As Bioneers celebrated our 35th-anniversary conference, the driving question was whether we have sufficient time to make the transformational change necessary to begin to heal and regenerate people and planet.
We need to connect and scale the constellation of brilliant social movements to reach critical mass and enact the kinds of breakthrough systemic solutions we’ve cultivated here at Bioneers for decades as they’ve matured, spread, and gotten ready for prime time.
Please enjoy and share this collection of media from the 2024 Bioneers Conference: videos of the amazing keynotes, performances, and more.
There’s more to come! We’ll be posting more from the conference throughout the coming months, so if you’re not already on our newsletter list, sign up today!
Original Sea Star Image by Laurent Formery, courtesy of Evident’s Image of the Year Competition. Learn about the research technique behind this striking image here.
KEYNOTE ADDRESSES
Kenny Ausubel
It’s the Corporations, Stupid
Bioneers founder Kenny Ausubel dissects the history and current machinations of corporations as they exert ever more dominance of our economy and political system, and urges us to fully grasp their strategies and to resist and curb the power of these forces of inertia and reaction while we still can.
Taylor Brorby
Raising Hell: Censorship, Carbon Capture, and Being Gay on the Great Plains
Taylor Brorby is a brilliant poet, writer and dedicated activist, one of the most eloquent and profound critics of the fossil fuel industry in the nation. He shares some of his life story, seeking to inflame us with the passion we will need to stop the carbon-burning Leviathans from destroying the biosphere.
Casey Camp-Horinek
Walking the Red Road: It’s Elemental
Casey Camp-Horinek, one of the most respected, beloved and impactful longtime activists on behalf of Indigenous rights and women’s leadership, delves deeply into what Indigenous ancestral wisdom teaches about how to harmoniously interact with nature’s fundamental components, aka the “elements”—Earth, Air, Water, and Fire.
Cindy Cohn
The Climate Fight is Digital
Cindy Cohn, Executive Director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and one of the nation’s leading civil liberties attorneys specializing in Internet law, explains why EFF’s push for open access to scientific information, net neutrality, open source/patents, “creative commons” licenses, and more, is critical in the fight to prevent climatic unraveling.
Sammy Gensaw, III
The Restorative Revolution and a River of Reciprocity
Sammy Gensaw III, a dynamic young Yurok leader, shares some of his experiences working for ecological and cultural revival along the Klamath River, central to his people’s identity and livelihood. He discusses how the epic struggle to remove destructive dams required drawing deeply from ancestral wisdom, modern science, and cutting-edge activism.
Erica Gies
The Slow Water Movement: How to Thrive in an Age of Drought and Deluge
Erica Gies shares both ancient and cutting-edge approaches to water management being implemented in a number of locales around the world, offering far more effective strategies to ensure a healthy, productive human-water relationship than the massive, failed attempts to impose our will on an element we cannot defeat we have long pursued.
Corrina Gould
Rematriation: Indigenous Women’s Work to Recover, Remember and Heal
Corrina Gould discusses the concept and practice of “Rematriation,” which involves reclaiming traditional land and sacred sites to help rebuild traditional cultures and heal the deep wounds inflicted by colonization and genocide and also prioritizes the unique role women play in that enormous undertaking.
Dolores Huerta
Organizing for Justice
Drawing from her decades of experience, Dolores Huerta shares her thoughts on the critical importance of organizing unions in all sectors of the economy to fight for a fairer society, and on how to build more unity between labor, social, racial, gender, and climate justice movements.
Sage Lenier
Towards a Just Transition: Blueprint for a Green Economy
We spend a lot of time talking about the ecological crisis, and not nearly enough talking about real, workable solutions. Sage Lenier, one of the most impressive young leaders to emerge in recent years, sheds light on what a realistic and just transition looks like, and the role we can each play in leading us towards a more circular and equitable economy.
Oren Lyons
To Survive, We Must Transform Our Values
In the face of climate and societal unraveling, the legendary, world-renowned Native American Rights leader, Oren R. Lyons, is here to tell us that we can’t give up. To reverse course, we will have to dig deep to transform contemporary society’s core values that underlie and drive the existential crises we are facing.
Charlotte Michaluk
Sailing into the Future: Weaving Tradition and Modernity
What can fiber arts and rotor sails have in common? Charlotte Lenore Michaluk, an extraordinary 17-year-old scientist, researcher, biomimetic inventor and passionate eco-activist and conservationist shares her hopeful vision informed by a deep respect of the natural world and powered by brilliant, clean green technologies.
Stacy Mitchell
Democracy vs. Big Tech: How We Can Win the Fight Against Monopoly Power
Corporate domination is radically undermining our democracy and concentrating wealth and power in fewer and fewer hands, but these companies have finally met their match. A broad grassroots alliance is bringing long-dormant anti-monopoly laws and strategies back to life, offering hope for reclaiming our rights and assuring a far more equitable and greener future.
Claudia Peña
Abolition as Amends to Mother
The mass incarceration system has wreaked havoc on our society, leading to the destruction of the social fabric of countless communities and contributing to the ravaging of the global environment. Our only path forward is to make amends with the land, water and air, one harmful industry at a time, including abolition of the prison industrial complex as we know it.
Colette Pichon Battle
Expanding Our Movements for Climate Justice
Colette Pichon Battle argues that we must expand our understanding of what a genuine Climate Justice movement needs to encompass if we are to succeed, and why such struggles as gender and migrant justice are inextricably connected to human rights for clean air, clean water, sovereign land, and community control of justly-sourced sustainable energy.
Merlin Sheldrake
How Fungi Make our Worlds
Most fungi live out of sight, yet they make up a massively diverse kingdom of organisms that support and sustain nearly all living systems. Biologist and bestselling author Merlin Sheldrake drives home the critical importance of fungi and presents cutting-edge research into the flow dynamics of carbon and nutrients within mycorrhizal fungal networks.
Suzanne Simard
Dealing with Backlash Against Nature-Based Solutions to Climate Change
For decades, scientists have warned about the consequences of deforestation and fossil fuel burning that have led to today’s climate and biodiversity crises, but efforts abound to discredit peer-reviewed climate change science. Suzanne Simard delves into the backlash she has experienced over her science that informs climate solutions for the forests of western North America.
Nina Simons
Beyond Binaries, Towards Solidarity
The co-founder of Bioneers and its Chief Relationship Strategist sets the stage for each year’s conference, and did it on the occasion of Bioneers’ 35th anniversary by acknowledging the unusually intense anguish and pain underlying the pressing crises we are currently facing, but sharing her own need to balance activist engagement with self-care, inner exploration, and an honoring of our personal and collective grief.
Rae Wynn-Grant
Wild Life: How Personal Journeys are Essential to Sustainable Leadership in Environmental Science
Rae Wynn-Grant, one of the most captivating science communicators of our time and a leading advocate for women and people of color in the sciences, shares some of her experiences finding her way in a profession with very few scientists who looked like her as she embarked on a quest to study the ever-shifting relationship between humans, animals, and place.
PERFORMANCES
Destiny Arts Youth Performance Company
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.
The Local Honeys
The Local Honeys (Montana Hobbs and Linda Jean Stokley) is a highly acclaimed musical duo from Kentucky that was formed a decade ago. Montana and Linda Jean are solidly anchored in the Appalachian culture and music they grew up in and deeply respectful of those roots, but their innovative songwriting, storytelling and musicianship are not constrained by tradition, as their music is very much of its time, elegantly and powerfully capturing the beauty, struggles and complexities of contemporary Appalachian life. Their most recent album is the eponymous, The Local Honeys, on La Honda Records.
MaMuse
MaMuse, a long-lived musical duo composed of the highly accomplished multi-instrumentalists (including upright bass, guitar, mandolins, and flutes), powerful vocalists, and brilliant songwriters, Sorah Nutting and Karisha Longaker, is dedicated to playing uplifting, heart-opening music rooted in the folk and gospel traditions that embodies a love of all life, a cultivation of emotional intelligence, and a desire for a world in which all can thrive.
Chris Pierce
Chris Pierce, a highly acclaimed, socially-conscious singer/songwriter/musician, has been described as “one of America’s most talented, gifted, and affecting artists.” He has toured or played nationally and internationally with such luminaries as Neil Young, B.B. King, Seal, Al Green, Steve Earle, Allison Russell, Ramblin’ Jack Elliot, Rodrigo y Gabriella, Jill Scott, Keb’Mo, Blind Boys of Alabama, Aaron Neville, Allison Russell, Sara Bareilles, and others. He has performed at many prestigious venues from The Kennedy Center to NPR’s World Café to the Newport Folk Festival. His most recent albums are 2021’s American Silence, widely viewed as one of the best folk albums of that year, and 2023’s Let All Who Will. In addition to his solo career, Chris Pierce performs/records with Sunny War as “War and Pierce,” with the Americana/roots band Leon Creek, and occasionally with the Black Opry Revue.