🎉 Congressing and Events
Activities
Storytelling of Ravens
The Trust's first major initiative was Storytelling of Ravens, an in-person convening format that began in Sitka, Alaska in 2019. These gatherings brought together Ravens from across the bioregion to share personal stories of local resilience and regenerative solutions. The events emphasize emotional and relational depth, fostering transformation through shared vulnerability and celebration of what's working. From Oregon to Alaska, these annual gatherings weave together a network of changemakers who share knowledge, build relationships, and inspire collective action.
Democracy Festival (Festival Iltir)
To channel energy around that tension, they launched a Democracy Festival (Festival Iltir)—a space to surface what was moving. Interest ran high across sectors: large firms, public agencies, even the regional police chief engaged seriously. Last year’s festival drew 300 participants, including people from Barcelona and Catalonia’s national government, exploring how such processes could scale.
Regional Activation Tour
To learn what regeneration would take, Brandon and Claire ran a month-long Regional Activation Tour in October 2023, soon after they met. With more than 100 organizers and projects around the Salish Sea and Willamette Valley, they visited 14 communities in 30 days and met over 1,000 people through talks, field visits, workshops, and interviews—all asking what it would take to regenerate an entire bioregion. Elders at each stop shared knowledge; the team documented bioregional learning around that question. They followed with an online capstone so participants could workshop and share expertise, then a Cascadia Summit to shape what Regenerate Cascadia would become. A major output was a movement map—who and what sit where, and where trust must be built through relationships, not anonymous institutions. Several core design challenges emerged. Work happens in landscapes but stays disconnected. Capacity to support it is thin. In Seattle, Brandon notes, people can discuss raising $54 billion for a third phase of light rail or hundreds of millions for schools via levies—but regenerating a watershed is often “give to your local nonprofit.” The design problem: help practitioners see their work, connect with others, and get resourced. Funding pathways for watershed regeneration are weak. Practitioners are underfunded and lack time to hunt for grants. Work stays siloed, competitive, and project-sized rather than coordinated at landscape or bioregional scale—even when funders exist, bridges to people on the ground are missing. Roughly 130–140 people stayed engaged after the tour; the movement map continues to show where regeneration lives and where new links are needed.
Stone Soup Social
Like many efforts here, it began with food. The first gathering was a stone soup social—people brought ingredients, shared a meal, and started to meet. That rhythm ran from February 2, 2020, for about six weeks until COVID shut public gatherings down.
Bioregional Congress
In October 2025, HERE convened a bioregional congress with all guilds—food, shelter, ecology, and culture—bringing together the range of voices and capacities active across the estuary.
Burren Public Engagement Program
Each year the winterage—moving cattle onto the mountain—draws a public ritual around transhumance. Crowds can reach a thousand people helping move stock, with national media coverage—a visible vote of confidence in farmers who produce food and steward a globally rare landscape.