Category: Values

Resistance: what does it look like?

It is imperative that we humans push back, with a resistance that has characterized our ancestral struggles against these forces of destruction. 
Today’s resistance looks like many things, not limited to these:

  1. The unsung movement of young people living this way-of-life and using their powers of creative invention to address technological challenges communally, without resorting to use of extractive energy sources.

  2. Individuals and organizations shrinking their carbon footprint and consuming behavior. (click article below to read)
    click to read
  3. Divesting from bundled retirement investments is a challenge that both institutions and individuals are addressing.
  4. Families and groups boycotting products of corporations that invest in disinformationValues-C4_6025
  5. Organizing movements/demonstrations against racial and gender injustices and environmental degradation.
  6. Scientists and behaviorists publishing their data in support of directions we must go.
  7. Supporting climate change initiatives.  Not becoming discouraged but realizing that the big and the small pieces all come together into one movement.
  8. Not-for-profits lobbying to find the money and apply for grants to fund manpower for education and restoration.
  9. Artists of every stripe producing theater, music, murals and paintings, and writing that inspires us to move toward the positive and away from the negative.
  10. Time to stop! Running scared every time a reactionary calls our progressive programs “communist” or “Luddite” or a “bunch of hippies” will keep us from unifying as a Movement.
    Yeah, the McCarthy era was scary. We are feeling the beginnings of a new trend to take our country back from those Shock and Awe disinformation professionals

The Foundation of our Values

Our work is inspired by the work of the early bioregionalists in the mid-70’s—friends and family all—who restored our sense of the centrality of this ancient relationship between human culture and our watershed, our homeland within the interconnected web of species and elements. [link to Planet Drum, photos of covers of seminal work from Berg to Totem Salmon to Gary Snyder’s poetry]

The bioregional framework–whose seeds gave rise to 100,000 small and large watershed organizations—grew out of Sixties countercultural experiments in community and restoring an earth-friendly way-of-life perfected by our ancestors. Like bioregionalism, the restoration of ancestral cultural practices has entered the mainstream:

  • Herbal and traditional medicine,
  • Natural ways of birthing and dying,

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  • Integrated agricultural and husbandry systems: fibers, foods, medicines, sacramental,
  • Education and childrearing,
  • Housing and energy systems,
  • Food, drink and clothing that arise naturally from our watershed.
  • Respect for the four essential elements of earth, air, fire and water, along with wood and metal.
  • Acknowledgement that we humans are one of the species of animals whose wellbeing depends on the synergy between the plant, insect, fish/reptilian/amphibian and fungal worlds, which we imperfectly understand.Values-8B_4724Values-8B_2671

Statement of Values

Reinhabitory institute is a bioregional organization, devoted to exploring and defining a sustainable way-of-life on our home watersheds.

Our collaborative and creative work on-the-ground is crucial to the survival of the human species and that of our brothers and sisters of other species, given the spectacular failure of the experiment of the last 150 years.

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The “modern” way-of-life, the capitalist, colonial, and exploitative way-of-life, based on profits and benefits for the few, and characterized by artifacts like traffic and highways, factory farming, air, water and soil pollution, species extinction, global warming, seems hopelessly pervasive doesn’t it?

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Built from our immoderate love affair with untested technological inventions, powered by fossil fuels and inspired by the industrial model of the 19th century, this “modern” way-of-life continues to destroy indigenous cultures, degrade our sense of shared community, isolate us from traditional sources of strength in the natural world, and pollute our planet.

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[INSERT   I will find a photo of a child and an adult and label it Values page 1]

Biodiversity and cultural diversity are inextricably interrelated. The best creative ideas the end product of communal thinking—come from contributions from unique perspectives based on age, gender, abilities, race and place.