Michael Pollan – Psychedelics and How to Change Your Mind

Bestselling author of landmark books that have challenged our fundamental civilizational assumptions, such as “The Botany of Desire” and “The Omnivore’s Dilemma”, Michael Pollan once again bravely ventures where angels fear to tread.

His new book “How To Change Your Mind” surveys the highly controversial terrain of the renaissance of both the science and popular usage of psychedelic substances. As one of our most brilliant and clear-eyed explorers of such topics as plant intelligence and how we feed ourselves, Michael will share his luminous insights from what began as investigative reportage and became a very personal interior journey into the mystery of consciousness and the nature of spirituality at this perilous moment when only a shift in human consciousness can alter the deadly trajectory of our societies.

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

This speech was given at the 2018 Bioneers Conference.

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Jayden Lim – My Culture Is Not a Costume

Award-winning young Pomo activist Jayden Lim of the California Indian Museum and Cultural Center’s Tribal Youth Ambassadors program illuminates the hidden history of California and how she has had to grapple with stereotypes and historical trauma to find her identity as a Native youth.

This speech was given at the 2018 Bioneers Conference. Read the full text version.

To learn more about Jayden and her work, visit the The California Indian Museum and Cultural Center.

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Rupa Marya – Health and Justice: The Path of Liberation through Medicine

Health visionary Rupa Marya, Associate Professor of Medicine at UC San Francisco and Faculty Director of the Do No Harm Coalition, urges us to radically re-envision and expand our concept of medicine to encompass and address the health impacts of poverty, racism and environmental toxicity.

Dr. Marya has been working to make visible the health issues at the nexus of racism and state violence through: her medical work; The Justice Study (national research investigating the health effects of police violence on Black, Brown and other disenfranchised communities); helping set up a free community clinic for the practice of decolonized medicine under Lakota leadership at Standing Rock (the Mni Wiconi Health Clinic); and international outreach with her band, Rupa and the April Fishes.

Introduction by Cat Brooks, Co-Founder of the Anti Police-Terror Project and Executive Director of the Justice Teams Network.

This speech was given at the 2018 Bioneers Conference. Read the full text version.

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Thanks to Rupa Marya for allowing the use of the performance at the end of this talk, a song from her forthcoming album. Keep up with Rupa and the April Fishes here.

Gar Alperovitz – Replacing Corporate Capitalism: Why We Need a Next System

As ecological and economic justice movements hit the same hard limits of possibility, being realistic in our time in history means getting serious about what might have formerly been seen as impossible: actually replacing our broken corporate capitalist system. Gar Alperovitz, co-founder of the Democracy Collaborative and co-chair of its Next System Project, shows how we can begin to build together for the systemic change we need to save both democracy and the planet. As a political economist, author, former legislative director in the House and Senate, nonprofit innovator and scholar, Gar shares breakthrough models for community-based political-economic development and new institutions of community wealth ownership. He highlights local, state and national policy approaches to community stability in the era of globalization that really work and can spread widely.

Introduction by Kenny Ausubel.

This speech was given at the 2018 Bioneers Conference. Read the full text version.

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To learn more about the work of Gar Alperovitz, visit The Next System Project.

Visit the Bioneers Green New Deal Media Collection.

2018 Destiny Arts Youth Performance

A performance by Oakland’s own incomparably dynamic and uplifting Destiny Arts Youth Performance Company.

This speech was given at the 2018 Bioneers Conference. To learn more about the work of Destiny Arts, visit their website.

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Third Annual Biomimicry Global Design Challenge Ray of Hope Prize

This annual competition was founded by the Ray C. Anderson Foundation and the Biomimicry Institute to stimulate biomimetic solutions to humanity’s greatest challenges. The winner of the prize, focused this year on climate change solutions, was announced and awarded on Bioneers’ main stage.

Introduction by Joshua Fouts, Bioneers Executive Director.

This speech was given at the 2018 Bioneers Conference. To learn more about the work of the Biomimicry Institute, visit their website.

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Lyla June – Nihimá Nahasdzáán: Healing Women and Nature Through a Diné (Navajo) Lens

Lyla June — poet, musician, anthropologist, educator, public speaker and community organizer of Diné, Cheyenne and European lineages — has inspired audiences around the world with a message of personal, collective and ecological healing. Drawing from her studies in Human Ecology and the traditional ancestral Diné worldview with which she grew up, she’s exploring the links between environmental destruction and “rape culture” and how we can heal and transform ourselves and our society. Lyla delves into how the healing of women can unleash the healing of men and how we have to heal humanity to heal the Earth. She shares paradigm-shifting techniques from the heart of the hogan that help mend the broken heart of the Western world.

Introduction by Nina Simons, Bioneers Co-Founder and Relationship Strategist.

This speech was given at the 2018 Bioneers Conference. To learn more about the work of Lyla June, visit her online.

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Edna Chavez – We Are The Future: Youth Leadership & Community Activism

This inspiring 18-year old activist from South Central Los Angeles, who has lost many friends and family members to gun violence, was a key participant in the March for Our Lives event and has become a leading gun control advocate and voter registration organizer.

This speech was given at the 2018 Bioneers Conference. Read the full text version.

Patrisse Cullors – Women of the #BlackLivesMatter Movement

Patrisse Cullors, a performance artist and award-winning organizer from Los Angeles, is one of the most effective and influential movement builders of our era. She was a key figure in the fight to force the creation of the first civilian oversight commission of LA’s Sheriff’s Department, but is most widely known as one of the three original co-founders of Black Lives Matter and for her recent, best-selling book, “When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir.”

In this talk, she explores the contributions women have made to the movement for Black lives historically and in the present; the institutional racism that still permeates our society, causing mass incarceration and high rates of maternal mortality in African-American communities; and the diverse ways women have been criminalized and have fought back to change the course of history.

Introduction by Sonia Sanjeeta Balajee, Founder and Creative Director of Our Bodhi Project. (Patrisse Cullors presentation begins at 5:00 in the video)

This speech was given at the 2018 Bioneers Conference. Read the full text version.

To learn more about the work of Patrisse Cullors, visit Black Lives Matter.

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Justin Winters – One Earth, an Ambitious Plan to Slow Global Climate Change

With contributions from scientists and partners around the world, One Earth, a project of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, has developed a bold, new plan to avert a climate crisis and protect our biosphere. Justin Winters, One Earth’s Co-Founder, explains the three goals humanity needs to achieve by 2050: Transform our energy systems to 100% clean, renewable energy; Protect, connect and restore 50% of our lands and seas; and shift to regenerative, carbon-negative agriculture globally.

At the heart of this effort is a new map of the world called the Global Safety Net, which shows what the world could look like if we achieve these three goals. This vision of a world where both nature and humanity coexist and thrive can only be achieved if activists and communities around the world are connected and strengthened with the resources and solutions to make this global transformation a reality. One Earth is accelerating this transformation through innovative science, radical tools for collaboration, and creative storytelling that will inspire and galvanize our society into action.

This talk was delivered at the 2018 National Bioneers Conference. Read the full text version.

For more information about One Earth, visit https://www.oneearth.org/

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

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Nina Simons – Roots and Branches

Bioneers co-founder and Chief Relationship Strategist Nina Simons, renowned for deeply intimate, poetic talks about how to find inner balance in the midst of our struggles to resist injustice and save the biosphere, explores here what trees can teach us about rootedness in community, embracing light and “branching out” effectively, even in the midst of challenging conditions. She describes how the long history of resilience of women and Indigenous and other oppressed peoples, including her Jewish ancestors, has helped her find perspective and fortitude, and how the extraordinarily dynamic women and youth-led movements that have been rising up these past few years are filling her with hope.

These were Nina Simons’ opening remarks at the 2018 National Bioneers Conference.

Read the full text version.

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The Ceibo Alliance – Protecting the Amazon Rainforest from Industrial Development

In response to catastrophic assaults on their lands and cultures by corporate industrial civilization, the First Peoples of the Amazon have formed unprecedented alliances to protect lands and peoples. These four extraordinary Indigenous leaders, Emergildo Criollo (Kofan), Alicia Salazar (Siona), Hernan Payaguaje (Siekopai), and Nemonte Nenquimo (Waorani) help guide the Ceibo Alliance of several ancestral peoples of Ecuador’s northern Amazon. They traveled far from their homes to share their stories of resistance and solutions. They offer guiding wisdom from their elders to show what’s at stake for their rainforest territories, what it means to the future of our planet, the amazing successes that Ceibo Alliance has found in their efforts to defend their land, and what we can all do as allies to protect the Amazon, its First Peoples and life on Earth.

Introduction by Cara Romero (Chemehuevi), Bioneers Indigeneity Program Director.

This speech was given at the 2018 Bioneers Conference. To learn more about the work of the Ceibo Alliance, visit Amazon Frontlines.  Read the transcript of these remarks here.

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