Indigenous peoples worldwide honor plants, not only as our sustainers, but as our oldest teachers who share teachings of generosity, creativity, sustainability and joy. By their living examples, plants spur our imaginations of how we might live. By braiding indigenous Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) with modern tools of botanical science, Robin Kimmerer, professor of Environmental Science and Forestry, of Potawatomi ancestry, explores the question: “If plants are our teachers, what are their lessons, and how might we become better students”?

Since 1990, Bioneers has acted as a fertile hub of social and scientific innovators with practical and visionary solutions for the world's most pressing environmental and social challenges.

To experience talks like this, please join us at the Bioneers National Conference each October, and regional Bioneers Resilient Community Network gatherings held nationwide throughout the year.

For more information on Bioneers, please visit http://www.bioneers.org and stay in touch via Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/Bioneers.org) and Twitter (https://twitter.com/bioneers).

This Aleut traditional messenger invokes indigenous perspectives and ancestral wisdom to guide us through modern times. His elders say that the leadership of women is paramount to transform civilization to conserve Earth’s capacity to sustain life.

This speech was given at the 2013 Bioneers National Conference.

Since 1990, Bioneers has acted as a fertile hub of social and scientific innovators with practical and visionary solutions for the world's most pressing environmental and social challenges.

To experience talks like this, please join us at the Bioneers National Conference each October, and regional Bioneers Resilient Community Network gatherings held nationwide throughout the year.

For more information on Bioneers, please visit http://www.bioneers.org and stay in touch via Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/Bioneers.org) and Twitter (https://twitter.com/bioneers).

The Executive Director of the Indigenous Environmental Network invokes indigenous peoples asking the world to reevaluate our relationship to Mother Earth. We can turn away from destroying, privatizing and commodifying nature, and instead to “indigenuity” to fashion sustainable solutions by re-sacralizing our relationship with Mother Earth.

This speech was given at the 2013 Bioneers National Conference.

Since 1990, Bioneers has acted as a fertile hub of social and scientific innovators with practical and visionary solutions for the world's most pressing environmental and social challenges.

To experience talks like this, please join us at the Bioneers National Conference each October, and regional Bioneers Resilient Community Network gatherings held nationwide throughout the year.

For more information on Bioneers, please visit http://www.bioneers.org and stay in touch via Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/Bioneers.org) and Twitter (https://twitter.com/bioneers).

In this expansive tour of human civilization leading to today's climate crisis, Native American scholar John Mohawk explores the interrelationship of climate change and human evolution. For most of our history as hunter-gatherers and farmers, we retained an intimate knowledge of the natural world that supported us, especially plants. That knowledge, he observes, is being lost at radical rates today. Re-establishing our intimacy and kinship with the plant world is key to surviving dramatic climatic changes. He shares insights about the "Native American pragmatism" that successfully balanced the practical with the spiritual for thousands of years.

"All of the survival techniques we learned about our relations to cultivars and everything at this hour stands in peril. And our relationship to wild plants stands in peril. The big human relationship to our cultural heritage is on the verge of extinction, and we need to change that."

This speech was presented at the 2004 Bioneers National Conference and is part of the Indigenous Knowledge, Vol. 1 and Nature, Culture and Spirit, Vol. 1 Collections.

Since 1990, Bioneers has acted as a fertile hub of social and scientific innovators with practical and visionary solutions for the world's most pressing environmental and social challenges.

To experience talks like this, please join us at the Bioneers National Conference each October, and regional Bioneers Resilient Community Network gatherings held nationwide throughout the year.

For more information on Bioneers, please visit http://www.bioneers.org and stay in touch via Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/Bioneers.org) and Twitter (https://twitter.com/bioneers).

Tom B.K. Goldtooth, a prominent indigenous and social change activist, contrasts common Western beliefs with those of the indigenous peoples. He shares that indigenous people know that it is "our sacred responsibility is to safeguard and protect this world."

Since 1990, Bioneers has acted as a fertile hub of social and scientific innovators with practical and visionary solutions for the world's most pressing environmental and social challenges.

To experience talks like this, please join us at the Bioneers National Conference each October, and regional Bioneers Resilient Community Network gatherings held nationwide throughout the year.

For more information on Bioneers, please visit http://www.bioneers.org and stay in touch via Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/Bioneers.org) and Twitter (https://twitter.com/bioneers).

In the face of large global institutional (economic, political, educational, etc.) obstacles to advancing the Rights of Mother Earth, it is time to explicitly state what we can and must do. This brief presentation is essentially a reporting out on what Indigenous Peoples from around the World are saying about activities and actions that must be encouraged and enhanced in the struggle to defend Mother Earth from human abuse and misuse. Dr. Dan Wildcat is the Director of Haskell Environmental Research Studies (HERS) Center and Dean of the College of Natural and Social Sciences at Haskell Indian Nations University in Lawrence, Kansas where he has taught for 25 years.

This speech took place of the 2012 Indigenous Forum, co-produced with the Cultural Conservatory, at the Bioneers National Conference.

Since 1990, Bioneers has acted as a fertile hub of social and scientific innovators with practical and visionary solutions for the world's most pressing environmental and social challenges.

To experience talks like this, please join us at the Bioneers National Conference each October, and regional Bioneers Resilient Community Network gatherings held nationwide throughout the year.

For more information on Bioneers, please visit http://www.bioneers.org and stay in touch via Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/Bioneers.org) and Twitter (https://twitter.com/bioneers).

Native American global leader and Executive Director of the Indigenous Environmental Network Tom Goldtooth shows that at the root of indigenous survival is gratitude for the generosity of Mother Earth and biodiversity. He contrasts this worldview with neo-colonial approaches such as genetic engineering, patenting of life, dirty energy extraction, and “Free Trade” that leads to exploitation, poverty, violence and international discord.

This speech was given at the 2001 Bioneers National Conference.

Since 1990, Bioneers has acted as a fertile hub of social and scientific innovators with practical and visionary solutions for the world's most pressing environmental and social challenges.

To experience talks like this, please join us at the Bioneers National Conference each October, and regional Bioneers Resilient Community Network gatherings held nationwide throughout the year.

For more information on Bioneers, please visit http://www.bioneers.org and stay in touch via Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/Bioneers.org) and Twitter (https://twitter.com/bioneers).

Fourteen-year-old indigenous environmental activist and rapper Xiuhtezcatl Martinez, Youth Director of Earth Guardians, has organized rallies, actions, demonstrations and events, and spoken globally. His generation is rising up to defend our future.

This speech was given at the 2014 Bioneers Annual Conference.

Since 1990, Bioneers has acted as a fertile hub of social and scientific innovators with practical and visionary solutions for the world's most pressing environmental and social challenges.

To experience talks like this, please join us at the Bioneers National Conference each October, and regional Bioneers Resilient Community Network gatherings held nationwide throughout the year.

For more information on Bioneers, please visit http://www.bioneers.org and stay in touch via Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/Bioneers.org) and Twitter (https://twitter.com/bioneers).

Winona LaDuke, the renowned indigenous rights leader and two-time Green Party U.S. Vice Presidential candidate highlights the struggles of indigenous peoples to protect their food sovereignty, restore their food systems and protect their cultures and foods from genetic modification. This speech was presented at the 2007 Bioneers National Conference in San Rafael, CA.

Since 1990, Bioneers has acted as a fertile hub of social and scientific innovators with practical and visionary solutions for the world's most pressing environmental and social challenges.

To experience talks like this, please join us at the Bioneers National Conference each October, and regional Bioneers Resilient Community Network gatherings held nationwide throughout the year.

Learn more about the Bioneers Indigenous Knowledge Program at http://www.bioneers.org/pages/indigen... and stay in touch via Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/Bioneers.org) and Twitter (https://twitter.com/bioneers.

Clayton Thomas-Muller, a leading organizer for Idle No More and Defenders of the Land, and a Co-Director of Polaris Institute’s Indigenous Tar Sands Campaign, portrays Canada’s rising Native-led rights-based movement, supported by labor, civil society, students and grassroots groups. It’s challenging the neo-liberal free market agenda that has turned Canada into a petro-state. It may be our last best effort to save our lands and the health of our people from the extractive industries and the banks that finance them.

This speech was given at the 2014 Bioneers National Conference.

Since 1990, Bioneers has acted as a fertile hub of social and scientific innovators with practical and visionary solutions for the world's most pressing environmental and social challenges.

To experience talks like this, please join us at the Bioneers National Conference each October, and regional Bioneers Resilient Community Network gatherings held nationwide throughout the year.

For more information on Bioneers, please visit http://www.bioneers.org and stay in touch via Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/Bioneers.org) and Twitter (https://twitter.com/bioneers).