Show Times

  • Wednesday

    8pm

  • Saturday

    3pm

  • Sunday

    6am

Bioneers : Revolution From The Heart Of Nature

As Bioneers celebrated its 35th-anniversary conference, the driving question was whether we all 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 Bioneers has featured 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!


Find out more at bioneers.org/FSTV

Tune in to Free Speech TV to watch Bioneers Wednesdays at 8pm EST,  or join the revolution online no matter where you are and explore what you missed on FSTV On-Demand anytime!

#FSTV is available on Dish, DirectTV, Amazon Fire, AppleTV, Apple IOS, Google Play, RokuSling, and online at freespeech.org

Find out more at bioneers.org/FSTV

Full Episodes

The Climate Fight is Digital

With climate advocates subject to surveillance and censorship and giant companies controlling the ways information and knowledge flow around the world, the fight to save our climate is now inextricably intertwined with digital rights. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), which has long been at the forefront of protecting those rights, has helped environmental activists protect their emails from Chevron, understand the surveillance they are under and develop “Security Self-Defense” practices to protect themselves. Cindy Cohn, EFF’s Executive Director, one of the nation’s leading civil liberties attorneys specializing in Internet law, explains why EFF’s push for open access to scientific information, for net neutrality, for open source/patents, “creative commons” licenses, and more, is critical in the fight to prevent climatic unraveling. Introduction by Cara Pike, Founder and Executive Director, Climate Access

Abolition as Amends to Mother

Like so many of our other industries, the enormous mass incarceration system has wreaked havoc on our society. Our desire for punishment, and the profits made by the incarceration of millions of human beings, consequences be damned, lead to the destruction of the social fabric of countless communities in the short term, and contribute to the ravaging of the larger global environment in the longer term. 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. Introduction by entrepreneur / activist Azita Ardakani.

Walking the Red Road—It's Elemental

In this talk, one of the most respected, beloved and impactful longtime activists on behalf of Indigenous rights and women’s leadership as well as a major figure in the “Rights of Nature” movement, delves deeply into how many Indigenous peoples view the human relationship to the natural world and what their ancestral wisdom teaches about how to harmoniously interact with nature’s fundamental components, aka the “elements”—Earth, Air, Water, and Fire. Casey explores how these incredibly sophisticated traditional Indigenous land, water and fire stewardship strategies, many of which are now being “rediscovered” by contemporary managers, have much to teach us as we grapple with the climate crisis. Introduction by Alexis Bunten, Bioneers Indigeneity Program Co-Director

Organizing for Justice

Dolores Huerta, now 93 and still going strong, is a genuine living legend, one of the most influential labor activists in U.S. history as well as a foundational leader of the Chicano civil rights movement. Huerta’s 7 decades of activism have included co-founding the world-renowned United Farm Workers’ Union with César Chávez, leading major strikes and consumer boycotts, negotiating contracts, and tirelessly advocating for safer working conditions (including the elimination of harmful pesticides) and for unemployment and healthcare benefits for agricultural workers. In this talk, she draws from her decades of experience to share 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. Introduction by Film Producer, Writer and Director Peter Bratt.

Rematriation: Indigenous Women's Work to Recover, Remember and Heal

Returning to open this year’s conference, one of the leading figures in the East Bay Indigenous community and a longtime activist for First People’s rights and the protection of land and waters globally, Corrina Gould, focuses on 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. Introduction by Cara Romero, Director of Bioneers’ Indigeneity Program.

Expanding Our Movements for Climate Justice

One of the Southeast U.S.’ and Gulf South's most renowned veterans of climate justice struggles as an activist, community organizer, coalition-builder, and award-winning litigating environmental and human rights attorney, Colette Pichon Battle, born and raised in Bayou Liberty, Louisiana, focuses on creating spaces for frontline communities to gather and advance climate strategies that help them steward their water, energy, and land responsibly. She draws from her decades of experience fighting for equitable climate resilience to unearth historic lessons and expose the root causes of the inequities and imbalances that characterize our relationships to the natural world and to each other. Colette argues that we must expand our understanding of what a genuine Climate Justice movement needs to encompass if we are to succeed in innovating a better future, 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. Introduction by Nina Simons, Bioneers co-founder and Chief Relationship Strategist

The Slow Water Movement: How to Thrive in an Age of Drought and Deluge

Increasingly frequent floods and droughts amplified by climate change inevitably spur calls for higher levees, bigger drains, and longer aqueducts. But this engineered infrastructure designed to control water, along with urban sprawl and industrial agriculture and forestry, are actually making water disasters far worse. Now some scientists, farmers, landscape architects and urban planners are asking a revolutionary question: “What does water want?” Our current forms of “development” speed water away and destroy wetlands, floodplains, and forests that normally absorb floods, store water for droughts, and grow food. But now, practitioners of the Slow Water movement like Erica Gies—inspired by geology, microbes, beavers, older cultures, and cutting-edge science—are showing us that we can make space for water within our human habitats and collaborate with natural systems to forge a more resilient future. Introduction by Teo Grossman, President of Bioneers.

Beyond Binaries, Towards Solidarity

The co-founder of Bioneers and its Chief Relationship Strategist, author most recently of Nature, Culture & The Sacred: A Woman Listens for Leadership, 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.

It's the Corporations, Stupid

Bioneers’ founder (back in 1990!), has become renowned for his eagerly-anticipated yearly passionate orations that lay bare with ruthless analysis and humor specific sectors of malfeasance in our society that are seeking to derail progress to protect their wealth and privilege. This year he dissected the history and current machinations of corporations as they exert ever more dominance of our economy and political system and urged us to fully grasp their strategies and to resist and curb the power of these forces of inertia and reaction while we still can.

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. The symbiotic mycorrhizal networks formed by plants and fungi comprise an ancient life-support system that easily qualifies as one of the wonders of the living world. Yet climate change strategies, conservation agendas and restoration efforts overlook fungi and focus overwhelmingly on animals and plants. This is a problem: the destruction of underground fungal networks accelerates both climate change and biodiversity loss and interrupts vital global nutrient cycles. In this session, Merlin Sheldrake, the biologist and bestselling author of Entangled Life: How Fungi Make our World, drives home just how critically important fungi are and discuss the visionary work of the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks (SPUN) and its efforts to map and protect the mycorrhizal fungal communities of the planet. He also presents cutting-edge research into the flow dynamics of carbon and nutrients within mycorrhizal fungal networks. Introduction by Toby Kiers, Ph.D., Executive Director and Chief Scientist, SPUN

To Survive, We Must Transform Our Values

We can all see the Earth is heating up, that polar ice and glaciers are melting, and that ever more fires, floods and droughts are screaming at us that our climate is unraveling. Our societies are also showing signs of unraveling. But the legendary, world-renowned Native American Rights leader, Oren R. Lyons, Faithkeeper of the Turtle Clan of the Onondaga Nation, who, among countless achievements, helped establish the UN’s Working Group on Indigenous Populations and authored or co-authored such profoundly influential texts as: Wilderness in Native American Culture and Exiled in the Land of the Free: Democracy, Indian Nations and the U.S. Constitution, is here to tell us that we can’t give up. We have profound responsibilities to coming generations, and time is of the essence, but if we want to reverse course to prevent climate catastrophe and achieve real peace, we will have to dig deep to transform contemporary society’s core values that underlie and drive the existential crises we are facing. Introduction by Rex Lyons, Haudenosaunee Nationals.

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. If the ultimate goal is to keep fossil fuels in the ground, how must we transform our economy to make that possible? Award-winning activist and innovative educator, Sage Lenier, one of the most impressive young leaders to emerge in recent years, takes to the stage to shed 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.

Wild Life: How Personal Journeys are Essential to Sustainable Leadership in Environmental Science

A widely-traveled, brilliant conservation ecologist/wildlife biologist who has done cutting-edge work on apex predators in many remote and rugged locales around the world, Rae Wynn Grant is also one of the most captivating and inspiring science communicators of our time as well as a leading advocate for women and people of color in the sciences. In this talk, she draw sfrom her just about-to-be-released memoir, Wild Life, to share 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 and came to understand the vital roles we must each play not just as stewards for our land and water, but also for our communities, each other, and ourselves. Introduction by J.P. Harpignies, Bioneers Senior Producer

The Restorative Revolution and a River of Reciprocity

Sammy Gensaw III, a dynamic young Yurok leader, will share 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, and how Indigenous leadership can play a central role in rekindling our connections to land and water and ushering in a restorative, resilient future for all of us.

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. They have also conducted careful research that has helped inform development of nature-based solutions. Despite the urgency of the interdependent crises and the agency we have in helping address them, there abound efforts to discredit peer-reviewed climate change science. Dr. Simard's talk delves into recent backlash she has experienced over her science that informs climate solutions for the forests of western North America. Introduction by J.P. Harpignies, Bioneers Senior Producer

Raising Hell: Censorship, Carbon Capture, and Being Gay on the Great Plains

Taylor Brorby grew in the dynamic shortgrass prairie of western North Dakota, a youth that coincided with the brutal physical and psychic scarring of his surroundings by the coal and oil industry, a fate not made any easier by being a young gay boy enthralled by classical music, art, fishing, and poetry. From here, Taylor became a brilliant poet, writer and dedicated activist, one of the most eloquent and profound critics of the fossil fuel industry in the nation, penning, among other works, the extraordinary memoir: Boys and Oil: Growing Up Gay in a Fractured Land, the powerful essays in Civil Disobedience, and co-editing: Fracture: Essays, Poems, and Stories on Fracking in America. He shares some of his life story and seek to inflame us with the passion we will need to stop the carbon-burning Leviathans from destroying the biosphere. Introduction by Nikola Alexandre, Co-Creator & Stewardship Lead at Shelterwood Collective

Democracy vs. Big Tech: How We Can Win the Fight Against Monopoly Power

Most of us would like to live in a society accountable to people and the planet, one in which we exercise genuine agency over our lives and have a real say in the decisions that affect our communities, but the dramatic increase in corporate domination, especially the rise of giant tech companies that wield unprecedented levels of surveillance and control, is radically undermining our democracy and concentrating wealth and power in fewer and fewer hands. Stacy Mitchell, who has long been at the forefront of the national movement to rein in excessive corporate power and reinvigorate local self-reliance, is here to tell us that, as powerful as these immense companies and their political allies may seem, they’ve finally met their match. A broad grassroots alliance, together with a new generation of creative government leaders, is bringing long-dormant anti-monopoly laws and strategies back to life. This promising turn of events, Stacy will explain, offers hope for reclaiming our rights and assuring a far more equitable and greener future. Introduction by Kenny Ausubel, Bioneers Co-Founder and CEO

Proud Partners