COMING TO COUNCIL
& BIOREGION
COUNCIL: We
come together in council to speak our truths and create and
sustain community. Councils in many native traditions often
connote a gathering of people to share resources, resolve issues, make
decisions, and celebrate. In the tradition of many tribal
people,
who would meet in council to help guide their communities, we gather
often in circles in which each person can speak his/her peace.
We
also draw from the Quaker tradition of "meeting," which honors each
person has having a piece of the truth to add to the collective wisdom.
BIOREGIONALISM:
Bioregionalists are lifelong students of how to live in
balance with our eco-communities. We recognize that we are
part of the web of the life, and that all justice, freedom and peace
must be grounded in this recognition. Bioregionalism
is a comprehensive "new" way of
defining and understanding the place where we live, and living in that
place sustainably and respectfully. What bioregionalism represents,
identification with place and its history and culture, and living
within the laws of nature, is new only for people who come out of the
Western industrial-technological heritage. The essence of
bioregionalism has been reality and common sense for native people
living close to the land for thousands of years, and remains so for
human beings today. At the same time, bioregional concepts are
rigorously defensible in terms of science, technology, economics,
politics, and other fields of "civilized" human endeavor. For an
extensive and annotated bioregional bibliography, please see our blog (entry posted Feb. 24, 2008).
BIOREGIONS:
"Bioregions are geographic areas having common
characteristics of soil, watershed, climate, native plants and animals
that exist within the whole planetary biosphere as unique and
contributive parts.
A bioregion refers both to geographical
terrain and a terrain of
consciousness -- to a place and the ideas that have developed about how
to live in that place.
A bioregion can be determined initially by use of climatology,
physiography, animal and plant geography, natural history and other
descriptive resonance among living things and the factors that
influence them which occurs specifically within each separate part of
the planet.
Discovering and describing that resonance is a way to describe a
bioregion."
Peter
Berg & Raymond Dasmann
Reinhabiting a Separate Country
Planet Drum
Foundation, 1978
(map)
BIOREGIONAL MOVEMENT: Conceptualized in the
late 1970 and founded in the 1980, the
Bioregional Movement acts as a catalyst for social and political change
in government toward decentralization of power to smaller units of
population and land for the purpose of: keeping wealth at home in local
communities, preserving and enriching the natural systems of water, air
and land, and practicing ways of living that foster sustainable energy
use in human endeavors. Change includes redefining the laws governing
corporations to ensure they serve societal and planetary interests for
health and sustainability. The Bioregional Movement should pioneer new
modes of relatedness to the mystery and wonder of the natural world.
Continental
Bioregional Congress.
BIOREGIONAL CONGRESSES: For
nearly 30 years bioregionalists have been gathering in congresses to
envision and develop a realistic, restorative way of life in the
bioregions of the Americas. We set our own agendas, operate by
consensus and build a common commitment. Grand times and good
friendships are only the first fruits. At bioregional congresses, we
live in community, concern ourselves with the things that matter, and
return home informed and inspired. Congresses have been held
in
Missouri; Michigan; the Ish region of British Columbia; Maine; Texas;
Moreles, Mexico; Flint Hills of Kansas; and North Carolina.
The
next continental congress is planned for the summer of 2009, to be held
at the Farm ecovillage in Summertown, Tennessee.