A Curriculum for Regenerating the Bioregion of Connecticut’s Mystic River Watershed

A Structured Guide on

Bioregional Regeneration:

How we can restore flourishing ecosystems through awareness, behavioral and practical change, and design of the built environment.

Prepared for Our Watershed Community Input

by Dr. Zbigniew J. Grabowski, Executive Director

and Gretchen Klens, Communications Coordinator

Alliance for the Mystic River Watershed

Made possible by:

The Nature Conservancy

Resilient Southeastern Connecticut Program

What are Bioregions?

Bioregions are culturally and ecologically cohesive geographies - co-developed over time by a combination of geological, climatic, and biological (including human!) forces. These relations result in distinct stories, ways of making decisions, identities, practices of land care, food systems, built infrastructures, architectural styles, clothing, and lifeways - in short, the culture of place.

An artistic representation of a bioregion showing geological (mountains, stones, sand, floodplain), climatic (rain, sun, moisture), and biological (human, agroforestry, wildflowers, bear, eagle, trees, migratory fish) forces interacting with one another to create the conditions that support a diverse community of beings. Two Long Houses were created, one traditional (left) and one modern (right), emphasizing their relevance to tribal communities of the Northeast and practicality in our rugged seasonal climate.

In the Northeastern United States - our bioregion stretches from the high peaks of the White Mountains of New Hampshire and Maine, the Green Mountains of Vermont, Berkshires in NY, CT, and MA, the High Peaks of the Adirondacks, through the many watersheds that drain into Long Island Sound, the Gulf of Maine, The St. Lawrence Seaway and the Atlantic Ocean. Ultimately we are part of larger hemispheric ecosystems and biocultures - e.g. that of Turtle Island, similar to tbe biocultures that are considered ‘European,’ ‘Caucasian,’ ‘Asian,’ or ‘African.’

Importance of Bioregions

Bioregion

Global

Local

The ‘think globally, act locally’ (or glocal) philosophy of sustainability that recognizes the importance of local actions in support of global goals has been a key concept since the 1980s. However, many local efforts have been frustrated by a growing recognition that local sustainability challenges cannot be addressed without addressing systemic challenges related to national and state policies and regulations, and the larger infrastructure systems that shape our basic life support systems (e.g. energy, transportation, food, water, air sheds). This systemic change is not occurring and the polycrisis is only deepening. The Bioregional / Bioregioning movement recognizes that bioregions are key sites of intervention that enable local transformations in support of global transformation. Bioregions are of sufficient size to enable new supply chains for material economies, utilize urban-rural synergies, and can sustain food and water systems.

Bioregions are both biocultural designations and ‘terrains of consciousness’—constructions of human perception, awareness, and intentional thought that seek to identify the right relationships humans should have with their more-than-human family and with the land as a living, agentic entity.

These right relationships matter deeply. In the context of the Northeastern Woodlands, the cultural systems developed around right relationship are what produced the paradisiacal abundance of the landscape—documented in both extensive oral histories and in the accounts of early European colonists: tremendous food forests, rich agricultural plains, and enormous migratory fisheries, as depicted in the artwork below.

Abundance of the Northeast Bioregion

What is Regeneration?

Humans working as part of nature to support the inherent capacities of biological and social processes to create the conditions for their own thriving and healing.

Regeneration is inherently restorative— and normal: every day, the body replaces damaged cells, and every season comes with death and rebirth on a cellular, organismal, and community level.

For example, regenerative medicine focuses on supporting the body’s inherent capacity to rebuild damaged tissues, often by stimulating its own pluripotency (stem cells). Culturally this entails enabling relationships, knowledge, and wisdom. Ecologically this requires restoring the connections and processes creating biocultural diversity.

Regeneration is embedded in our DNA. Our ability to generate, or create, and regenerate is what has allowed our very existence for so long.

Related Qualities of Thriving Systems

Regeneration is also connected to other ‘qualities’ of organisms, organizations, and systems - the capacity to regenerate is closely linked to:

SUSTAINABILITY

the ability to sustain activities over designated periods (e.g. life cycles)

PRODUCTIVITY

the ability to convert time, energy, and material into useful goods and services

REGENERATION

the capacity to renew life and systems- cells, organisms, ecosystems, social-ecological-technological assemblages

ROBUSTNESS

the ability to function in diverse environmental (internal and external) conditions

BEAUTY

a sense of aesthetics, style, and value alignment

RESILIENCE

the ability to anticipate, withstand, attenuate, recover, adapt, and transform in response to disturbance

Our Bioregional Regeneration Curriculum, organized for circulation among our watershed community, encompasses three core themes:

Cultural Regeneration
Regenerative Land and Water Relations
Regenerative Built Environment and Systems

REGENERATIVE CULTURE is like the precipitation that falls on the mountains. Just as water connects and enables life as it flows down the landscape—regenerative culture is the all-encompassing enabler of the subsequent forms of regenerative activity. Only when we embrace a regenerative culture will we be able to implement action and experience outcome.

REGENERATIVE LAND & WATER RELATIONS—like the river that connects water to soils and bedrock, or culture to practice—supports social-ecological flourishing through interdependent projects such as:

ecological restoration
food
fisheries
fiber
fuel
access

REGENERATIVE BUILT ENVIRONMENTS are the fruits bore from regenerative culture and land and water relations. They are sweet like fruit because they embody regenerative values and strengthen relationships with the living world, creating a positive feedback system, similar to how fruit seeds reproduce the trees they grow from.

Culture

Land + Water
Relations

Built
Environments

Right Relationships

Building containers, convenings, and opportunities for shared understanding, empathy, and identification of opportunities for mutual aid.

Knowledge

Creation of communities of learning and practice to support a knowledge base for regeneration, as well establishing appropriate.

Values and Vision

The refinement of values in order to strengthen cohesion and alignment in mission and vision.

Technique

Skills and technologies developed in relation to needs and place.

Governance

The development of place-based regenerative decision making processes including supporting resurgent Tribal governance and nation building, interjurisdictional, and watershed based planning.

is the largest container that enables subsequent forms of regenerative activity - its focal areas include:

Regenerative Culture

These all enable and depend on one another. Right relationships make existence possible. We exist through interdependence. “Right” refers to a fundamental acknowledgment of that interdependence—guided by values and visions that shape the trajectory of our societies. These relationships are given structure through governance, which in turn relies on knowledge to be enacted.

Regenerative Land and Water Relations

Regenerative Built Environments

Regenerative Built Environments are those that harness the potential of built systems to embody regenerative values and strengthen relationships with the living world. This happens through their direct impacts and interactions with ecosystems—for example, using appropriately sized stream crossings—and is rooted in right relationships between humans and the more-than-human world. Regenerative built environments include residential, commercial, and industrial buildings, as well as the critical infrastructures that support daily life:

Energy Systems

Housing and Buildings

Waste Processing and Conversion

Water Supply

Stormwater Management

Manufacturing

Application of the Concepts Laid Out Above

Assembling Place-Specific Resources and Describing Their Application Within the Bioregion

In the Mystic River Watershed,

a key site in the development of Pequot cultures and the broader bioculture of the Northeastern Woodlands,

regeneration entails:

Understanding Culture as Bioculture

The culture of the Pequot peoples is inseparable from the bioculture—namely the agro-ecologies and life ways—encountered by colonizing and migrated peoples.
Culture encompasses both immaterial and material aspects of human existence and serves as a container for interrelated focal areas. All fit under the umbrella of culture and land relations.
A general background on Native history—told from a Native point of view, as much as possible—is a key part of our Bioregional Regeneration Curriculum.

Indigenous Descriptions of Abundance

Colonial accounts of first contact emphasized the paradisiacal nature of the Northeast and Eastern Seaboard.
Accounts describe hyper-abundances of migratory fish and birds:
- Walking on the backs of salmon, shad, river herring, and sturgeon.
- Skies darkened by passenger pigeons.
Many of these species were intentionally respected for their life-giving attributes, with specific practices of land care and ritual ensuring their seasonal returns.

Bioregion-Based Food Systems

Native and Naturalized Agro-Ecologies

Polycultures in intensive crop production:
- The Three Sisters: corn, beans, and squash.
Medicinal gardens and intensively cultivated areas, including:
- Wetland agricultural systems often co-produced with beavers.
- Cultivated wetland species like cattails, duck potatoes, chenopodium species.
- Fish and mammals dependent on wetland complexes.

Forest-Based Systems

Immediate sustenance provided by:
- White oak acorns, hickories, walnuts.
- Fruiting trees and shrubs such as:
- High and low bush blueberries
- Cherries
- Shadbush / Serviceberry / Juneberry
- Wintergreens
Forests supported key game species:
- White-tailed deer, turkeys, raccoons, opossums, wolves, bears, coyotes, and the now-extinct eastern elk.

Fisheries and Shellfish

Marine, freshwater, and migratory fisheries.
Shellfish as a critical component of both sustenance and cultural identity.

Fiber Systems / Fibersheds

Vital for clothing, building materials, and necessary technologies:
- Fish nets, lines, storage nets, etc.

Regenerative Built Environment

Key Sectors:
- Buildings and Housing
- Manufacturing
- Food and Material Processing
- Community Infrastructure
- Commercial Systems

photo credit: hpb magazine

Wastewater Treatment and On-Site Systems

Living Building Challenge requires on-site waste treatment with flexibility in implementation:
- Composting toilets and greywater separation are common.
Examples:
- Omega Center (Rhinebeck, NY): Living machine
- PAE Building (Portland, OR):
  - Living machine
  - Collects urine for fertilizer
  - First large commercial building to produce fertilizer on-site
Community-scale innovations:
- Anaerobic digestion and wastewater treatment systems: