Bioneers

So, um, Rose was a great inspiration, and she challenged me to, um, understand that women were the first scientists.

And simultaneously, I, like hopefully many of you, heard the great Mohawk leader, Katsi Cook, at Bioneers and other venues.

And Katsi Cook is a environmental researcher, water protector, philanthropist now, does amazing work.

And she always said, "Women are the first environment." Women are the first environment.

And a bunch of years ago, this was probably 10 years ago, I had come across this idea.

There was a Bioneers event.

I'm saying the wrong thing.

I went to a Bioneers event once in California, but this was...

I can't remember the term for it, but basically they called in naturalists and specialists to all of the fungus people and all of the plant people and insect people.

And they did this thing.

Yael Jose Barrero, a scholar, an activist, a journalist, a novelist, a Taino elder, and someone who's been very close to the Haudenosaunee Confederacy for most of his life, primarily through his very beautiful, clear, and smart decision to become wed to Goody Cook.

Please put your hands together for a longtime collaborator of John Mohawk, who was such an influential figure in the Bioneers universe, a trusted collaborator of Onondaga faith keeper Oren Lyons, and a deep, beautiful indigenous leader in his own right, Jose

Barrow.

May the sun be with you.

[gentle music] Welcome to The Bioneers, revolution from the heart of nature and the human heart.

It's all alive.

It's all connected.

There, he saw the catastrophic consequences of climate disruption and the fossil fuel economy on the tribe's sacred wild rice, called manomin.

Instead of a normal harvest of eighty pounds, the epic drought left just a cup and a half of this critical food for the community and their economy.

Nick Estes spoke at a Bioneers conference.

Anishinaabe people have an esoteric spiritual connection to manomin, which is codified within their 1855 treaty that actually protects the right of manomin to exist.

It's the only grain that is protected by treaty rights, by indigenous treaty rights, which isn't necessarily an aberration because Article 11 of the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty, which was signed by my nation, the Oceti Sakowin, the Lakota Nation, and the Dakota Nations, also set aside territory for the continued perpetuation of the BdéOye Þíe, or the Buffalo Nation, or the Buffalo People.

As Secretary of the California Natural Resources Agency, Wade Crowfoot is responsible for identifying nature-based solutions and putting them into state policy.

He spoke at a Bioneers conference.

California is one of the world's biodiversity hotspots.

Scientists say one of 36 hotspots in the world.

We'll hear more from Wade Crowfoot when we return.

I'm Neil Harvey.

You're listening to The Bioneers, revolution from the heart of nature.

If you'd like to learn more about the variety of nature-based solutions that are inherent within the diverse life on our planet, check out our other episodes of our Nature's Genius series.

So I was in a position to have a little bit of breathing room to decide what I wanted to do next.

A few years earlier than that, I started to attend the Bioneers conference.

And I was like, I landed in that space and I was like, oh, these are my people.

You know, I thought my fed people were my people, but I moved into that space and I thought, these are my people.