2008 Great Lakes Bioneers Award
The Great Lakes BIONEERS Award goes to a person whose life-work embodies the bioneer principles of interconnectedness, development of healthy relationships, and respect for the inherent intelligence of all life and ecological systems. This Award is for those who go beyond sustaining their home communities, but heal and regenerate them as well. For being an avenue toward hope.
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Stephanie Mills has been engaged in the ecology movement for more than thirty years, and in 1996 was named by Utne Reader as one of the world’s leading
visionaries. Stephanie Mills is an author, editor, lecturer and ecological activist who has concerned herself with the fate of the earth and humanity since 1969, when her commencement address at Mills College in Oakland, Calif., drew the attention of a nation. Her speech, which the New York Times called “perhaps the most anguished statement” of the year’s crop of valedictory speeches, predicted a bleak future.
Stephanie Mills’s account of the simple life reaches deep into classical sources of pleasure - good food, good health, good friends, and particularly the endless delights of the natural world. One of the primary motivations for her pursuit of simplicity is her concern about the impacts of a consumerist lifestyle on the natural world. Mills touches on broad range of topics relating to that issue - social justice, biological extinctions, the global economy, and also more personal aspects such as friendship, the process of country living, the joys of physical exertion, the challenges of a writer’s life, and the natural history and seasonal delights of a life lived close to nature. An overarching theme is the destructiveness of consumerism, and how even a simple life affects a wide range of organisms and adds strain to the earth’s systems. The author uses her own experience as an entry point to the discussion with self humor and lyrical prose that bring big topics to a personal level.
Her book: Epicurean Simplicity is beautifully crafted, fluid, inspiring, and enlightening, examining topics of critical importance that affect us all. It celebrates the pleasures, beauty, and fulfillment of a simple life, a goal being sought by Americans from all walks of life, from harried single parents to corporate CEOs. For fans of natural history or personal narrative, for those concerned about social justice and the environment, and for those who have come to know and love Stephanie Mills through her speaking and writing, Epicurean Simplicity is a rare treasure. So many people who have read this book, have genuinely been touched by it, and wish that they could - yes - live that life. Her new book, published and released in 2007 is called Tough Little Beauties and examines issues that remain timely: overpopulation, ecological degradation, and the Peak Oil crisis as well as a lived spirituality.
The Award will presented on April the 18th at the Annual NMEAC Environmentalist of the Year Award from 6 – 9 pm at the Waterfront Conference Center in Traverse Cit. For more information about the event and NMEAC, visit their Web site at www.nmeac.org