Protocols for Regenerative Economy — Part I
Economic resilience and sustainability require a shift from reliance on external markets and capital-intensive industries toward local, cooperative economies that prioritize equity, cultural preservation, environmental stewardship, and personalized innovation & creativity. Marginalized communities, particularly Indigenous peoples, often bear the brunt of systemic inequities, highlighting the need for economic systems rooted in fairness, shared prosperity, and respect for all forms of life — a concept Vandana Shiva calls “earth-others”.
By embracing principles of abundance, interdependence, reciprocity, and creativity, we can move beyond traditional market society frameworks — societies where based market based transactions have seeped into all aspects of the society — work, love, relationships, spirituality, sustenance, etc., to foster living economies that deliver what is truly good, useful, and desirable for all. This vision supports community autonomy, local governance, and solidarity, empowering people to shape their futures while honoring cultural values and the interconnectedness of life.
To advance this transition, I propose protocols inspired by Indigenous principles and practices.
Protocol 1: Life energy is for no one to own, it is abundant and not scarce
In modern world, money gets its value from a perceived scarcity. One of the highest values in modern market societies has been the accumulation of personal wealth and material goods, often at the expense of or in disregard for the common good. Consequently, a monetary system anchored in market society is fundamentally premised on an ever-accumulating debt, a liability that remains unsettled. This extractive paradigm money first creates poverty and then colonizes the way to get out of it (see Akomolafe 2017). The institutions responsible for value generation — banks and governments — often rely on a system grounded in scarcity. This is done conspicuously by basing investments on optimistic expectations of how much people will consume products and services in the market. This system fundamentally assumes that humans participating in markets are self-interested actors with unlimited wants.
When personal accumulation of wealth and resources is deemed the highest good, all systems reinforce this belief creating an unconscious substrate which push humans to enact those qualities of scarcity and lack — more for you is less for me. This mindset is fundamentally rooted in a mistrust of life, a belief that life does not provide what we need. Driven by this mistrust, we are compelled to control life’s energy, separating ourselves from its abundance, drawing boundaries, and engaging in never-ending accumulation.
Unseen systems and narratives dictate our actions — defining rigid boundaries on expressions of the life energy within. But the energy of life is for no-one to own or define, it belongs to the Universe. Everything that we ever want or need is already here in the Universe. This life energy chooses to arrange itself in various configurations through the formation of various beings and relationships, so that we can steward and experience that configuration. As these configurations change through death and rebirth, they give rise to new ones, offering us unique roles to play in stewarding this life energy. These are principles grounded in abundance given to us by the many lived lives of our ancestors — human or otherwise, who listened to and perceived the natural ways. These principles of trust and abundance are indigenous principles. To emphasize this Paul Shepherd writes,
“An ecologically harmonious sense of self and world is not the outcome of rational choices. It is the inherent possession of everyone; it is latent in the organism, in the interaction of the genome and early experience.” (Roszak, T., Gomes, M., & Kanner, A.D. 1995).
Protocol 2: Work is not an exchange of labor for money, it is fundamentally an outpouring of dignity
Fundamentally, Work is an application of our energy towards something, where the value is generated in its perceived deliverable quality. We live in a world where our work shapes our life in many ways. More generally it decides where we live, whom we meet, opportunities we have access to, our daily stressors, and overall means and resources for our daily well-being. In this way work has become something we “do” so that we can experience the rest of our life in its richness and health. We exchange our labor for money. The forces which define what kind of work is considered meaningful and how much we get paid are generally experienced quite impersonally and detached from our individual experiences & values of our life. This way we surrender to these impersonal forces and find glimpses of meaning in our work.
Fundamentally, work is an inherent aspect of a holistic life. In societies outside market societies work is a form of service, service to the universal energy of life. In that way it is experienced as the rhythmic movement of breath, as expressed as the Indigenous Hawaiian word Hana, where Ha symbolizes the inhalation of breath and Na as an exhalation of breath. In this way work is an outpouring of dignity just like exhalation is an outpouring of breath (Kameʻeleihiwa, 1992). In this way work is not just an instrument through which we get paid to live a life of well-being. This work is well-being in action. This is the work which naturally comes out through our inherent desire to participate in the collective life of the world. The inherent part of us which sees ourselves in unity with the world, and yet recognizes the sovereignty of self as our own unique potentiality.
Indigenous societies never experienced homelessness or unemployment, primarily because everyone is recognized as possessing the ability to breathe with the collective and inherently possessing gifts that have a role in the collective world-making. In this way, everybody has a role and a home. On the contrary, modern world and economic systems are characterized by unemployment and homelessness. This essence of work as service is not an unattainable idealistic goal or something that requires some external condition to occur. It is a remembering, an orientation, and a choice. It involves recognizing the expression of our life energy in synchrony with the rhythms of our environment, our bodies, and our culture. The documentary Hopi Songs of the Fourth World and the article by Delaney (2009) beautifully and poetically share the concept of “Koyaanisqatsi,” which highlights the relationship between life in and out of balance. Learning from the life, belief, and practice of the Hopi people, one can see what harmony feels and looks like — a continual rhythm of mind and body in harmony with the patterns of nature — a true merging of culture and nature.
Protocol 3: Perception is understanding the totality
The sense of seeing is understanding the totality of one’s own universe Seeing involves mentally experiencing the relationships between tangible and non-tangible things in the world and universe. It is to see things in more than a human-to-human context. This perception involves human beings, animals, plants, the natural environment, and the metaphysical world of visions and dreams. This involves more responsibility for the care of and respecting the relationships of all things. Patience is a part of “seeing”, as understanding unfolds over time. One may need the help of a wiser person to interpret what is seen sometimes.
Likewise, listening is another important aspect of perception. Listening involves hearing and realization. Seeing provides images and hearing adds substance to the visual experience. And as such all other senses combine together to provide a holistic perception. This holistic perception invites the mind to see the connection between two or more entities and trying to understand the relationship between them. The combined reality of physical and metaphysical reflects the belief in a combined reality, where stories combine this reality of physical and non-physical interactions on a daily basis. This holistic perception is how one can truly understand their universe. Understanding one’s relationships to events, peoples, and phenomena is most important in living a life of beauty, balance and harmony. Achieving balance is a continual orientation within this thought process. It involves balancing good and evil, aggressive and peaceful emotions, self and community. This is a sense of perception and thought processes that is reflected in indigenous way of life.
Traditional economics is based on a rationalistic understanding of human connections in the market. There is very little experiential and behavioral understanding of human “beings” in the context of market. Systems based on such assumptions reduce humans into mechanistic producers and accumulators in the market context, where the value of non-rational understanding is diminished and limited to creativity for production. A regenerative & collaborative economy needs to be based on holistic perception and relational understanding of oneself and the world.