Bioneers Offer Transformative Hope Rooted in Action 

Bioneers is not a conference. It is soil, alive with ideas, stories, and the roots of movements. 

This year, across every stage of the 37th annual event held from March 26 to 28 in Berkeley, California, one message rose again and again: We are living through a defining moment, and our response must be collective, loving, and courageous. 

You see it in how people speak about what they stand for, how collective bodies move to the rhythms of African drums and samba between keynote sessions, how they rejoice simply to be alive and to still believe in the power of renewal. 

Sure, hope can be performative. But here, it isn’t. Here, hope is cultivated, in the fertile soil of shared purpose and radical love.

This unique gathering draws together a particular kind of people, ones who haven’t given up. Scientists and storytellers. Indigenous leaders and young trailblazers. Lawyers working to recover ancestral land. Those who challenge convention.

Participants and speakers arrived from different ages and backgrounds, but a common thread was alive in every conversation — everyone believed that the world can evolve, and they are actively doing the work to change it. 

What struck me the most this year wasn’t any single keynote or headline, but the throughline connection of all of them: interdependence. It also recognized that independence — as a story, a system, a way of being — had run its course. 

Speakers called for this shift from independence to interdependence, from extraction to relationship — a transformation guided by Indigenous sovereignty, youth leadership, and the rights of nature. Another central thread wove through each conversation on climate, democracy, and Indigenous sovereignty: hope as a practice. 

“To fix the really big things that need fixing, we have to know and accept who we are,” said Indigenous law expert Samantha Skenandore, a Ho-Chunk Nation attorney and former Associate Justice for the Ho-Chunk Nation Supreme Court. Whatever comes next must be rooted in relationship, reciprocity, and responsibility. “Find your people. They don’t have to look like you; they might be way older or way younger, but find your allies.”

A young firefighter and organizer Kyle Treffen spoke of wildfire and climate anxiety not as an abstraction, but as lived experience. “If you threaten people’s future,” he said, “we will threaten your expectations.” His call echoed across multiple sessions linking land stewardship, cultural burning, and Indigenous knowledge as acts of resilience and responsibility. Because responsibility, as one speaker put it, “is love in action.”

This year’s conference showed how organizing can turn pain into power. From multiracial faith coalitions confronting authoritarianism to educators redesigning scientific training through green chemistry, each story reinforced that ideas alone don’t change the world — people do.

“Ideas don’t just start here,” said comedian and Emmy-nominated storyteller Baratunde Thurston, “they spark movements.” 

Amid current rollbacks in diversity and equity efforts nationwide, Bioneers speakers and the leadership team reminded participants that movement building is itself an act of hope. Hope is not sentimental; it’s palpable. You can feel the energy in the air.

But ultimately, hope is only cultivated through solidarity, soil-deep relationships, and the everyday act of living from our truest values and shared purpose as a collective. When stories change, the world changes. 

Take Action:

• Learn about additional Bioneers events, book clubs, and offerings.
  
• Listen to the Indigeneity Conversations Podcast.
  
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