From Use to Relationship: What We Heard in the Regenerative Commons Conversation

This week’s Regenerative Outdoor Visioning session may have marked an important turning point in this series. Not because we arrived at definitive answers—but because the conversation began naming something deeper beneath many of Alaska’s outdoor debates:

What if the outdoors is not simply a place we use, recreate, or extract value from…but a shared commons we are collectively responsible for stewarding?

That was the central thread woven by our Guest Weavers, AlexAnna Salmon and Steve Cohn.

AlexAnna spoke from the lived reality of Igiugig, where long-term community visioning, salmon stewardship, cultural continuity, and climate adaptation are not separate initiatives—but part of a holistic effort to sustain life in place across generations.

Steve brought decades of experience inside federal public lands systems, including leadership roles with the Bureau of Land Management and The Nature Conservancy. He offered a candid assessment of how many land management systems remain oriented around permitting uses rather than building ecological resilience or community stewardship.

Together, they helped surface one of the clearest distinctions yet in this series:

There is a difference between managing land as “open access” and stewarding it as a commons.

A Different Way of Thinking About the Outdoors

One of the strongest themes to emerge was that regeneration begins with relationship—not infrastructure, marketing, or recreation planning.

AlexAnna reflected that concepts like “sustainability” or even “exercise” can feel oddly disconnected from Indigenous ways of living. Stewardship, physical work, subsistence, and reciprocity were never separate activities in the communities she grew up in—they were simply part of daily life.

That framing fundamentally shifts the conversation. The outdoors stops being something “out there” to consume and becomes something we remain accountable to.

• Not just use. Responsibility.

• Not just visitation. Reciprocity.

• Not just ownership. Relationship.

Boundaries vs. Flows

Another major insight emerged around the tension between administrative boundaries and ecological reality.

Steve emphasized that people, trails, salmon, rivers, wildlife, and ecosystems do not organize themselves according to lines on maps.

Caribou migrations ignore jurisdictional boundaries. Salmon connect oceans, rivers, villages, and forests into a single living system. Historic trails connect communities regardless of which agency technically manages which parcel.

Yet many management systems still operate in fragmented silos: this agency, this parcel, this permit, this use.

The conversation challenged whether Alaska needs a more connected, watershed-scale, community-centered model of stewardship—one that manages for flow, relationship, and continuity rather than isolated jurisdictions.

Stewardship Requires Governance—and Capacity

A recurring theme was that regenerative stewardship does not happen accidentally.

Communities need the ability to shape decisions before outside pressures define outcomes for them.

AlexAnna described how Igiugig spent over a year bringing together all generations of the community to build a 20-year shared vision for their future. That vision now guides local institutions, economic development, land strategies, cultural programming, and climate resilience work.

The takeaway was powerful: community visioning itself is infrastructure.

Participants also identified the need for local organizational capacity—whether through tribal governments, nonprofits, stewardship collaboratives, or community coalitions—to carry long-term stewardship work forward.

Without local capacity:

• participation weakens

• outside interests dominate

• stewardship becomes reactive

  
  

The conversation also highlighted that many useful governance tools already exist:

• cooperative management agreements

• tribal co-management

• 638 compacting

• Recreation & Public Purposes Act authorities

  
  

In short, Alaska may not need to invent every tool from scratch. It may need to better connect the tools, communities, and authority already available.

Beyond Human-Centered Stewardship

One of the most important moments came when AlexAnna reframed stewardship itself. Speaking about caribou habitat and salmon systems, she asked:

“What do our relatives need to be sustained here as well?”

That single shift widened the entire conversation.

A regenerative framework cannot only measure human benefit. It must also ask:

• What happens to wildlife?

• What happens to watersheds?

• What happens to future generations?

• What relationships are strengthened—or weakened—by the decisions we make?

  
  

What This Means for the Framework

The purpose of this series is not simply to host interesting conversations.

It is to gather ideas, tensions, examples, and practical tools that can inform a regenerative framework for Alaska’s outdoor future.

This session surfaced several themes that feel increasingly central:

• stewardship over extraction

• connectivity over fragmentation

• reciprocity over consumption

• community agency over outside control

• long-term resilience over short-term growth

  
  

It also reinforced that regeneration is not merely about reducing harm. It may require rethinking governance itself: who decides, who benefits, who participates, and who—or what—is missing from the table.

That is a much bigger conversation than recreation. And based on this session, it seems to be exactly the conversation many Alaskans are ready to have.

Watch the video of the session on YouTube.

These are the remaining sessions: Free on Tuesdays at Noon. Click to register on Zoom.

May 12 - Stories, Culture & Narratives, Princess Johnson, Native Movement (Molly of Denali)

May 19 - Regenerative Business & Livelihoods, Gabe Sjoberg & Kevin Alexander, Dean, UAF Community & Technical College

May 26 - Outdoor Rx: Jim Beck, Mat-Su Health Foundation

June 2 - Policy, Co-Stewardship & Governance, Candace Nielsen, Aleut Corp.

June 9 - The No Voice: Ilarion 'Kuuyux' Merculieff, Global Center for Indigenous Leadership & Lifeways and Mackenzie Englishoe, Tanana Chiefs Conference, Chair, Emerging Leaders Youth Council

June 16 - Metrics/Measuring What Matters: Rachel Roy, Sitka Chamber of Commerce