Regenerative cultures

Ask yourself; what makes a culture regenerative?

Does it produce more than it consumes?

Does it steward and use ecological resources wisely and regeneratively?

Is it something that people will continue to participate in, on their own?

Is it uplifting for people, rather than dragging them down?

Do people find it healing?

Can the cultural practices generate the resources (human and ecological) needed not just to survive, but thrive?

What makes a culture healing and regenerative, for you?

Permanent Culture

Culture is an important aspect of ensuring a design is regenerative and will last.

Thus, taking the time to ensure you understand core cultural beliefs and agreements will ensure a design that is more likely to be implemented and to succeed. Ask people what’s important to them, especially if you are coming from outside the culture. Don’t assume.

Cultural agreements are a vital part of building community.

These agreements, by their nature, can’t be enforced. They have to be agreed upon. Listening is also a vital component of that.

An intentional community can consciously co-create these agreements which help knit people together and make the project more regenerative.

Understanding the elements of culture in the place you’re designing and incorporating key regenerative culture elements into the design can make the design more effective, resilient and regenerative.

Be willing to question cultural elements, beliefs and practices that clearly don’t lead to regenerative culture or long term survival of people or planet. It’s often fruitful to look into where those elements derived from, how they derived, and what cultural practices were abandoned in favor of those.

Also, what cultural practices from indigenous groups who lived in your region or who live in similar ecosystems elsewhere worked or work well to create long term abundance?

Regenerative cultures have a code of ethics that allows them to maintain regenerative practices and lifestyles. In permaculture, that would be the ethics and principles of permaculture.

We’ll get more deeply into how to create strong communities in a later section of the course.

Further Study

A Lakota project that Grow Permaculture has supported embraces all cultures through the concept of Mitakuye Oyasin, “We are all related.” The project is much stronger as a result. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ON1q5DNUNX0

Oglala Lakota Cultural and Economic Revitalization Initiativehttps://Olceri.org

Blackfoot hierarchy of needshttps://gatherfor.medium.com/i-got-it-wrong-7d9b314fadff https://gatherfor.medium.com/maslow-got-it-wrong-ae45d6217a8c

South Side Chicago revitalizes gardens through culturehttps://vimeo.com/35532870

Haiti compost toilet organizationshttps://www.oursoil.org/ https://givelove.org/

Economics of Happiness - a story of Ladakh culturehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2kHUKbPogQ

Indigenous statement re: permaculturehttps://docs.google.com/document/d/1er9ixhlZWmwNgywzKPNPuGVfrM5KjeRBdVMiIsjtLUM

5.1.7. Regenerative and Permanent Cultures

You must be logged in to access this course