“ Even if we got everything else right – the science, the appropriate
ecological knowledge, sufficient resources at the scale required to
repair the Earth – these efforts would be unlikely to make much
difference to the planetary predicament without cultural transformation.
Culture is about worldview, identity, a sense of belonging.
Culture is the glue that can bring people together; without
it, logic and persuasion have little power.”
So begins the powerful essay “Cultivating a Cultural Shift Toward Bioregional Resilience”, published by Bioregional Earth on April 12, 2025, and co-authored by Clare Attwell, Brandon Letsinger, and Taya Seidler of Regenerate Cascadia. More than a policy or program overview, this article offers a deeply rooted invitation: to see culture as the soil from which all regeneration must grow.
🌎 Cascadia as a Place, a Practice, and a Possibility
Stretching from Southeast Alaska to Northern California and eastward to the Yellowstone Caldera, the Cascadia bioregion is more than a map—it’s a terrain of consciousness. As the article puts it:
“Cascadia is more than simply a place. Cascadia is a state of mind and a terrain of consciousness—the most effective framework of scale where connectedness and identity make sense.”
Regenerate Cascadia is introduced not just as an organization, but as a multigenerational strategy—one that seeks to regenerate place, grow capacity at every scale, and invest in the inner and outer work needed for long-term resilience.
💠 Culture Is the Missing Link
While many regenerative projects focus on ecosystems, data, or carbon, the authors argue that culture is the essential glue holding communities together. Without it, “logic and persuasion have little power.”
Culture—defined here as worldview, identity, and belonging—is what connects people to each other and to place. It is the foundation for trust, collaboration, and lasting change.
“By cultivating a culture of collaboration, supporting the emergence of local and bioregional systems of governance and finance, and investing in the inner and outer work required for transformation, Regenerate Cascadia is helping to lay the foundation for a more resilient and life-affirming future.”
🗺️ Bioregional Mapping: A Theory of Change
The authors uplift bioregional mapping as a core strategy for regeneration. It is not only a tool, but a transformative process that helps communities reconnect to land, story, and each other. It brings forward:
- Place-based identity
- Collective memory and history
- Ecological relationships
- Deep-time awareness and belonging
“Bioregional mapping helps people see the land as an interconnected whole—where watersheds, species, food systems, and human communities are all part of a living web.”
This cultural work becomes the foundation for regenerative governance, landscape-scale collaboration, and shared ecological stewardship.
🌿 From Isolation to Interconnection
A key insight from the article is that many grassroots groups are working in silos, with burnout, limited funding, and fragile infrastructure. To address this, Regenerate Cascadia is weaving together:
- Seed & Landscape Groups
- Landscape Hubs
- Decentralized funding ecosystems
- Cohort learning programs like How to Organize Your Bioregion
These efforts support local leadership, enable community-led grantmaking, and help groups develop governance models rooted in place.
💸 Two Programs for Systemic Regeneration
The article outlines two major programs launched in 2025:
1. Cascadia BioRegen
Developing landscape-scale capacity through cultural work, mapping, and local organizing.
2. Cascadia BioFi
Creating financial infrastructure that shifts capital away from extraction and toward regeneration, using trust-based and participatory funding models.
Together, these programs address both the cultural and economic conditions necessary to regenerate Cascadia over generations.
🔥 Regeneration Is a Living Process
Above all, the article calls us into relationship—with land, with community, and with self. Regeneration, it reminds us, is not linear. It’s alive.
“The path toward regeneration isn’t linear—it’s a living, evolving process rooted in relationship, reciprocity, and a shared sense of responsibility for the places we call home.”
📖 Read the Full Article
We highly encourage everyone in the Cascadia movement to read this article in full. It’s a beautifully written, deeply resonant articulation of the why behind our work—and a vision for the cultural transformation that must accompany systemic change.
🔗 Read the full article in Bioregional Earth
Let’s regenerate, together. 🌲