River Rising Vision Statement

We are building a community village, making a sanctuary for fugitives of modernity rooted in belonging, where care, curiosity, collaboration, and consideration connect a diversity of humans across cultures and generations. A place where people feel empowered through interrelated co-creation.

We strive to live in balance with the land, learning from and building alongside nature. Art and beauty are part of everyday life, shaping spaces that are functional and inspiring. We foster resilience through self-sufficiency in cultivating regenerative food systems, in building of autonomous and shared infrastructure, in holding communal relational structures of communication and conflict resolution, and in the learning and developing of shared skills.

Our village is a space for healing and collective transformation, grounded in awakening each of our own ancestral wisdoms and ways of being for the sake of learning/unlearning and undoing systems that have not served us. Through secular ritual, ceremony, and intentional living, we cultivate cooperation, mutual aid, and a shared responsibility to people and place.

Guiding Principles for Co-Living on the Land:

    • Listen to and learn from the land, build minimally and harmoniously.

    • Reverence and care for the land

    • Understanding and redefining what it means to 'steward' land

    • Continuous practice of being in relationship with the land and the awareness, presence and interconnected consciousness required for that

    • Care for each other emotionally, physically, and socially

    • Practice mutual support and share responsibilities across the community

    • Support for local Indigenous communities to have access to the land for ceremony etc

    • Work towards inclusivity in a continuous learning cycle

    • Empower individuals while nurturing interdependence within the collective

    • Create systems that allow both personal projects and collective commitments to thrive

    • Honour, include and learn from the wisdom of multiplicity and diverse perspectives

    • Holding one another and all our relations with grace

    • Embrace experiential learning: building, growing, crafting and learning by doing

    • Encourage skills-sharing, experimentation, and co-creation

    • Infuse daily life with playfulness, curiosity, and shared celebrations

    • Maintain space for art, leisure, storytelling, and ritual as essential forms of expression and healing

    • Upholding the belief that rest is a radical act of resistance

    • Build with local and renewable materials

    • Maintain physical and relational systems and structures that the community can use, repair, and improve collectively

    • Hold a willingness and capacity for mediating conflict

    • Strive for simplicity where beauty, utility, and sustainability align

    • Embrace complexity and reject unnecessary complication and consumption

    • Leaning towards easefulness

Reciprocity