Bioregional Awareness
 "The human race is challenged more than ever before to demonstrate our mastery -- not over nature but of ourselves." Rachel Carson 1962

 “I doubt that many people have an easy feeling about the future . . or our ability to protect and maintain the networks of plant and animal life upon which the human future ultimately depends. Nor do I believe it likely that many of us believe that the hope for the future lies in more research, or in some technological fix for the human dilemma. The research already done has produced truths which are generally ignored. We are reaching the end of technological fixes, each of which gives rise to new, and often more severe problems. It is time to get back to looking at the land, water, and life on which our future depends, and the way in which people interact with these elements.” Dasmann 1975

What is a Bioregion:
 • A distinct area with coherent and interconnected plant and animal communities, and natural systems, often defined by a watershed. A bioregion is a whole "life-place" with unique requirements for human inhabitation so that it will not be disrupted and injured.
 • A geographical area whose boundaries are roughly determined by nature rather than human beings. One bioregion is distinguished from another by characteristics of flora, fauna, water, climate, rocks, soils, land-forms, and the human settlements, cultures, and communities these characteristics have spawned.
• The basic geographic unit that integrates human governance within ecological principals, the minimum area where a human community is able to achieve an autonemous, sustainable lifestyle. In the pre-conquest era identified by a particular indigenous language group.

Re-inhabitation:
Local community is the basic unit of human habitation. It is at this level that we can reach our fullest potential and best effect social change. Human communities are integral parts of the larger bioregional and planetary life communities. The empowerment of human communities is inseparable from the larger task of re-inhabitation -- learning to live sustainably and joyfully in place.

 Curriculum
 • Act together as a community,
• Learn local history and natural heritage,
• Discover the wisdom of diverse world views,
 • Distinguish their needs from their wants,
• Develop environmental literacy,
• Understand local ecosystems,
• Make ecologically sustainable choices,

 Act together as a community
• Create greeting and bonding rituals
• Choose a clan name and totem
• Learn songs and dances

Learn local history and natural heritage 
• Story telling: “How Port of Spain came to be”
• Learn hazards of nature
• Develop familiarity with local wildlife

Discover the wisdom of diverse worldviews
• Reading creation myths of different cultures

Distinguish our needs from our wants
• “How long would I live without…?”

Develop environmental literacy,
• The water cycle
• A food chain
• The compost heap

Understand local ecosystems
• Definitions
• The POS watershed
 • Explore our connections to the land, the sea and all living things,

Make ecologically sustainable choices
• Reading grocery labels
• Food miles • Import substitution
• Understand our responsibility as inhabitants of a bioregion.

Know your watershed
 • Describe where your water comes from and where it goes after you use it?
• How many days to full moon? (Give or take two days)
• What kinds of rocks or soils make up the ground under you?
• When does the wet season begin and end?
• When was the last big fire in your region?
• What foods did the Amerindian tribes of your region eat?
• Name five local herbs?
 • From which direction does the rain come?
• Where does your garbage end up?
• On which days of the year are the shadows shortest in your region?
• When are the Agouti in heat and when are the young born?
• Name five trees in your region, are they indigenous or naturalized exotics?
• Name five birds that live in your region?
• Do you know the history of development in your watershed?
• What species are already extinct in your region?
• You are sitting here reading this now, point to the north.

Activities
• Exploring the garden - learning the hazards
• Using all our senses – deer ears, owl eyes, touching, smelling, tasting
• Observing the animal and plant interactions
• Imitating animals
• Recognising bird calls
• Building a model of a mountain to show soil erosion
• Build a model of the POS watershed from a contour map using paper/clay
• Build a compost pile
• Stalking