00:02:17.380including frontline and native activists, artists, public intellectuals, authors, scientists,
00:02:25.580entrepreneurs, permaculturalists, children, and students, basically the gamut of earth-minded
00:02:31.900citizens. Today we are joined by the co-founder of Bioneers, Nina Simons. Nina is an award-winning
00:02:40.660social entrepreneur and visionary thinker. In 1990, she co-founded Bioneers with her husband
00:02:47.080and partner. As president, she has helped to lead the organization through 27 years of identifying,
00:02:54.460gathering, and disseminating breakthrough innovations that reveal a positive and life-honoring future
00:03:00.740that's within our grasp today. And for those of you who are interested in attending the Bioneers
00:03:06.640conference this October 21st through 23rd, you can use the coupon code FORTHEWILD15 and receive
00:03:14.680a special discount. Nina, welcome to For the Wild podcast. It is just incredible to have you
00:03:22.780with us. It's great to be with you, Ayanna. Thank you for your good work. It's really exciting.
00:03:29.860Oh, thank you. What you have done for the earth is absolutely astounding over the last
00:03:36.300nearly three decades of building the Bioneers platform and keeping this community of truth
00:03:43.080seekers and truth in actor is very well fed. So my first question for you is broad, and you're
00:03:49.960welcome to take it in any direction. But here we go. Of the many ideas and perspectives that
00:03:57.720Bioneers has advanced, would you say any of them have joined the ranks of common knowledge?
00:04:03.800And what is the general public more resistant to accepting?
00:04:07.340Oh, gosh, it's such a good question. Well, in a sense, the most obvious response comes to me
00:04:17.820as the same answer for both questions, Ayana, which is that the thing that I think
00:04:24.840has reached the widest acceptance or at least awareness is climate change. You know, when we
00:04:32.340began in 1990, few people had even heard of climate change. And what we discovered to our
00:04:40.860chagrin very quickly was that the people who were doing the most about it were actually the
00:04:49.840extractive industries. So when we went to attend education conferences, because we knew that what
00:04:59.980was happening at Bioneers had broad application for curriculum at many levels. What we found was
00:05:08.740huge, well-funded displays of environmental education that were being put forth and distributed
00:05:18.300free of charge to educators at these conferences that really formed the basis, I believe, of what
00:05:27.860we would all call climate deniers today. You know, if you think about that for 23 or four or five
00:05:36.300years, those curriculum teaching people that climate change was a natural phenomena and was
00:05:45.920not human induced is a long time. And I think we're seeing the results of it today. So in a
00:05:54.460sense. That's the biggest idea that I think has gained the most traction, as well as the
00:06:01.480healing capacity, both ecologically and in our human bodies of mushrooms and fungi.
00:06:09.560As you mentioned earlier, that the work of For the Wild will include working with mycelia and
00:06:17.020fungi to help regenerate ecosystems. So I think that's an idea that has gained a great deal of
00:06:25.580traction. And I think that, well, there are two more. Biomimicry, I think, is growing rather
00:06:32.720rapidly as an idea. And when we first helped introduce it with the onset of Janine Benyus's
00:06:41.340really seminal book, Biomimicry, in 1998. Of course, no one had heard of it and it was a new
00:06:48.740idea, but I think the Biomimicry Institute and many other biomimics have helped to spread that
00:06:56.120idea in significant ways. And then the last one that I think has grown immensely over the years
00:07:05.340is the recognition of the interdependence of social justice and ecological health and restoration.
00:07:14.760I think through the environmental justice movements and through the climate justice movement
00:07:21.600and through some very persevering efforts on the part of Bioneers and a lot of other brilliant practitioners,
00:07:30.140there's been a much greater public awareness of the kind of intersectionality and interdependence
00:07:39.700of justice and environment um and what has the public been most resistant to i would say
00:07:47.080in many ways i believe that people are most resistant to informed and engaged action
00:07:57.980around climate and even also perhaps around racial justice and around taking a stand against
00:08:10.700the corporate destruction of our home. You know, I just came from a recent gathering that was
00:08:19.000focused on public lands and on the shift in awareness and kind of paradigm that people
00:08:27.780are going through in terms of how we understand our relationship to Mother Earth. And in the
00:08:35.440course of that gathering, I had some very interesting discussions, especially about
00:08:41.220how many layers people need to go through before they get to the place of saying, I'm willing to
00:08:49.660act and even willing to engage in what might be dangerous activity in order to protect or defend
00:08:58.440our home. So I think all those layers involve dimensions of resistance to acting on behalf of
00:09:08.400systemic change. You know, I think people are much more prone to act individually. And yet,
00:09:15.880as we know, both racial justice and gender justice and earth justice all require systemic shifts
00:09:25.040and economic justice all require systemic shifts. And I think there's a lot of resistance to
00:09:31.580knowing how to engage there. Wow, I absolutely agree. Thank you so much for that analysis. And
00:09:42.520I'm wondering, what are the barriers to embracing direct action on a larger scale,
00:09:52.340or at least supporting that as a individual or a group?
00:09:57.660hmm what a good question i am not sure that i know the answer but if i were to hazard a guess
00:10:09.440i would say that i think the barriers are numerous and i think they are probably
00:10:15.380somewhat um different for each individual uh i think there's a there's a barrier that has to do
00:10:25.460with the simple fact of self-preservation and a kind of fear around putting oneself in harm's way.
00:10:34.520I think that's part of it. I think we also have a lot of conditioning
00:10:39.040depending on who we are. But as a woman of Jewish and therefore Anglo descent,
00:10:49.740I would say that I have identified conditioning in myself that has caused me in the past to kind of smooth over racial difference and even the discomfort of sitting with another's trauma or pain.
00:11:11.520and it's required me to actually turn towards building some courage and some muscle in myself
00:11:23.360on a psychological level to be able to keep turning towards how do I develop my own capacity
00:11:31.380to stay in that conversation so that I can act on behalf of the world I want.
00:11:37.960I think also because our societal conditioning has led us to be so individualistic in our orientation, you know, that hyper individualism has caused us to not have a lot of practice or tools at acting collectively.
00:12:00.380And so I think even the formation of our movements tend to be somewhat factionalized, and we're just not all that skillful or all that practiced at collaborating toward greater impacts.
00:12:30.380I used to walk like a giant on the land
00:12:38.800I feel like a leaf floating in a stream
00:13:48.620I want to walk like a giant on the land
00:13:57.180The environmental movements have historically been on separate tracks as human rights or women's movements, etc.
00:14:05.560But in this time of convergent crises, it's undeniable that these challenges are inseparable.
00:14:14.820And just as corporate polluters are merging, the resistance must also merge.
00:14:20.460Bioneers has been instrumental in connecting these movements
00:14:24.400and showing how the environmental movement really must broaden its aims to remain relevant.
00:14:32.000Could you speak about how your ideas about activism as a holistic endeavor
00:14:37.460have evolved through the years of Bioneers?
00:14:40.400And would you share some of those connections you draw between issues of ecology and race, class, and gender disparities?
00:14:52.440It's a wonderful question, Ayana. Thank you.
00:14:56.940Let's see. To begin on the activism piece.
00:15:01.100I think when we first started Bioneers, I didn't consider myself an activist.
00:15:07.720I considered myself a communicator and a producer, but I thought of activism in a very prescribed way as people who demonstrated and got arrested or did direct actions.
00:15:26.820And those were not forms of activism that I was readily called toward.
00:15:33.120And I think that over the years, my exposure to Bioneers and all the diverse leaders that we have featured there really helped me to broaden my understanding of what activism can be.
00:15:50.100Because I've come to understand that there are as many ways to respond to the multiple interdependent crises and challenges we face as there probably are human beings on the planet.
00:16:06.600and that communication is absolutely a form of activism
00:17:17.880Well, I would have to say what first called me to Bioneers was my deep, deep love of an affinity for nature.
00:17:28.100I had learned in my childhood that nature was the place I went to for healing, for regeneration, for solace when I was hurting.
00:17:41.760And although I grew up in New York City, nature became my deep connection and ally.
00:17:49.600And so that was what first drew me to Bioneers.
00:17:52.240And then I kind of had this sequential awakening about how all those other ways that we divide
00:18:03.120up human beings relate to our ecological crises.
00:18:09.620And what I saw was that when we first started Bioneers, we actually imagined that people
00:18:19.160working on different elements of ecological restoration would be much more connected with
00:18:25.720each other than they actually are. I think one of our first misapprehensions, Ayana, was that we
00:18:33.120thought, well, surely the people working on river restoration and the people working on wetlands
00:18:38.780and the people working on oceans will not only know each other, but in many cases might be
00:18:45.320collaborating. And in fact, one of the startling early revelations was that not only did they
00:18:53.020rarely know each other, but often they were in competition for scarce funding, and that there
00:19:00.760was tremendous value in bringing them together to introduce them so that they could begin to
00:19:07.700cross-pollinate learning and solutions and accelerate the learning of the field. So I think
00:19:15.200one of our first big ahas with Bioneers was the degree of factionalization that existed even
00:19:23.360within an environmental movement that, as you mentioned earlier, was historically predominantly
00:19:30.880white, predominantly middle class, but yet still wildly factionalized. And then early in my
00:19:41.240experience with Bioneers, I was lucky enough to be exposed to some First Nations or Aboriginal
00:19:49.660leaders. In 1992, I heard an extraordinary man from Picaris Pueblo. We were hosting a
00:20:00.820discussion about the 500-year anniversary of Christopher Columbus coming upon this land.
00:20:10.060And he actually said, 500 years ago, you came and we welcomed you with open arms.
00:20:19.040And if you came again today, we would do the same.
00:20:22.680And I remember the feeling, Ayana, of my jaw dropping open and thinking, holy cow, and he meant it. And I thought, I have so much to learn about being a human being, about forgiveness, about redemption, about relationship from these people who are our elders.
00:20:47.820You know, at Bioneers, we sometimes refer to indigenous people as not only the first Bioneers, but the old growth cultures who live among us.
00:21:00.440And so that was sort of a beginning awakening for me around race and racial justice.
00:21:09.080And then, of course, the more that I got to know and heard people of all colors and classes speak, the more that I understood the degree to which our culture operates in a hierarchical paradigm that tends to devalue people of color, people of lower income, and ultimately women as well.
00:21:37.560I didn't have my own kind of gender awakening until I was nearly approaching 40. It was in the mid-90s. And I had always assumed coming out of college that I was stepping onto a relatively level playing field and that I owed a great debt of gratitude to the first waves of feminist movement.
00:22:02.500and it wasn't until I was working in my 30s that I began to realize and have the experience
00:22:11.080of sitting in a boardroom and saying something and having it fall on deaf ears and then the man
00:22:19.120next to me saying it with slightly different language and everybody kind of nodding their
00:22:25.080heads and saying, what a great idea. And I began to understand how bifurcated our society still is
00:22:34.560around issues of gender. And really, over the last 11 years, I would say, Ayana, I've been
00:22:42.420gathering women in a project that I co-founded. And we do six-day immersion trainings with 20
00:22:52.360women at a time called Cultivating Women's Leadership. And through that work, I've really
00:22:59.400had many, many experiences and formed very deep friendships with women from many different
00:23:06.580cultures. And as I have learned their stories and experienced both the physical impacts
00:23:15.300of living in communities where the worst toxic health issues and exposures happen and the toxic0.99
00:23:26.660psychic impacts and psychological impacts of intergenerational trauma through indigenous0.99
00:23:34.180communities and mestizo communities and black communities, it has awakened me to the experience
00:23:42.780that I believe that as women, because we all have some inkling of what it's like to be valued less
00:23:53.360than, it gives us an empathic window on injustice. And so for me, the last 11 years has just been
00:24:01.060this giant awakening and recognition that traditional cultures and indigenous Aboriginal
00:24:08.540cultures have keys to our ecological restoration that are essential to our survival as a species
00:24:18.740and that just like in nature, the systems with the greatest biodiversity are the ones that are
00:24:28.120most resilient and most capable of rebounding after trauma. Our human systems are exactly the
00:24:36.220same. And so not only valuing diversity and certainly beyond tolerating diversity, I think
00:24:44.800we have to get to a place of celebrating and recognizing the essentialness of our human
00:24:51.480diversity toward regenerating our relationship with ourselves, each other, and the earth,
00:24:58.160which I believe are all octaves of the same relational imbalance that we've inherited.
00:25:04.400We shall not, we shall not be moved, we shall not be moved, we shall not be moved, just like a tree, that's a planet, a battle of waters, we shall not be moved.
00:26:02.400As North Dakota militarizes its response to the Standing Rock protest,
00:26:17.320the racial injustices that the tribes have suffered for centuries are being cast again into the spotlight.
00:26:25.880Even today, poverty, incarceration, and unemployment rates among Native Americans in North Dakota
00:26:32.860are some of the highest in the country.
00:26:35.920As we speak for the first time in modern history, we see 200 indigenous nations uniting to protect
00:26:44.840water and more broadly to protect their role as earth guardians.
00:26:49.680So do you believe the climate movement will continue moving towards uplifting Indigenous priorities, perspectives, and leadership? And how would that benefit the movement?
00:27:03.740it's interesting how you phrased that i'm i'm not a hundred percent sure that i believe
00:27:12.040the climate movement will but i sure am throwing everything i know in that direction so i i hope
00:27:22.160it will i pray it will and i'm doing everything i can to help it align in that way you know i think
00:27:30.400that the movements of Idle No More and the Climate Justice Alliance, I think that there are
00:27:36.940a number of rather large-scale movements that are orienting increasingly towards
00:27:44.160honoring the role of First Nations Indigenous people as leaders of that movement. And in reality,
00:27:53.860they may be some of the leaders, but I think we're going to need many, many, many leaders
00:27:59.380and leaders of all colors and of all ages. And I think that that leadership is emergent right now.
00:28:07.780And, you know, what's happening at Standing Rock is simultaneously incredibly exciting
00:28:14.920and deeply tragic, as you say. The militarized response is not dissimilar to other pretty large
00:28:24.820scale native uprisings that have occurred in the past. But the advent of social media
00:28:31.540and of some independent media sources like Amy Goodman is making it harder for that to happen
00:28:39.720in a way that's invisible to the larger public. So I think the visibility of it is a tremendous
00:28:46.780help. And I know that in addition to the representatives of more than 200 sovereign
00:28:54.540nations who are there in Standing Rock, there are a great many non-Native people at Standing Rock
00:29:01.820now. And to me, that's part of what's most exciting about what's happening there is the0.94
00:29:07.020openness and receptivity in spite of all the history that tells them to be mistrustful of
00:29:14.640non-native allies, the continued openness and welcoming and true generosity of spirit
00:29:21.720that's welcoming the non-native allies who are showing up there.
00:29:26.320I do believe that native people have an essential role in leading the climate revolution that
00:29:38.100And of course, it's not only a climate revolution, as you point out, it's about water.
00:29:44.640it's about clean air, it's about the future of our children, and it's about the future of
00:29:50.720ourselves, to be blunt. And it's about rebelling against the corporate state, which in many ways
00:29:59.820is what makes Standing Rock different than past Native stands, because in the past it was
00:30:08.200government who were quashing native rebellions. And I think this time it's banks, it's corporations
00:30:15.500who are behind what's happening there. And I don't think that our government was as influenced
00:30:22.420or dominated by corporate control as it is now in the past. And to respond to the last bit of
00:30:30.940your question, Ayana. My hope and prayer is that the visibility of Indigenous and Aboriginal people
00:30:40.720leading this movement of movements will help translate into a shift in our worldview,
00:30:48.960because there is a way that I keep learning from Indigenous friends and acquaintances
00:30:59.640the depth of how they relate to every aspect of life around us as a living relation.
00:31:09.160You know, this gathering that I was just at, there was a remarkable Lakota man named Teokasin
00:31:16.960who broadcasts radio out of New York. And we were doing a soil ceremony. And he said,
00:31:25.320in my language, the word we use to describe this, meaning the soil, means who we used to be.
00:31:36.820And I thought that was such a profound way of invoking the longer time frame that many
00:31:45.200indigenous folks live with. The recognition that the soil is who we used to be and that
00:31:54.740we will go back to being soil after our brief experience in human form on this planet.
00:32:02.880And a whole different kind of perspective and respect of relational intelligence than
00:32:10.840our Western culture has been raised to recognize.
00:32:15.940So my hope is that Indigenous peoples' centrality to this movement of movements will help accelerate culture shift and a real shift in worldview that's so needed right now.
00:32:34.140As you've alluded to, generosity and mutual aid characterize many Indigenous societies around the world.
00:32:42.980but in capitalist societies where greed is rewarded sacrifice is almost nonsensical
00:32:51.880it's a major hurdle to overcome this aversion to sacrifice and it prevents people from making
00:32:59.680substantial commitments to positive change you've spent much of your life in service
00:33:06.240And I'd love to hear from your point of view, what would be needed for us as a society to shift towards a culture of simplicity and service, to overcome our energy-intense lifestyles, to break that inertia?
00:33:24.160you ask such things they're just wonderful and they cause me to have to go deep inside myself
00:33:37.340to see how i'm going to respond thank you and please take your time i know they're
00:33:43.140very large questions and and i know that so many people no matter what age are
00:33:50.480searching and looking to others and looking inside themselves for these answers as well.
00:33:57.980One of the things that my own journey has brought me to is a real inquiry around how we are
00:34:06.260reinventing leadership in this time. Because I came to an awareness that what was most needed
00:34:14.600from everyone was leadership and that our inherited model of leadership was not one
00:34:21.940that many people I knew could wholeheartedly embrace. One of the things that I've grappled
00:34:28.200with is the question of sacrifice. And when I first started looking at it, I thought,
00:34:35.900why does leadership necessarily have to involve sacrifice? Maybe that's part of the old paradigm.
00:34:42.960Maybe it doesn't have to involve sacrifice. And when I look back on the me that asked that question, I sort of have to chuckle to myself because of her naivete, because life has taught me that there is sacrifice that's somehow often integral to real leadership.
00:35:05.460and that as an example, Kenny and I, Kenny is my husband and partner who I co-founded Bioneers with
00:35:14.800and we ran Bioneers for eight years with almost no compensation, basically doing it in our spare
00:35:24.340time on top of our day jobs. And we did it because we loved it. We did it because it felt really
00:35:32.500important and necessary to us. We certainly didn't do it for personal gain. And at the end of those
00:35:39.620eight years, we were plumb near exhausted. And we were starting to question whether we should be
00:35:45.860giving it up when a donor came along and gave us a massive five-year, seven-figure grant.
00:35:55.720So it was kind of a crazy sacrifice at the beginning there. And I think a lot of people
00:36:00.380would look at that and say, you did what? You know, you did this as a volunteer effort on top
00:36:05.700of your day jobs for eight years. That's crazy. So I think part of what's needed is that we don't
00:36:14.220have a lot of role models for new models of leadership these days. And I think one of the
00:36:20.340things that's important to helping shift our culture is to see examples of leaders who have
00:36:29.540embraced leadership in a wholehearted way, and often who have made their peace with sacrifice
00:36:36.420as a part of that. People often appreciate bioneers for how much good it's done in the world,
00:36:43.260and they don't know the sacrifice that underlies it. And so in a certain sense,
00:36:49.380and I think it's part of our old model of heroic leadership, that we didn't talk about the
00:36:55.160sacrifice and maybe part of what's the new model of leadership that integrates all of our human
00:37:02.040capacities means being vulnerable enough to say, well, there was a lot of blood, sweat and tears
00:37:07.740that went into it. And to do that in a joyous way that says, yeah, there are things, there are risks
00:37:16.320that I have taken that have led to some of the most rewarding moments in my life. And I would not
00:37:24.580retrace my steps and undo those risks or those sacrifices for any amount of money.
00:37:31.500I think part of the answer to your question lies in lifting up role models of all races and
00:37:39.660backgrounds and ages and genders so that we can all see that there are elements of working for
00:37:47.960the common good that provide a level of meaning and fulfillment to the essence of our lives
00:37:55.680that so outweigh any monetary gain, you know, and one of the things that I have found as
00:38:03.860a kind of guiding principle in my life is a quote by the Austrian physicist Fritjof
00:38:10.420Capra. And he said, the shift to an eco-literate society, a society that knows how to live in right
00:38:18.580relationship to nature, involves a shift from an emphasis on counting things and amassing things
00:38:27.400from quantity to mapping relationships to quality. And in a sense, from a goal orientation to one
00:38:37.680that's much more process oriented. And so I think one of the ways we can shift from this
00:38:45.240egocentric, me-centric, greed-centric culture to one that is more collaboratively,
00:38:53.220communally oriented is to focus on relationships as the things that give us the greatest meaning
00:39:01.800in our lives. And those relationships are not only to the human world, but to the more than
00:39:09.980human world, to the elements, to the ancestors, to the plants and animals and fungi. So I think,
00:39:18.040for me, one of the most fulfilling and meaningful aspects of my life has been that dedication
00:39:25.080to all my relations. Thank you, Nina, for sharing those thoughts and some of your personal
00:39:34.260sacrifices. And it's a question I've been thinking about for a while as I moved on to raw land a
00:39:43.380little over two years ago, living in a tent through, thankfully, very rainy winters. And
00:39:50.580and just a number of different things as we're moving through this extremely over consumptive
00:39:57.340system and and trying to look deeply into what actually is fulfilling what does real purpose
00:40:06.160feel like and how can we actually reciprocate and sacrifice for what we love
00:40:12.220the more than human world as you so beautifully put it
00:46:41.500Absolutely. And I think back to something you said earlier in the interview, it can sometimes be challenging for people who are interested in the same things to really learn how to work together or even know of each other.
00:46:54.560And I'm wondering, what are some ways that you're experiencing where collaboration is really taking off? And what are some of those tools that we can all keep in mind when we're trying to build these regenerative projects with others?
00:47:11.500Huh. Honestly, I feel like I am in a process of trying to identify those tools and really codify them so that they can be more accessible to all of us.
00:47:25.060But I think one thing that I would say is that intimate relationship is one of the hardest spiritual practices, perhaps the hardest that I have encountered in my life.
00:47:38.600And I think anyone who is in a very long-term relationship who's paying attention would
00:47:45.180likely agree and that it's no accident that our divorce rate is as high as it is because
00:47:51.520we get so little training in how to be in effective close relationships.
00:47:59.480But some of what I can offer, Ayanna, would be to say building collaborative tissue takes