Indigenous peoples are the original “bioneers.” Since our founding in New Mexico, Bioneers has been fundamentally shaped and guided by Indigenous knowledge, participants and partners.

Our Native-led Indigeneity program promotes the leadership, cultural survival, human rights, land rights, Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) and cultural wisdom of First Peoples. We all belong to mother earth., and Indigenous cultures  carry knowledge, practices and wisdom crucial to navigating today’s unprecedented global crisis.

Indigenous Peoples also carry what’s sometimes called “The Original Instructions,” invaluable guiding principles, values, ethics, social processes and tools for how a culture or society can organize itself in relation to place, embody kinship, and practice peace.

The Indigeneity program invites support for Indigenous Peoples as the guardians of lands that contain as much as 80 percent of the world’s remaining biodiversity, and are the razor’s edge of the development of both clean and dirty energy. The program supports all peoples to explore where their ancestral ties lie, examine the history of colonization within their own roots, which requires a respect for the intellectual property and cultural privacy of First Peoples.

Our annual Indigenous Forum within the Bioneers Conference provides a unique space for in-depth explorations of the most important issues and solutions in Indian Country. The Indigenous Forum has become an annual touchstone for Native leaders and non-Native allies to communicate and to create and grow strategic alliances.

We produce and distribute extensive media from conference and Indigenous Forum presentations and interviews, including radio shows from our annual series, our Indigeneity Youtube channel, the acclaimed anthology book Original Instructions and other publications We serve Indigenous and mainstream communities, educators, youth, and many others with authentic tools for understanding and teaching contemporary Indigenous issues.

We produce regular one-of-a-kind TEK intensive workshops for hands-on learning and training in invaluable traditional practices.

We work directly with students and educators to create an educational model for cross-cultural understanding between Native and non-Native students. We provide educators and lifelong learners access to free classroom-ready coursework and teaching materials.

We partner with U.S. Indigenous communities to offer Rights of Nature legal trainings and governance practices.

Past Organizational Projects with an Indigenous focus include:

The Iroquois White Corn Project.

Dreaming New Mexico