California is the world’s largest consumer of crude from the Amazon rainforest where it is converted into oil for some of America’s largest corporations and airports. Not only does this extraction contribute to climate change, Amazon crude is causing contamination and rights violations all along the supply chain. Extraction on Indigenous territories is driving deforestation and leaving a toxic legacy across Ecuador’s Amazon, tankers carrying crude across the Pacific threaten our oceans, and refineries processing the crude poison neighboring communities, while Californians are forced to consume goods and services that rely on Amazon-sourced crude oil. This presentation by Indigenous Amazonian forest protectors in partnership with Amazon Watch calls for Californians to take action to #EndAmazonCrude and demand corporate responsibility for people and planet.

Revitalizing traditional Native foods are part of a re-indigenization renaissance happening from coast to coast. Many people are unaware that a key strategy of the American genocide was to destroy native food sources, create dependency, and replace healthy diets with nutrient deficient commodities. In this panel, Native leaders in the Bay Area will discuss how they have been shaping this movement to revitalize Indigenous foods. In addition to improving health, Indigenous foods local to place fosters community wellness and intergenerational healing by bringing people together, providing fun activities for youth, and decolonizing urban spaces. Join us to learn what you can do to be a part of this movement, and how to decolonize your own diet.

Gail Pelletier, a member of the Treaty 6 Pukatawagan Cree Nation and a Cross Lake and Guy Hill Indian Residential School survivor, along with her son, Bioneers board member, author, director and campaigner, Clayton Thomas-Müller; and her grandson, thirteen year-old Jaxson Thomas-Müller, will share how they are practicing mindfulness and intention while their family is moving through and healing from the trauma of 150 years of Canada’s genocidal residential school policy. Join them to learn how working toward truth and reconciliation and healing from the violence of colonization and the intergenerational impacts of Indian Residential School Syndrome is a multigenerational endeavor.

As the world continues to grapple with the reality of the changing climate and the ever-more evident destructive consequences of capitalism and colonization, it is normal to feel an increase in anxiety about what our future may hold. This is even more true for Native people. Indigenous peoples are responsible for protecting and maintaining some 80% of the world’s remaining biodiversity as part of their deep cultural and spiritual connections to many of the lands, waters, species and biomes of the planet. Colonization didn’t just bring the displacement of First Peoples; it led to intense degradation of the critical ecosystems they were intrinsically connected to. As the climate emergency exacerbates this threat, Indigenous communities find themselves experiencing a more visceral and different form of eco-anxiety. Join Eriel Tchekwie Deranger as she invites us to explore holding this reality, yet also to discover how Indigenous ways of knowing can be a salve to these powerful tensions, as they can point the way to climate solutions and help us move from anxiety to inspiration. What might it look and feel like to live in a world where Indigenous peoples were thriving? How can we work through this collective emergency and crisis together with healing in mind?

San Francisco is arguably America’s most progressive city, at the cutting edge of intersectional culture change for social and environmental good. To this end, city leaders, officials and local NGOs have made land acknowledgments, removed racist murals, established an American Indian Cultural District, and made partnerships to restore public lands hand-in-hand with Native American community leaders. Presenters will lead a frank discussion about how to revitalize cities through these kinds of re-indigenization efforts. Join us to learn about the unique issues that San Francisco’s urban Indian communities face through stories about successes and mistakes that have been made on the road to reconciliation.

Cree legends talk about the nefarious winter spirit Witigo’ and how it can possess you to such an extent that you become an all-consuming cannibal stricken with insatiable greed and hunger. 350.org‘s Cree Campaigner and best-selling author of Life in the City of Dirty Water: A Memoir of Healing, Clayton Thomas-Müller, will discuss how this sort of possession offers us an excellent metaphor for the mindset that has brought us the ravages of ruthless extractive capitalism and the oppression of First Peoples and other historically disenfranchised groups; and he will propose some answers to the question: What is it going to take for us to move through and heal from the violence of colonization?

The Rights of Nature movement protects nature (rivers, mountains, and entire ecosystems and the life forms supported within them) by recognizing their legal rights. This legal framework offers a radically different worldview from current legal premises. Instead of being seen as property, nature’s inherent rights to exist, persist, flourish and evolve can now be protected under the law. For over 15 years, the Rights of Nature movement has caught fire across the US and the rest of the world in the most and least expected places, from tribal lands to “progressive” cities, coal country, and more. Join us to hear the latest updates on the Rights of Nature movement and legal battles in the US from the attorneys leading the movement in Indian Country and beyond.

Although there have been breakthrough successes in some of our social and environmental struggles, others seem stubbornly resistant to change. Recent wins have occurred in labor organizing, Native nations reclaiming lands, independent journalism and in some progressive politics. Yet the defense of land, water and cultures against extractive industries and resistance to the onslaughts of the far-right and to erosions of racial and gender equity are not going nearly as well. In this session, three seasoned movement leaders discuss what it will take to lift up what’s working and strategize how we can collectively work to transform what isn’t. With: Taj James, founder at the Movement Strategy Center and Principal at Full Spectrum Capital Partners; Enei Begaye, Executive Direct of Native Movement; and Joshua Kahn Russell, Executive Director of The Wildfire Project.

In this session we will hear about the inspiring model of Pie Ranch, an exemplary socially and eco-conscious enterprise that incorporates: cutting-edge land management; working with disenfranchised urban youth; recruiting BIPOC farmers (historically most often left out of equity-building in agriculture); becoming a distribution hub for local farmers to feed farmworker and other food insecure communities during the pandemic; and building reciprocal relationships with the Amah Mutsun tribe, drawing on its long-lived land stewardship and regeneration prowess to repair some of the ranch’s ecosystems damaged by recent fires. With: Jered Lawson, co-founder, Pie Ranch; Valentin Lopez, Chairman of the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band; Nancy Vail, co-founder, Pie Ranch; Leonard Diggs, Pie Ranch Director of Operations and Farming Education. Moderated by Arty Mangan, Bioneers’ Restorative Food Systems Director.

A “Just Transition” to a post-fossil fuel economy will require solutions led by Indigenous Peoples hand-in-hand with communities that have been historically cut off from a sacred relationship to the planet. To be “just,” this transition will have to equally address environmental and social issues. Instead of expanding such ill-conceived initiatives as “carbon-trading markets,” a Native-led transition must reject the commodification of nature. In this panel, Kandi and Loren White will share Indigenous approaches to the Just Transition movement. They will discuss how this movement will demand all of us assume a greater responsibility to place, honor the power of leadership rooted in tribal sovereignty and forward Indigenous values to ensure that future generations inherit a planet capable of sustaining regenerative ecosystems. With: Kandi White and Loren White of the Indigenous Environmental Network; and Jayce Chiblow and Jacob Crane with Indigenous Climate Action. Moderated by Cara Romero.

Indigenous peoples in the north have been feeling the disastrous effects of climate change far longer than the rest of the planet’s population. According to NASA record sets, the arctic is warming up to four times faster than the rest of the planet, disturbing terrestrial and marine ecosystems, destroying villages, and disrupting healthy ways of life. Some of the most innovative solutions to the climate crisis are emerging from the circumpolar north born of the practicality and ingenuity rooted in Native knowledge systems. In this panel, leaders at the Native Conservancy, Native Movement and Indigenous Climate Action will share their strategies for addressing climate change in policy, civil society and economic sectors.

Filmmaking has been radically transformed in the digital age. Film equipment is lighter and cheaper, and documentary filmmakers can capture footage of significant events as they occur and can reach audiences directly via online platforms. Yet there are still many impediments to making and distributing topical films that challenge the status quo, and the glut of information and media can make reaching large numbers of viewers challenging. In this session, several prominent filmmaker-activists discuss their strategies for making movies that matter and positioning them so they can contribute to real change on the ground. With: Clayton Thomas Mueller (In the City of Dirty Water), Mark Kitchell (Berkeley in the ‘60s; Evolution of Organic, Fierce Green Fire), and Alex Binder of the media collective Unicorn Riot. Hosted by Bioneers co-founder and filmmaker Kenny Ausubel (Changing of the Gods).

Indigenous Peoples already do “green jobs,” integrate cultural values into business activities, and protect 80% of the world’s biodiversity. In order to transform our economies through Indigenous-led solutions, we need to uplift movements and stories inspired by Indigenous resistance. To do this, we must change the culture of philanthropy and impact investing, which still largely circulates in privileged circles. In this panel, Sikowis, Nick Estes, and Alexis Bunten discuss colonial-capitalism and how Indigenous-led strategies offer a pathway towards an equitable and regenerative future.

Indigenous women entrepreneurs are leading the most innovative solutions for community wellness despite disproportionately facing rampant descrimination, violence and lack of access to social goods. For Native Peoples, economic empowerment is not just measured in dollars, but also in terms of challenging stereotypes, responsibilities to future generations, and relationship to ancestral homelands. Join this panel to learn more about how Native Women Lead in partnership with New Mexico Community Capital are at the cutting edge of supporting business women and healing communities. Topics discussed will include how to challenge current systems while working within them, new models for economic empowerment in communities incorrectly written off as “high risk,” quadruple bottom line evaluation metrics and centering Indigeonus women’s voices through storytelling through media.