Bioneers: Revolution From the Heart of Nature

Nontoxic hair color from the recipes of beetles, and a potential Alzheimer’s cure derived from applying nature’s operating instructions. The world-renowned “co-father of green chemistry,” John Warner, says: “We’re learning to do everything we want to do without poisoning people or planet.” He’s showing how we can follow nature’s lead to create good chemistry with nature and our own health. The results are jaw-dropping.

Native American students face racism throughout their education, from racist mascots to the historical erasure of the American genocide from textbooks. In this passionate conversation, Indigenous Rights Activists Dahkota Brown, Chiitaanibah Johnson, Jayden Lim, and Naelyn Pike share stories of their own experiences and how they are working to abolish racism in schools.

Women-led movements arising around the world herald a profound shift that changes everything. Visionary women leaders Osprey Orielle-Lake, Leila Salazar and Lynne Twist report on the women leading the clean energy revolution in Africa, defending the Amazonian rainforest, and making peace in Liberia.

In this time of radical upheaval and change, fulfilling the promise of a “more perfect union” in the United States means building a multi-racial democracy through transformative solidarity. As the Founder-in-Residence at Policy Link, Professor Angela Glover Blackwell has spent decades advancing racial and economic equity at the national and local levels. She says the fate of the wealthiest nation on Earth depends on what happens to the very people who’ve been left behind.FeaturingAngela Glover Blackwell, one of the nation’s most prominent, award-winning social justice advocates, is “Founder-in-Residence” at PolicyLink, the organization she started in 1999 to advance racial and economic equity that has long been a leading force in improving access and opportunity in such areas as health, housing, transportation, and infrastructure. The host of the “Radical Imagination” podcast and a professor at the Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley, Angela, before PolicyLink, served as Senior Vice President at The Rockefeller Foundation and founded the Urban Strategies Council. She serves on numerous boards and advisory councils, including the inaugural Community Advisory Council of the Federal Reserve and California’s Task Force on Business and Jobs Recovery.ResourcesFrom Othering to Belonging with Angela Glover Blackwell and john a. powellTransformative Solidarity for a Thriving Multiracial Democracy with Angela Glover BlackwellThis is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. Visit the radio and podcast homepage to find out how to hear the program on your local station and how to subscribe to the podcast

In this episode, we speak with Julian Brave NoiseCat, an enrolled citizen of the Secwepemc, also known as Shuswap First Nation, in British Columbia.Julian Brave NoiseCat explores the importance of connection and relationship, to family, to history, to place and to culture, threading his own story throughout a larger narrative about the deep trauma Indigenous people have experienced through colonization and the resilience and power that is emerging as individuals, tribes and nations work to reclaim their own stories and landscapes.Julian is a fellow of New America and the Type Media Center, Vice President of Policy & Strategy at Data for Progress as well as one of the first visiting fellows of the Center for Racial Justice at the University of Michigan’s Ford School of Public Policy. In 2021, NoiseCat was named on the Time 100 list of emerging leaders.This episode’s artwork features photography by Dauwila Harrison. Mer Young creates the series collage artwork.FeaturingA prolific, widely published Indigenous journalist, writer, activist and policy analyst, Julian Brave NoiseCat has become a highly influential figure in the coverage and analysis of Environmental Justice and Indigenous issues as well as of national and global political and economic trends and policies.Raised in Oakland, California, in a single-mother household, Julian is a proud member of the Canim Lake Band Tsq'escen and a descendant of the Lil'Wat Nation of Mount Currie. You can follow Julian on Twitter @jnoisecat.ResourcesVideo of Julian Brave NoiseCat's Keynote speech at Bioneers 2021– Apocalypse Then & NowVideo of Indigenous Activism NOW: Talking Story With Clayton Thomas-Muller and Julian NoiseCatVideo of Julian's Keynote speech at Bioneers 219 The Indigenous Renaissance | Julian Brave NoiseCatThis is an episode of Indigeneity Conversations, a podcast series that features deep and engaging conversations with Native culture bearers, scholars, movement leaders, and non-Native allies on the most important issues and solutions in Indian Country. Bringing Indigenous voices to global conversations. Visit the Indigeneity Conversations homepage to learn more.  

Defending land rights and preserving tribal culture is difficult for North American tribes, especially for those that do not have sovereign nation-to-nation status with the federal government. The lack of recognition of a tribe’s nationhood as a self-governing entity (as defined by the U.S. Constitution) has been explicitly used as a tool to continue to prevent Native peoples from living on the most desirable lands or protecting sacred lands that have been stolen. We talk about these issues with Corrina Gould, a celebrated leader and activist of the First Peoples of the Bay Area from the Lisjan/Ohlone tribe of Northern California. She also co-founded the grassroots organization “Indian People Organizing for Change”, which works to defend and preserve sacred Ohlone shell mounds formed over generations.FeaturingCorrina Gould (Lisjan/Ohlone) is the chair and spokesperson for the Confederated Villages of Lisjan, as well as the Co-Director for The Sogorea Te’ Land Trust, a women-led organization within the urban setting of her ancestral territory of the Bay Area that works to return Indigenous land to Indigenous people. Born and raised in her ancestral homeland, the territory of Huchiun, she is the mother of three and grandmother of four. Corrina has worked on preserving and protecting the sacred burial sites of her ancestors throughout the Bay Area for decades. ResourcesCalifornia Indian Genocide and Resilience | 2017 Bioneers panel in which four California Indian leaders share the stories of kidnappings, mass murders, and slavery that took place under Spanish, Mexican and American colonizations — and how today’s generation is dealing with the contemporary implications. This is an episode of Indigeneity Conversations, a podcast series that features deep and engaging conversations with Native culture bearers, scholars, movement leaders, and non-Native allies on the most important issues and solutions in Indian Country. Bringing Indigenous voices to global conversations. Visit the Indigeneity Conversations homepage to learn more.  

There is a growing movement to redefine manhood, and to address ways that violence is baked into our cultural expectations of masculinity. Courageous, visionary men are rising to the challenge. One of those men is activist, writer and public speaker Kevin Powell. In this half-hour, Powell boldly and bravely discusses his experiences with toxic masculinity and his journey to redefine what it means to be a man. This is “Climbing Out of the Man Box: What Does Healthy Manhood Look Like?”FeaturingKevin Powell, a leading figure in the movement to redefine manhood and in contemporary American political, cultural and literary life as well as in the hip-hop arena, is the product of a single mother, absent father and severe poverty in his youth. In spite of those challenges he has become an acclaimed, prolific writer, authoring 13 books, including his autobiography, The Education of Kevin Powell: A Boy's Journey into Manhood.ResourcesWatch the full keynote and learn more about Kevin Powell and his work | Bioneers 2018 KeynoteThis is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. Visit the radio and podcast homepage to find out how to hear the program on your local station and how to subscribe to the podcast

In this episode, Indigenous scholar and organizer Nick Estes explores how Indigenous land-based and Earth-centered societies are advancing regenerative solutions and campaigns to transform capitalism. An ancient “eco-nomics” today puts Indigenous leadership at the forefront of assuring a habitable planet.FeaturingNick Estes, Ph.D. (Kul Wicasa/Lower Brule Sioux), is Assistant Professor of American Studies at the University of New Mexico and a member of the Oak Lake Writers Society, a group of Dakota, Nakota and Lakota writers. In 2014, he was a co-founder of The Red Nation in Albuquerque, NM, an organization dedicated to the liberation of Native people from capitalism and colonialism. He serves on its editorial collective and writes its bi-weekly newsletter. Nick Estes is also the author of: Our History Is the Future: Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance.ResourcesNick Estes – The Age of the Water Protector and Climate Chaos (video) | Bioneers 2022 KeynoteIndigenous Pathways to a Regenerative Future (video) | Bioneers 2021 PanelThe Red Deal: Indigenous Action to Save Our Earth | The Red Nation Indigenous Resistance Against Carbon | Indigenous Environmental NetworkFor more info on Nick Estes and show notes, please visit our radio page. This is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. Visit the radio and podcast homepage to find out how to hear the program on your local station and how to subscribe to the podcast.

What if there are ways to sustainably harvest protein and nutritious vegetables from the seas in ways that restore coastlines, local economies, produces abundant food, and sequesters vast amounts of carbon dioxide? Pathfinding ocean farmer Bren Smith has cultivated a breakthrough method of near-shore aquaculture called 3-D Ocean Farming, which has the potential to transform our relationship with the ocean, make room again for the flourishing wild diversity of ocean animals, and launch a novel, delicious and authentically sustainable cuisine along with way.FeaturingBren Smith, co-executive director and co-founder of GreenWave and owner of Thimble Island Ocean Farm, pioneered the development of regenerative ocean farming. Bren is the winner of the 2015 Buckminster Fuller Challenge award. He is an Ashoka, Castanea, and Echoing Green Climate Fellow and James Beard Award-winning author of Eat Like a Fish: My Adventures Farming the Ocean to Fight Climate Change.ResourcesVideo of Bren Smith speaking at Bioneers 2016This is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. Visit the radio and podcast homepage to find out how to hear the program on your local station and how to subscribe to the podcast.

In an era of climate change and sprawling human development, how can we conserve, manage and/or restore wilderness at scale? And what does “wilderness” mean in an epoch almost completely dominated by human activity? What role do wild places play, practically and spiritually? Hosted by Jason Mark, Editor of the Earth Island Journal. With: Bruce Hamilton, Deputy Executive Director of the Sierra Club; Richard White, Professor of Environmental History at Stanford; Rue Mapp, award-winning founder of Outdoor Afro. Recorded Friday, October 16, 2015 at the National Bioneers Conference in San Rafael, California.