Following the Roundtable

Posted on August 1, 2012 by islandinstitute

It’s been a whirlwind the past few weeks here at the Island Institute! First off, we want to send out our deep thanks and gratitude to everyone who participated in and helped contribute to the Roundtable on Resilient Communities that took place July 18-20. The gathering of over 40 people worked to weave the many threads of resilience together and we hope it served as an important place of inquiry, visioning, and celebration.

The Roundtable crew in discussion in the Yaw Chapel building on Sheldon Jackson Campus.

So where do we go from here? We’re still in the process of compiling notes and documentation from the Roundtable, while also practicing personal resilience with some vacations over here at the Island Institute. We hope to continue and expand the conversation around resilience here on the blog through posts and comments, and are opening up contribution possibilities to Roundtable Participants and beyond. Eventually, written and video documentation from the event will be posted here. A Resilience Facebook page has been started to share shorter thoughts and comments.

Many key ideas came out of the Roundtable; one that we are focusing on going forward is that “Everything we need is right here.” In creating resilience in Sitka and in other towns, we want to explore how we can we look within our communities to find the tools we need, and to ask the difficult questions of what we love enough to work to preserve. Continue reading →

How to Hold Resiliency & Resistance Together

Posted on July 24, 2012 by islandinstitute

Thank you to all who made our Community Resilience Roundtable such a powerful experience. Updates on the Roundtable will be posted here soon–for now, enjoy the last “pre-Roundtable” blog from Joe Solomon, Roundtable Core Member.

Hi friends.

I’m a bit new to the world of resiliency, and cannot wait to join so many others in the islands of Alaska to explore this rich topic.

My background is as a frog catcher, wildflower spreader, once theatrical clown, and as the former social media coordinator for 350.org. I’ve seen a number of ‘days of action’ bloom, and like many, have had the privilege of witnessing the rebirth of a politically charged environmental movement.

In preparation for our round of conversations — I’ve been trying to imagine what resiliency means, in light of resistance, and vice versa.

I wonder: what if we lived on another planet? What if the planet we lived on was being invaded by aliens? And what if those aliens were of the subtle planet-invading variety. What if their big plan was to surround our planet with force field stratified ships, and simply hover there, with arrays of cannons that endlessly pumped carbon? What if their big plan was pump so much carbon into our atmosphere, making the planet more or less uninhabitable, and cause enough climate chaos and societal chaos, so as to make conquering us that much easier? And what if they were willing to spend a number of years–decades even–weakening humanity at the knees with a hot and stormy planet? Continue reading →

Between a Rock and a Hard Place

Posted on July 16, 2012 by islandinstitute

By Lauret Savoy, Roundtable Core Member

In “The Testing-Tree,” poet Stanley Kunitz wrote, “the heart breaks and breaks and lives by breaking.” So many experiences that make a life, even in more ordinary times, involve breaking or being broken, physically, emotionally, and in other ways. But how does an individual, a family over generations, or a community find courage to be broken and transformed by experience, and to believe it possible to retain a sense of wholeness beyond the breaking?

I came to know many child-forms of despair as a brown-skinned little girl in 1968 America; a child who had believed that her skin was made and ‘colored’ by Sun, blue sky, and the land until told otherwise with spit. As an adult, I’ve needed to understand what hardness leaves of our lives. For hardness in this sense is not harshness or severity. Not difficulty or insensitivity. Instead, imagine the quality of rock or stone to retain some identity and physical memory even though broken or fragmented repeatedly.

It might seem counterintuitive but such hardness can feed resilience over time, and be a vital wellspring for communities for whom distress has been a norm across generations, whether a ghetto, a barrio, a reservation, or impoverished rural area. Continue reading →

Resiliency is Work

Posted on July 10, 2012 by islandinstitute

By Sam Skaggs, Roundtable Core member

Resiliency concepts helped me to integrate my layman’s knowledge in ecology and my conservation experience with my profession as an investment advisor. I come to this workshop looking for more ways to practice resiliency and to expand what I have learned toward applications to promote community resiliency.

As a way of background: when I began my investment business in Fairbanks over 30 years ago, I was one of the early advisors that tried to screen for companies that recognized the value of the commons and tried to avoid those that profited from passing on their external costs to the public. You can tell what side of Garrett Hardin’s Tragedy of the Commons argument I came out on. Continue reading →

Presilience: Of Eggs and Baskets

Posted on June 25, 2012 by islandinstitute

by Kathleen Dean Moore, Roundtable Core member and Island Institute Board member

Here’s what I want to know: What did the farmer do after he put all his eggs in one basket and then tripped over a hay-rake?

This has been the world’s project for the last few centuries, has it not? The growth economy has narrowed and narrowed future options by building infrastructure for the exclusive use of fossil fuels, while killing off competitive sources of energy; dramatically reducing biodiversity among living things as humanoids convert their biomass into human flesh; eliminating cultures, languages, indigenous life-ways and lives and replacing them with the global economy; growing one genetically modified variety of corn and lopping the heads off any stalk of wheat that grows to a non-average height; making sure that each Big Mac is exactly like the other 47 billion; demeaning any ways of loving or living that differ from the ‘norm’; measuring all value in US$; and — all together now — singing the same song (“I’d Like to Buy the World a Coke”).

So here’s what I see, scrolling in slow motion: The farmer hurries across the farmyard, whistling. A basket of eggs swings from his hand. Because his eyes are on the kitchen door, he doesn’t see the hay-rake. He trips and sails forward — a giant leap. His legs pedal air. The hand holding the basket reaches forward, as if it were holding a lantern. The eggs bound out of the basket, one after another — twelve eggs flying. And one after another, they flatten against the pounded earth. Soon after, the farmer’s body smacks full-length onto the ground. There is stunned silence in the barnyard. Then, wide-eyed, the man lifts his head. He has egg on his face, and blood in his nostrils. Continue reading →

Moving Towards Solutions: From Resilience Thinking to Human Thriving

Posted on June 19, 2012 by islandinstitute

By Terry Chapin, Roundtable Core member

We know a lot about resilience at levels from individuals to communities to the planet. I’m looking forward to the conversations in Sitka that will bring together many of these threads. However, many of the discussions about resilience have been stronger on ideas and theories than on practical solutions. I worry that we no longer have the luxury to just think about resilience. We need to begin identifying and implementing pathways toward solutions—even as we continue to learn about resilience and stewardship—our personal and societal responsibility to shape the future of our planet toward sustainability.

How do we get there from here? Some of this may involve expanding the dialogue from a comfortable conversation among the converted to a dialogue that engages broader segments of society. We need a social movement to which a large proportion of society can subscribe. There are at least a couple ways to start this process, first by shifting from a focus on the problems to a focus on solutions, and second by listening to, and engaging with, concepts that form part of the moral fabric of a broad spectrum of society. For example, stewardship is a fundamental moral code in most of the world’s religions. The majority of Americans consider themselves active members of a church. Can we work with churches to re-invent a civil rights movement for the integrity of the planet and its human residents? If we could turn the United States around, wouldn’t that help the world? However, there is a lot of trust that must develop before this dialogue will be effective. That requires a lot of listening and a thoughtful and transparent strategy.

Continue reading →

Why Resiliency Resonates

Posted on June 12, 2012 by islandinstitute

by Elena Gustafson, Island Institute Program Associate

Way back in October, I was sitting at my parent’s house nervously awaiting a phone interview with the Island Institute for their brand-new Program Associate position. I was, frankly, shocked that I had even gotten an interview, figuring the position was a bit of a long-shot for a recently-graduated wannabe writer with limited job experience outside of environmental education. But, the Institute’s work focused on an amazing combination of issues I was engaged with and the position would bring me to Alaska for a year, so I figured why not go for it?

During the interview, I was asked a question that surprised and deeply excited me:

“What do you see as the difference between sustainability and resilience?”

In my own writing, conversations, and organizing, I had started to shy away from the term “sustainability,” but until that point I hadn’t really met others who were also shifting from this term. Continue reading →

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Category Archives: Civic Engagement

Following the Roundtable

Resiliency is Work

Presilience: Of Eggs and Baskets

Why Resiliency Resonates

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