RESONANCES

The Potential of Regenerative Practice and Indigenous Ways of Being in Relationship to Place

A Global Impact Essay

By Mary Casey

Acknowledgements

I would like to begin with an Acknowledgment of Country.

I live on Gadigal land, in the Eora nation. I acknowledge the traditional custodians of this land, and their continuous connection to Country, lands, waters, and sky, and pay my respect to Elders past and present. I extend that respect to the lands on which you live and their traditional custodians as you read this essay. also wish to deeply thank all those who have shared their knowledge and wisdom with me on this journey which I embrace as never-ending.

would also like to acknowledge Introba’s sponsorship of this essay, which has been made possible through the Impact Fund.

The Impact Fund is an internal program aimed at supporting thought leadership initiatives around sustainability and digital innovations for the built environment. It runs on an annual basis and funds projects, studies, essays and advisory pieces that provide new insights on how we perceive, design and build our human environment. It is an opportunity to reflect, question, think big and offer solutions to make our world more resilient, just, and regenerative. Essays created as part of this Impact Fund form part of our book collection: The Global Impact Essays.

I would like to thank Robin Hawker, my thinking partner in the writing of this paper, and the following people for their contributions to this paper:

Bill Reed, Joel Glanzberg, Dr Dominique Hes, Dr Anne Poelina, Louise Hamot, Rachel Lieberman, Richard Palmer, Anika Bell, Keeley O’Reilly and Elisa Thomson.

Mary Casey

Principal, Sydney, Australia

Artist Acknowledgement: Lani Balzan

Title: Coming Together

The cover artwork was created for Introba, representing their journey paths and commitment to helping close the gap between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and Non-Indigenous Australians.

Scan the QR code to learn more about the artwork.

Scientists are suggesting we call this geologic age the “Anthropocene” in recognition of humanity’s impact on living systems. Unfortunately, the character of the impact is harmful. We see it in things like species loss and increasing severity of weather events. The Earth is signalling to us that we are approaching a threshold.

We are at a Kuhnian crisis , where we can see that our current worldview is creating serious issues, and this is not a one-off but a pattern. It is time to consider other ways of looking at how we have framed our understanding of the world and develop some new perspectives that better fit the reality we are observing. Rather than thinking the world would be better off without us, we could begin to see that we are not only necessary to Nature, we are Nature.

Seeing things in this way, as inextricably linked, dynamically entwined and continuously unfolding is the basis of the epistemology known as Regenerative Practice.

We see strong parallels between the worldview of Regenerative Practice and Indigenous ways of being and being in relationship to living systems, and we are curious about what those resonances could produce if we looked at combining them more intentionally.

As practitioners in the built environment, we’re specifically interested in how the application of these ideas to our work can support and enable a thriving world.

Through this essay, will take you through my reflections about:

• The Law of Three Framework

• The Regenerative Practice Approach

• Our Threshold Moment – How Indigenous ways of being can inform our shift

• Implications for Our Practice – Where to from here?