Principles and Values

Regenerate Cascadia was formed by Brandon Letsinger and Clare Attwell in April 2023 during the first-ever Salmon Nation Edge Prize, where their vision to activate a bioregional movement in Cascadia won the Edge Prize for Innovation in Systems and Governance. After months of planning with 100+ local community organizers on both sides of the Canada-US border, they partnered with the Design School for Regenerating Earth to co-facilitate a month-long Bioregional Activation Tour. They traveled to 14 communities around Cascadia during October 2023, hosting presentations that asked, “How do we regenerate the Cascadia bioregion?”. They met with more than 1000 individuals, including Indigenous knowledge keepers, regenerative leaders, groups, community artists, and elders across Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia through presentations, workshops, site visits, and strategy sessions. This was followed by an online summit that brought together 50+ presentations in a ‘Festival of What Works’ and concluded with an Open Space Unconference from November 3-12, 2023, where participants cocreated working groups for Regenerate Cascadia. The vision resonated strongly with many communities across the bioregion. 

Jay Bowen, an elder of the Skagit people who opened the Summit, articulated the following statement in the opening ceremony: “Gathered before us are the most important people in the world. It may be a small group right now, but in a few short years, there will be a long line of people waiting to get involved in this very important movement overseeing the welfare of our communities.” 

Core Design Challenges Identified

As we traveled into different landscapes, many themes emerged clearly, over and over and over again.

• The work is happening in the landscapes but is operating in silos, not operating relationally towards a whole systems understanding of the health of a bioregionMany of the challenges we face are similar, and there is learning that can occur both within and across watersheds. Work is siloed and separated rather than on the scale of a landscape or watershed. Instead, it happens on a project-by-project basis and is competitive rather than weaving many groups together for a shared vision, mission, and cooperative grants.
• The capacity to support this work does not exist. For example, we can talk about funding a school for 200 million or a light rail in Seattle for 45 billion. Still, there is no discussion like this for regeneration on the scale of landscapes, watersheds, ecoregions, or bioregions—in which we need it. Concepts like biodiversity, permaculture, and place-specific learning aren’t excluded from carbon sequestration.
• Work is not coordinated at the ecoregional, bioregional, and planetary scale.  People don’t know bioregional frameworks, stories of place, or layers of stewardship relevant to a place. Often, these don’t exist and need to be actively created. This is a complex process and must be supported.
• Practitioners, those with the “shovels in the dirt and boots on the ground,” are often overworked, under-resourced, and don’t have the time to connect beyond specific localities or to be the ones to take advantage of very specialized grants, funding, and policy. Instead, existing corporations and larger organizations are often positioned to swoop in and secure funding, making it difficult to visualize and connect bridge funding to these communities to those who most need it, and are doing the work. People need to be funded and supported. People focusing on their projects often feel they need help to get through.
• We need to connect the dots. We need whole Systems Thinking because these are interconnected issues. We are all a part of the story of our landscapes.  “Putting people back into their own story of place.”
• Regeneration is positive, place-based, and exciting, while the status quo creates a sense of disconnection and burnout.  So, our purpose became clear. How do we support the people in the landscape doing the work? How do we help visualize the work happening in a way that can connect people, in which we are not bottlenecks, and how can we speed up the learning that we all need to build and share templates? How do we start to weave together processes happening on a landscape scale and support people in holding these processes? How do we build in governance and develop relationships built on trust? How do we get the people with shovels in their hands and boots on the ground paid and the resources they need in a way that is defined by them? Also, how do we identify the voices missing from the process who need to be present? 

So then, for us, we have identified that:

Our Core Principles:

Our Core Values

Since the activation tour, Regenerate Cascadia organizers have come together to affirm that our movement and organization is:  

• Bioregional: We work on the scale of landscapes, watersheds, ecoregions and bioregions, because nature acts on these scales. A bioregion is defined by its unique physical and biotic features such as watersheds, climate, native plants and animals, as well as human cultures and ways of living within that place.
• Commonlands Model: Four Returns. Inspiration. Resources. Knowledge. Financial. The Commonlands Model is an approach to land management and community development emphasizing shared stewardship and sustainable use of natural resources. Rooted in the tradition of shared property systems, this model involves the collective management of land and resources by local communities, ensuring that benefits and responsibilities are equitably distributed. Over a 20-year vision, it aims to support a dedicated landscape steward team, fostering their capacity and resilience over time. This team collaborates with local stakeholders to enhance biodiversity, restore ecosystems, and support local livelihoods while preventing overexploitation and degradation. By integrating traditional knowledge with modern conservation techniques, the Commonlands Model aspires to create resilient landscapes that sustain both human and ecological well-being for future generations.
• Decolonial: A framework and practice aimed at dismantling the enduring impacts of colonialism and imperialism on societies, cultures, and knowledge systems. It involves challenging and rethinking dominant narratives, power structures, and cultural norms imposed by colonial powers, while reclaiming and revitalizing indigenous identities, traditions, and ways of knowing. Decolonial efforts seek to promote social justice, equity, and the sovereignty of marginalized and indigenous peoples by addressing historical injustices and fostering self-determination and cultural resurgence.
• Intergenerational: Regenerate Cascadia firmly belives in connecting the legacy and wisdom of elders, with the passion and action of youth. Only together can we take the action that’s needed.
• Multi-Capital: Multi-capital is a holistic framework for assessing and valuing the diverse forms of capital that contribute to the overall wealth and sustainability of an organization or society. Beyond financial capital, it includes natural capital (the environment and ecosystems), human capital (skills, health, and education of individuals), social capital (relationships and social networks), intellectual capital (knowledge and innovation), and time (availability and effective utilization). This approach recognizes that true prosperity and long-term success depend on the balanced and sustainable management of all these capitals, ensuring that economic activities do not undermine environmental integrity, social well-being, or other vital resources.
• Natural Law: John Borrows, Co-Chair, Indigenous Law Program, UVic & UofT.
• Privacy by Design: Privacy by Design is a proactive approach to ensuring privacy and data protection is integrated into the development and operation of systems, products, and services from the outset. Rather than being an afterthought or add-on, privacy is embedded into the entire lifecycle of the data processing activities, including IT systems, business practices, and networked infrastructures. This approach emphasizes the importance of anticipating and preventing privacy-invasive events before they happen. Key principles include ensuring privacy by default, maintaining full functionality (positive-sum, not zero-sum), and providing strong security measures throughout the data lifecycle. The goal is to build systems that inherently protect user privacy and comply with regulatory requirements, fostering trust and transparency.
• Regenerative: Regenerative refers to practices and philosophies that aim to restore, renew, and revitalize systems, particularly in the context of environmental, economic and agricultural processes. Unlike sustainable approaches that focus on maintaining the status quo, regenerative methods seek to improve and enhance the health and resilience of ecosystems. This involves practices that replenish soil health, increase biodiversity, capture carbon, and enhance water cycles, ultimately creating self-sustaining systems that can heal themselves over time. The regenerative approach is holistic, considering the interconnectedness of natural systems and emphasizing long-term ecological and social well-being.
• Story of Place: We’re all a part of the story of our place. Context setting. Locating ourselves in place.
• Subsidiarity: The lowest level of decision making that a decision can be made, is where the decision should be made.
• Temporal: We work with the natural rhythms of time and the year. We like to work around Solstices and equinoxes and recognize the patterns of each season. Working with ancestral knowledge and indigenous wisdom. Kairos/Chronos: Going at the speed of relationships.
• Three Horizons Model: The Three Horizons Model is a strategic framework used for managing innovation and guiding organizational transformation over time. It divides the future into three distinct horizons: Horizon 1 represents the current core business, focusing on optimizing existing operations and performance; Horizon 2 involves emerging opportunities and innovations that are starting to take shape and have the potential to become new business areas; Horizon 3 looks further ahead to visionary and disruptive ideas that could fundamentally change the organization or industry. By balancing efforts across these three horizons, organizations can ensure sustained growth and adaptability, fostering short-term performance and long-term transformation.

Organizational Values

As we traveled into different landscapes, we also learned for ourselves that:

• We work with people—not organizations—by building trusting relationships. We partner with organizations through those people.
• We work with people who want to work with us, where we are invited in – we need more capacity. We want to go where we are invited in, and where people want to work with us around the vision we are holding and building. Over and over again, when we were not invited – or there needed to be more clarity about RC or what we were doing, it led to adverse outcomes. We want to work with the people excited to work with us.
• Our work must be connected with people on the ground doing the work. So many global organizations are not examining their own ‘places.’ When removed from place, these can become disconnected and abstract.
• A shared context and understanding is needed. People who weren’t part of the early organizing or who missed Joe’s presentation – often didn’t have a clear sense of what we were doing. A shared north star, language, context, and understanding of Regenerate Cascadia and the how and why is needed for people who want to be involved. Many still do not understand the program, our relationship as a 501(c)3 nonprofit, and goal of getting grant funding in the next 6 months, and how we are building RC as an administrative framework for a regeneration fund.