Bioneers: Revolution From the Heart of Nature

The Original Instructions represent the ancient empirical wisdom of Traditional Ecological Knowledge earned over generations and millennia by people living closely with the land and each other. They also comprise disarmingly simple counsel: be thankful, enjoy life and attend to the inner pollution that results in outer pollution. Indigenous leaders Winona LaDuke, John Trudell and Evon Peter voice these ancient instructions, which hold the keys to our survival as a species in the historic transition to a truly sustainable world.

The brilliant, award-winning contributor to the New York Times Magazine, Journalism professor and best-selling writer Michael Pollan, author most recently (May 2018) of How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence, had a fascinating conversation back in 2001 with renowned anthropologist and ethnobotanist Wade Davis on the co-evolution of people and plants. Michael explained the importance of gardening to human evolution and Wade shared his insights into the centrality of plants in cultures from the jungles of Borneo to the secret “zombifying” herbal mixtures of Haiti. (2001)

Daphne Miller, MD, had long suspected that human wellbeing and how our food is produced are intimately linked. She visited and studied seven innovative family farms around the country on a quest to discover the hidden connections between how we grow our food and our health, and she published her findings in "Farmacology: Total Health from the Ground Up" (also the basis for the award-winning documentary In Search of Balance). (Daphne begins speaking at 44:00.) Joining Daphne to discuss how farming techniques from seed choice to soil management have a direct impact on our health will be: Timothy J. LaSalle, Ph.D., co-founder and Co-Director of the Regenerative Agriculture Initiative at CSU Chico and first CEO of the Rodale Institute (Tim begins speaking at 3:50); and Josh Whiton, a highly successful eco-tech entrepreneur whose most recent project is MakeSoil.org (Josh begins speaking at 25:35). Hosted by Arty Mangan, Director of Bioneers’ Restorative Food Systems Program.

It’s a fact of life that communities of color and low-income communities suffer the worst environmental damage. Urban planner Greg Watson, physician Martha Arguello, and activist and scholar Carl Anthony show how these communities have found practical ways to reclaim the health and wellbeing of both their places and their health.

Until recently, it has been very difficult to get approval for serious research into “mind-manifesting” plants and drugs. Leading figures in the field describe that potential and the status of current research. Hosted by Kat Harrison; with Ralph Metzner, Charles Grob, Mariavittoria Mangini, Ph.D., and Alicia Danforth.

The seminal co-founder of Green Chemistry, John Warner, and his esteemed partner, green chemistry educator Amy Cannon, are co-founders of the groundbreaking green chemistry education non-profit Beyond Benign. They’ll show how the combination of green chemistry and biomimicry in the STEM curriculum provides a unique opportunity to inspire students to make connections with the natural world and to use that inspi- ration to become creators of truly sustainable products and processes. They’ll focus on techniques and resources for adopting green chemistry and biomimicry throughout educational systems, highlighting K-12 and higher education programs aimed at transforming STEM education.Recorded Saturday, October 17, 2015 at the National Bioneers Conference in San Rafael, California. 

"There is an environmental movement and there is a social justice movement. If they could truly become one movement the transformation would be unimaginable.When a black child in Oakland winces at the thought of an ancient tree being cut down in northern California, and when an ex logger in northern California winces at the thought of a teenager, a black teenager in Oakland, being cut down on those streets, then we’ll know that day has arrived."Could Western civilization's oldest ethical instructions of the Golden Rule hold acute relevance to our planetary environmental crisis? Could restoring respect for human beings be the key to restoring the health of the planet? Author Paul Hawken has been tracking the rapid proliferation of nonprofit, non-governmental organizations around the world. It boils down to this: Taking care of nature means taking care of people, and taking care of people means taking care of nature.

Did medicine's separation from nature propel our health care system into its current crisis? Join Dr. Andrew Weil and nurse and health activist Charlotte Brody as they describe how Ecological Medicine reunites the interdependence of medicine and nature, and restores the feminine principle in healing.

Shailja Patel's unique artistry is a provocative global mash-up of genres. Shes a slam poetry champion and star of her award-winning, one-woman play Migritude about the intricate webs of global migration and cultural identity. As an acclaimed poet of South Asian and Kenyan ancestry, through her fearless art she embodies the authentic voices of women, South Asians and Africans who are otherwise seldom heard. For her, the ultimate destination of poetry is justice -- too heart-breakingly beautiful to be denied.

With the illustrious anthropologist Francis Huxley of the renowned Huxley clan; a leading figure in Native American and American Studies, the late, beloved professor John Mohawk; and groundbreaking anthropological thinker and author Jeremy Narby. Practices by different Indigenous people around the world were labeled "shamanism" by anthropologists and dismissed as irrational superstition, but in the 20th century cultural observers began to see shamans in a new light, as creators of meaning. Are science and shamanism compatible? Is Indigenous knowledge safe for a modern, secular world?