests and the development of sustainable forest stewardship practices, Suzanne Simard is a world-renowned pioneer on the frontier of plant communication and intelligence whose work has influenced several major filmmakers and novelists. She is the author of the currently best-selling Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest.

Learn more about Suzanne Simard and her work at her website.

Explore More

Forest Wisdom, Mother Trees and the Science of Community

In this podcast, learn how Suzanne Simard is transforming the science of forest ecology and coming full circle to the wisdom held by First Peoples and traditional land-based cultures from time immemorial.

Frank Kanawha Lake: Indigenous Traditional Ecological Knowledge Can Save Our Ecosystems

Frank Kanawha Lake, an Indigenous research ecologist who specializes in fire and fuels, discusses his lifelong connection with the land, why traditional ecological knowledge matters, how federal agencies can foster healthier relationships with local Indigenous communities, and more.

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

In this keynote address to the 2019 Bioneers Conference, Leila Salazar López, Executive Director of Amazon Watch, urges us to stand with Indigenous peoples to protect and restore the bio-cultural integrity of the Amazon, because our collective future depends on it.

Alexandria Gordon – The Power of Young People

Young people have been key players in nearly every successful social change movement, and at the moment they are at the forefront of the struggle to force authentic global action on climate and injustice—they are currently humanity’s conscience, and it’s crucial that we listen to them and that we nurture as many of these new leaders as possible. Student PIRGs (Public Interest Research Groups) are working to train the next generation of activists, and Alex Gordon, one of these young activists, a winner of this year’s 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.

This talk was delivered at the 2021 Bioneers Conference. Read the transcript of this presentation here.

Alexandria (Alex) Gordon, a senior at Eckerd College (in St. Petersburg, FLA) and student organizer with Florida PIRG Students, a student-run nonpartisan nonprofit, got her start organizing on that group’s New Voters Project, working to register young people for the 2018 midterm elections. In 2019 she launched a successful campaign to get Eckerd to sign the “Break Free From Plastic Pledge” and eliminate all nonessential single-use plastics on campus, resulting in Eckerd becoming the first school in the nation to implement such a pledge. Alex continues to build support for campuses and communities to break free from plastics and to build student power in the state of Florida.

Explore More

Youth Solutionaries: Future Present

Youth movements are rising to restore people and planet. In this podcast, De’Anthony Jones, a former President of the Environmental Students Organization at Sacramento State, Chloe Maxmin, co-founder of Divest Harvard, and Xiuhtezcatl Martinez, hip-hop artist and Youth Director of Earth Guardians, say there’s no better time to be born than now because this generation gets to rewrite history. It could be known as the generation that brought forth a healthy, just, sustainable world for every generation to come.

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.

Alexia Leclercq – Climate Justice Must Be Social Justice for All

For the Climate Justice Movement to arrive at results that are truly “just,” it must be radically inclusive, which means that its struggles must of course intersect with those of social, racial and gender justice movements, but it also means that other historically disenfranchised groups can’t be excluded, so, for example, the Disability Justice Movement must have a seat at the table. One of this year’s Brower Youth Award winners, Alexia Leclercq, an environmental justice organizer based in Austin TX and NYC, shares her passion about these rarely discussed aspects of intersectionality.

This talk was delivered at the 2021 Bioneers Conference. Read the transcript of this presentation here.

Alexia Leclercq (she/they), a young environmental justice organizer based in Austin TX and NYC, is a co-founder of Start: Empowerment, a non-profit that works with teachers and students to implement radical social and environmental justice education and programming and that organizes at a grassroots level to combat environmental racism. Alexia was just announced as one of the winners of this year’s prestigious Brower Youth Awards.

Explore More

Vien Truong: Creating an Equitable Environmental Movement

Vien Truong, formerly the National Director of Green For All, has worked tirelessly to bring equity, social justice and climate justice to the frontlines of the environmental movement and public policy. In this address to the 2016 Bioneers conference, Vien shares her wise perspectives on how to build a new clean-energy economy that brings prosperity and justice to low-income communities and communities of color.

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.

David Montgomery and Anne Biklé – You Are What Your Food Ate

Building on their highly influential “Dirt Trilogy” (Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations; The Hidden Half of Nature; and Growing A Revolution: Bringing Our Soil Back to Life), geologist David Montgomery and biologist Anne Biklé preview their forthcoming book, You Are What Your Food Ate. They share the growing body of scientific evidence underlying how soil health dramatically affects the health of crops and animals, and ultimately human bodies. The intimate connections between the life of the soil and the nutritional quality of food points to the profound importance of farming practices that can imbue the human diet with the nutrients and compounds that underpin health, or rob us of them. They discuss how a growing vanguard of farmers pioneering regenerative practices is proving that farming practices that are good for the land are good for us too.

This talk was delivered at the 2021 Bioneers Conference.

David Montgomery is a professor of Geomorphology and, along with his wife and collaborator Anne Biklé, co-author of The Hidden Half of Nature: The Microbial Roots of Life and Health a landmark exploration the microbiome. Montgomery’s research looks at the process shaping Earth’s surface and how they affect ecological systems—and human societies. He has studied everything from the ways that landslides and glaciers influence the height of mountain ranges, to the way that soils have shaped human civilizations both now and in the past. He is an elected Fellow of the American Geophysical Union and has received many awards throughout his career, including a MacArthur Fellowship and the Vega Medal. In addition to The Hidden Half of Nature, Montgomery is the author of the seminal Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations and Growing a Revolution: Bringing Our Soil Back To Life.

Anne Biklé is a biologist, avid gardener, and co-author, along with her husband, David Montgomery, of The Hidden Half of Nature: The Microbial Roots of Life and Health.  Biklé is among the planet’s leading experts on the microbial life of soil and its crucial importance to human wellbeing and survival.

Explore More

The Hidden Half of Nature: The Microbial Roots of Life and Health

Microorganisms have always been an invisible part of life. But now that scientists are uncovering how they can help us address some of the world’s most pressing problems, a revolution for life and health is emerging. In The Hidden Half of Nature, David Montgomery and Anne Biklé explore humanity’s relationship with microbes across science and nature by recognizing the essential roles they play in our lives. Read an excerpt from the book.

Deep Dive: Regenerative Agriculture

Learn all about regenerative agriculture, which has demonstrated remarkable results in eliminating toxic inputs, increasing fertility, regenerating soil life and strengthening on-farm resilience against climate extremes. Scientists, and regenerative farmers and ranchers share their knowledge and experience.

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

Nalleli Cobo, now 20, has acted as an extraordinarily effective Environmental Justice activist since she was 9 (years before Greta Thunberg began her school strike). She lived in South Los Angeles across the street from an oil drilling site. Her mother and many neighbors suffered from a range of illnesses, and Cobo herself had heart palpitations, headaches and nosebleeds so severe that she had to sleep sitting up lest she choke on her own blood. Nalleli became one of the leading voices demanding the site be shuttered, and she has become an internationally renowned, award-winning Environmental Justice activist. She shares the story of her trajectory and challenges, the importance of the ongoing struggles in which she’s engaged, the very high price she and many people in disenfranchised communities continue to pay, and how local struggles relate to the larger global fight for Climate Justice.

This talk was delivered at the 2021 Bioneers Conference.

Nalleli Cobo, has been a passionate Environmental Justice activist since age 9, when she realized the oil drilling operation across the street in her South Los Angeles neighborhood was making her and many of her family and neighbors very sick. She helped create a grassroots campaign, People not Pozos (i.e. “wells” in Spanish) that has been fighting ever since to close the well permanently. Nalleli went on to co-found the South Los Angeles Youth Leadership Coalition, which sued the City of Los Angeles for Environmental Racism. Nalleli has become an award-winning, internationally renowned, profoundly inspiring young leader.

Explore More

Don’t Mourn, Organize: Power and Passion for Environmental Justice and Democracy

Women and men from vulnerable communities everywhere are rising up to gain equal access to clean water and air, equal environmental enforcement and protection, and equitable land use and planning. In this podcast, impassioned community organizers Mary Gonzales and Peggy Shepard show us all how successful environmental justice campaigns across the U.S. are raising the voices of people of color and low-income communities and creating a better world for everyone.

Heather McGhee: A New “We The People” For a Sustainable Future

Heather McGhee, Distinguished Senior Fellow at Demos, a public policy organization working for an America where we all have an equal say in our democracy and an equal chance in our economy, depicts how deep democracy is the only solution to the crises of inequality and climate change, and how the changing demos — people — of America can rise to meet this moment.

Designing Futures for Health and Justice

To achieve the profound socio-economic, environmental and political changes we so desperately need, many of our societal systems will require intensive re-visioning. Key professions such as medicine, architecture/design, and the law (among many others) will need to embrace far more socially engaged worldviews and on-the-ground practices. In this dynamic dialogue, two leading figures who have been cutting-edge, exemplary models of how passion for social justice can inform professional life share their thoughts on what it will take to radically transform professional paradigms.

With: Rupa Marya, MD, Associate Professor of Medicine at UCSF, one of the nation’s leading figures working at the intersection of medicine and social justice, and co-author of the brand new: Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice; and Deanna Van Buren, M.Arch, groundbreaking activist architect, a major thought leader in advocating a complete rethinking of the criminal justice and incarceration system, and Executive Director of Designing Justice + Designing Spaces. Hosted by: Sonali Sangeeta Balajee, founder of Our Bodhi Project.

This discussion took place at the 2021 Bioneers Conference.

Panelists

Sonali Sangeeta Balajee

Sonali Sangeeta Balajee is the founder of Our Bodhi Project, which promotes practices at the intersection of Belonging, Organizing, Decolonizing, Health, and Interconnectedness. Sonali previously spent 13 years in government in Portland, OR, leading equity-based projects, has been an activist in HIV/AIDS work, environmental justice, and racial equity for 30 years, has 20 years’ experience in dance and music performance and 35 years’ practicing yoga and mindfulness. She sits on the boards of Bioneers and Worldtrust.

Rupa Marya

Associate Professor of Medicine at UCSF and Faculty Director of the Do No Harm Coalition, Dr. Rupa Marya is one of the nation’s leading figures working at the intersection of medicine and social justice (including in investigating the health effects of police violence on communities and helping set up a free clinic under Lakota leadership at Standing Rock). She is also singer and musician who leads the internationally touring band Rupa and the April Fishes and the co-author (with Raj Patel) of the brand new book: Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice.

Deanna Van Buren

A widely-traveled, award-winning, groundbreaking activist architect with 16 years’ experience designing projects internationally and a major thought leader in advocating for restorative justice centers (a radical transformation of the criminal justice system), Deanna Van Buren is Executive Director of Designing Justice + Designing Spaces, an architecture and real estate development firm innovating in the built environment to end mass incarceration; and serves on the national board of Architects/ Designers/Planners for Social Responsibility.

Naima Penniman – “These Gardens are Blueprints”

A multifaceted, dedicated, and gifted poet and performer, and beloved Bioneers colleague and friend, Naima Penniman performs her piece “These Gardens are Blueprints.”

This performance took place at the 2021 Bioneers Conference.

Naima Penniman headshot

Naima Penniman, an artist, activist, healer, grower and educator committed to planetary health and community resilience, is the co-founder of WILDSEED Community Farm and Healing Village, a Black and Brown-led intentional community focused on ecological collaboration, transformative justice, and intergenerational responsibility. She is also: Program Director at Soul Fire Farm, dedicated to supporting the next generation of B.I.P.O.C. (Black/Indigenous/people of color) farmers; the co-founder/co-artistic director of Climbing PoeTree, an internationally-acclaimed performance duo; a Thai Yoga Massage practitioner; and a member of Harriet’s Apothecary, a collective of Black women-identified healers.

“Growing Upward” by Rupa & the April Fishes

Rupa & the April Fishes perform their song “Growing Upward.”

This performance took place at the 2021 Bioneers Conference.

Rupa & the April Fishes create a “powerfully evocative” (LA times) sound that pulsates with the pluralism of US culture, celebrating the art of resistance through a wide musical palette that pulls from over a decade of playing street parties, festivals and symphonic concerts through 29 countries with songs in 5 languages. Under the direction of composer, front-woman, activist and physician Rupa, the band creates a live experience which is a manifestation of a world beyond nations, where the heart of humanity beats louder than anything that divides us.

The band consists of drummer Aaron Kierbel, cellist Misha Khalikulov, trumpeter Mario Alberto Silva, electronics artist/duduk player JHNO, bassist Daniel Fabricant, violinist Matt Szemela and guitarist/vocalist Rupa Marya.

Lessons from the Underground

We humans tend to look mostly around, sometimes up, and occasionally down, but even then, only at the surface of things. It turns out, however, that all of life on Earth actually depends on the extraordinarily dynamic life hidden beneath our feet, in the incredibly complex interrelationships of plants, bacteria, fungi, insects and minerals that make our continued existence above ground possible. In this session three of the world’s leading specialists on different aspects of those underground ecosystems share their cutting-edge research.

With: Suzanne Simard, Ph.D., Professor of Forest Ecology at the University of British Columbia, one of the planet’s leading experts on the synergies and complexities of forests, and a highly influential, world-renowned pathfinder on the frontier of plant communication and intelligence, and author of the current best-selling Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest; Anne Biklé and David R. Montgomery, a wife and husband team of scientific researchers whose groundbreaking work on the microbial life of soil has revealed its crucial importance to human wellbeing and survival. Dave, a professor of Geomorphology, is the author of the seminal Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations, and Anne, a biologist and science communicator, co-authored The Hidden Half of Nature: The Microbial Roots of Life and Health. Their latest collaboration, What Your Food Ate, to be published spring 2022, tells the sobering and inspiring story of how agriculture can help restore health to the land—and ourselves. Moderated by Bioneers’ Restorative Food Systems Director Arty Mangan. 

This discussion took place at the 2021 Bioneers Conference.

Panelists

Suzanne Simard

Professor of Forest Ecology at the University of British Columbia, one of the planet’s leading experts on the synergies and complexities of forests and the development of sustainable forest stewardship practices, Suzanne Simard is a world-renowned pioneer on the frontier of plant communication and intelligence whose work has influenced several major filmmakers and novelists. She is the author of the currently best-selling Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest.

Learn more about Suzanne Simard and her work at her website.

Anne Biklé

Anne Biklé is a biologist, avid gardener, and co-author, along with her husband, David Montgomery, of The Hidden Half of Nature: The Microbial Roots of Life and Health.  Biklé is among the planet’s leading experts on the microbial life of soil and its crucial importance to human wellbeing and survival.

Learn more at digtogrow.com.

David R. Montgomery

David Montgomery is a professor of Geomorphology and, along with his wife and collaborator Anne Biklé, co-author of The Hidden Half of Nature: The Microbial Roots of Life and Health a landmark exploration the microbiome. Montgomery’s research looks at the process shaping Earth’s surface and how they affect ecological systems—and human societies. He has studied everything from the ways that landslides and glaciers influence the height of mountain ranges, to the way that soils have shaped human civilizations both now and in the past. He is an elected Fellow of the American Geophysical Union and has received many awards throughout his career, including a MacArthur Fellowship and the Vega Medal. In addition to The Hidden Half of Nature, Montgomery is the author of the seminal Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations and Growing a Revolution: Bringing Our Soil Back To Life.

Learn more at digtogrow.com.

Arty Mangan

Arty Mangan, Bioneers’ Restorative Food Systems Director, joined Bioneers in 1998 as Project Manager for the Restorative Development Initiative. A former board president of the Ecological Farming Association and member of the Santa Cruz GE Subcommittee that banned GE crops, Arty has worked with farmers and agriculture since 1978, first as a partner in Live Juice and later with Odwalla, where he was in charge of fruit sourcing.

Bill McKibben – Why We Actually Need Everyone in the Climate Struggle

Alongside Indigenous and frontline communities, young people have been at the forefront of the global climate fight. In this talk, Bill McKibben explains why older activists not only need to have their backs, but how we can harness the power of the fastest-growing population on earth—people over the age of 60—and move them towards progressive political involvement, foster intergenerational collaboration, and deepen the fight for a fairer, more stable planet.

This talk was delivered at the 2021 Bioneers Conference.

Bill McKibben, one of the most important thinkers on environmental issues and climate activists of our era, is a contributing writer to The New Yorker, a founder of the remarkable influential grassroots climate campaign 350.org and the Schumann Distinguished Professor in Residence at Middlebury College in Vermont. A recipient of the Right Livelihood Prize (sometimes called the ‘alternative Nobel’) in 2014, and the Gandhi Peace Award, he has written over a dozen books about the environment, including his first, the seminal, groundbreaking text, The End of Nature, published 30 years ago; and his most recent, Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?

Learn more about Bill McKibben and his work at his website.

Explore More

The Human Game: Playing and Winning Against Climate Change

In his New York Times best-selling book Falter (Henry Holt and Company, 2019) Bill McKibben warns us that climate change is unraveling this very human game. Our rapid degradation of the environment is moving faster than ever as humans have used more resources in the last 35 years than in all of human history before. Read an excerpt from Falter.

May Boeve: Climate Change is Changing the World – Now We Too Must Change

In her keynote address to the 2018 Bioneers conference, May Boeve shares her eagle’s-eye perspectives on the current state of the climate struggle. She illustrates 350.org’s learnings and strategies moving forward, including ways of learning about and incorporating justice and equity.

Rupa Marya – Deep Medicine and the Care Revolution

The way in which we diagnose problems in our bodies, in society and in our ecosystems is hampered by legacies of overly reductionist thinking, racist world-views and misguided desires to subdue nature, all conceived in a time of colonial conquest. These continue to persist, to our great detriment. What results is an inability to see how “whole systems” interact and how to effectively address the challenges we face, from pandemics to climate change, which are systems-level derangements.

Physician, musician, activist and writer Rupa Marya describes what “Deep Medicine” is and how the new level of diagnosis it offers can address the suffering of our planet, our societies and our own bodies. Drawing from insights in science, medicine, ecology, and story detailed in the book she co-authored with Raj Patel—Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice—Dr. Marya outlines why it is time for us all to join the Care Revolution.

This talk was delivered at the 2021 Bioneers Conference. Read the transcript of this talk here!

Associate Professor of Medicine at UCSF and Faculty Director of the Do No Harm Coalition, Dr. Rupa Marya is one of the nation’s leading figures working at the intersection of medicine and social justice (including in investigating the health effects of police violence on communities and helping set up a free clinic under Lakota leadership at Standing Rock). She is also singer and musician who leads the internationally touring band Rupa and the April Fishes and the co-author (with Raj Patel) of the brand new book: Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice.

Read an excerpt from Inflamed here.

Explore More

Ecological Medicine: Healing the Earth, Healing Ourselves

“You are about to read a collection of thoughtful essays on medicine and health—not just personal health but planetary health, and not just medicine in the ordinary sense but medicine as an enterprise that encompasses the totality of human experience.” – Andrew Weil M.D.

Ecological medicine is an idea whose time has come. This free ebook is an anthology of visionary voices surveying the principles and practices of this critical shift in paradigms, practices and societal design.

Social Medicine: Restoring Public Health by Changing Society

In this podcast, Dr. Rupa Marya describes how “social medicine” works to dismantle harmful social structures that directly lead to poor health outcomes, and building new structures that promote health and healing.

Kenny Ausubel: The Coming Age of Ecological Medicine

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

Manuel Pastor – Solidarity Economics: Mutuality, Movements and Momentum

In a world wracked by income inequality, social divisions, and ecological destruction, can we build an alternative economics based on mutual cooperation and respect for our environmental commons? Among the nation’s most influential progressive thought leaders, activists and scholars, Manuel Pastor taps his new book, written with his long-time colleague Chris Benner, to propose that drawing on our instincts for connection and community can actually help create a more robust, sustainable, and equitable economy. But while most of us would benefit from centering mutuality and equity, some people do benefit from the current stark inequalities. As a result, seizing this moment for change will require brave conversations about racism and social fragmentation, a deep commitment to intersectional social movements, and a clear strategic vision for building people power.

This talk was delivered at the 2021 Bioneers Conference.

Manuel Pastor, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor of Sociology and American Studies & Ethnicity at USC and Director of its Equity Research Institute, has long been one of the most important scholars and activists working on the economic, environmental and social conditions facing low-income urban communities and the social movements seeking to change those realities. He has held many prominent academic posts, won countless prestigious awards and fellowships for his activism and scholarship, and is the author and co-author of many important, highly influential tomes, including most recently, State of Resistance: What California’s Dizzying Descent and Remarkable Resurgence Means for America’s Future (2018) and the just-about-to-be-released Solidarity Economics: Why Mutuality and Movements Matter.

Explore More

Bioneers Reader: Our Economic Future

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

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

Why Equity is Good for Everyone: Changing the Story, Changing the World with john a. powell and Heather McGhee

How do we change the story of corrosive racial inequity? First, we have to understand the stories we tell ourselves. In this podcast, racial justice innovators john a. powell and Heather McGhee show how empathy, honesty and the recognition of our common humanity can change the story to bridge the racial divides tearing humanity and the Earth apart.