Regenerate Cascadia

From the website: "When people come together to share their stories, it’s not uncommon for them to feel an alive crackle of potential. When the conditions for sharing knowledge and learning are present, we get a taste of what might be possible together. Yet, routinely the people doing the work on the ground are left out of the decision-making process. Too often, decisions are outsourced to experts and institutions with little or no direct relationship to the bioregion.   

So, how do we begin to take back our agency to restore a felt sense of right relationship with the land and each other? How do we weave ourselves coherently across many different watersheds and territories to connect the work done on the ground? How do we imagine new forms of bioregional governance while honoring and celebrating our unique stories of place? 

Regenerate Cascadia is emerging from our time in the Salmon Nation and Terran Collective Edgeprize, for eight weeks, a community of Edgewalkers – weavers on the edge of different communities but tied to the whole – gathered to share open-source Indigenous knowledge for a more resilient world.  

Our communities know what they need. Edgewalkers are weaving the work.

But what comes next? Through an activation tour happening from September 28th-October 30th and a bioregional summit November 3rd-12th, we aim to create a shared vision and framework, grow watershed hubs, explore bioregional frameworks and governance, and grow an ecosystem of regenerative funding that can support this work in every watershed of the Cascadia bioregion. 

Our names are Clare Attwell and Brandon Letsinger. While we are the primary conveners for Regenerate Cascadia, we are excited to partner with a fantastic community of catalysts from around Salmon Nation to ask ourselves one simple question – how can we empower all of our work and connect it with the resources we need, for the long term regeneration of the Cascadia bioregion?  For more than 40 years, Cascadia has played a central role in this organizing. Now it is time for us to step up and take responsibility for the stewardship of our bioregion and the regeneration of our Planet. We can’t wait to see what work we weave together."