Bioneers: Revolution From the Heart of Nature

Globally, women experience some of the harshest challenges in wartime and the climate crisis while simultaneously remaining caretakers to their families, communities, and the Earth. Zainab Salbi is a humanitarian, author and media host who has dedicated her life to empowering women on the frontlines in conflict zones and climate crisis zones. Her vision is that the fate of humanity depends on elevating feminine leadership that offers a model for a new way of being – for both women and men. Featuring: Zainab Salbi is a celebrated humanitarian, author, and journalist, co-founder of ⁠DaughtersforEarth.org⁠, “Chief Awareness Officer” at ⁠FindCenter.com⁠, host of the ⁠Redefined⁠ podcast, and founder of ⁠Women for Women International⁠. The author of several books, including the bestseller, ⁠Between Two Worlds⁠ and, most recently, ⁠Freedom Is an Inside Job⁠, she is also the creator and host of several TV shows, including ⁠#MeToo, Now What?⁠ on PBS. Resources ⁠Zainab Salbi – Daughters for Earth⁠ (video) | Bioneers 2022 Keynote ⁠Daughters for Earth: Women and the Climate Change Movement⁠ (video) | Bioneers 2022 Panel This is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. For more info on Zainab Salbi and show notes, ⁠please visit our radio page⁠.

We present a profound conversation on the Indigenous Roots of American Democracy that puts women at the center. The vision for U.S. democracy drew largely from the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, the longest-standing democracy in world history. Women are central to the Great Law of Peace and Governance within the Haudenosaunee, whose federalist structure values peace, justice, and collective wellbeing. The Constitutional phrase “We the People” was drawn directly from Haudenosaunee philosophy.  This conversation took place at the Indigenous Forum during the 2026 Bioneers Conference and features revered contemporary leaders, author-activists, elders, and clan mothers who speak to the themes of governance rooted in peace, matrilineal values, women's leadership, and wisdom from their own life's work and activism.

In this episode, Indigenous scholar and organizer Nick Estes explores how Indigenous land-based and Earth-centered societies are advancing regenerative solutions and campaigns to transform capitalism. “Eco-nomics” puts Indigenous leadership at the forefront of assuring a habitable planet. Nick Estes, Ph.D. (Kul Wicasa/Lower Brule Sioux), is a Professor at the University of Minnesota and a member of the Oak Lake Writers Society, a group of Dakota, Nakota and Lakota writers. In 2014, he was a co-founder of The Red Nation in Albuquerque, NM, an organization dedicated to the liberation of Native people from capitalism and colonialism. He serves on its editorial collective and writes its bi-weekly newsletter. Nick Estes is also the author of: Our History Is the Future: Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance. Credits Executive Producer: Kenny Ausubel Written by: Kenny Ausubel Senior Producer and Station Relations: Stephanie Welch Program Engineer and Music Supervisor: Emily Harris Producer: Teo Grossman Host and Consulting Producer: Neil Harvey Production Assistance: Anna Rubanova

Human activity has disrupted the innate capacity of Earth’s natural systems to create a stable, healthy climate and atmosphere. The solutions are hiding in plain sight, inherent in the web of biological diversity that creates the conditions conducive to life. In this episode from our Nature’s Genius Series, Wade Crowfoot, California Secretary for Natural Resources, describes how the world’s fourth largest economy is putting natural systems at the center of its bold policies and practices to help restore the biosphere and, in turn, sustain the long-term habitability of planet Earth for human civilization. This is an episode of Nature’s Genius, a Bioneers podcast series exploring how the sentient symphony of life holds the solutions we need to balance human civilization with living systems. Visit the series page to learn more.

Although they receive less than 1% of climate funding, women-led climate justice grassroots projects are generating cascading benefits, from greater gender and economic equity and less gender violence to improved biodiversity and ecosystems’ health. Simultaneously, the centrality to many Indigenous peoples’ cultures of traditional relationships to place and to honoring all of life as sacred are a tremendous resource in strengthening efforts to protect and renew biodiversity and water resources.  We invite you to listen to this excerpt of a panel conversation from the Bioneers 2026 Conference, which explores what these two vastly under-resourced constituencies have to offer in the quest to co-create regenerative landscapes and futures. With Dilafruz Khonikboyeva, Executive Director of Home Planet Fund; Osprey Orielle Lake, founder and Executive Director of Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN); and Zainab Salbi, co-founder of Daughters for Earth.