Being With Bioneers: Northern Rockies Conference Grows

By Kerry McMannis, 10-23-06

There I was again, sitting in a darkened theater full of my fellow Montanans. We clapped and whistled and gave standing ovations to a projection screen.

This was my third year at the Northern Rockies Bioneers conference. I keep coming back to find inspiration, to be so moved that I shed my self-consciousness and clap for people being beamed from California via satellite into this old theater in Bozeman.

They merit the applause. They are Bioneers, working for peace and justice through their various means. Each contributes an element to the portrait of sustainability being created across the planet today. For Paul Stamets, his medium is fungi, he plans to save the world with them. For James Hillman it is Jungian psychology, the philosophies of which he applies to the need for civil disobedience. Some of the names are familiar, Amy Goodman and Paul Hawken both spoke at this years conference.

There are flesh and blood people here to admire as well. Paul House’s passion is bio-fuels. His car, home and hot tub are all powered by a combination of vegetable oil and sunlight as a group of us learned on the Garage to Garage tour this weekend. Jeff Milchen is the director of ReclaimDemocracy.org, a national organization based out of Bozeman working to take back corporate control of America.

The term bioneer stands for: biological pioneer. A bioneer is anyone working toward sustainable solutions to the problems facing the world today. The conference is an annual celebration of the work being done to build a sustainable future. Through the union of the environmental and social justice movements, the impact and reach of the conference grows year after year.

Five years ago Sam Porter helped to pioneer (or is that bioneer?) the satellite conferences that now exist across the nation. He and his wife Abby Porter are the heart and soul of the Bozeman conference, which grew to over one thousand participants this year.

Click here or click on the still below to see the interview with Sam about how it all got started and his hopes for the future.

Next year I plan to attend the main conference in San Rafael, California. I know that being there will be incredible but I suspect that a part of me will be missing the blissfully unabashed experience of cheering for the screen in this dim theater in Bozeman.


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