Permaculture, can it all be native?

Life after grad school has most certainly not been a halt in learning.  In the past 3 weeks or so, Anna and I have collectively read about 6 books on self-sufficient living.  We've covered topics from beekeeping to chicken raising to building our root cellar (lots of rainy/snowy days has helped, too).  We became members of the local library, we know just where our section is, and we've also purchased several books from our local bookseller.  We're slowly building a library of references from which we can glean information on how to make this dream a reality.

Oliver oversees the newest to-reads (and some we've finished already). Our fuel is on the right -- we'll get through these in a couple weeks.

One stark difference between learning outside of grad school is that my response to this 'daunting' stack of books is that I don't find it daunting at all.  I cannot wait to dive into all this goodness!  We've had the same Netflix movie for over a week now because we can't motivate to watch a movie when we have all this at our fingertips!

I'm currently reading this book:

Amazing -- a must read.

It is a wonderful introduction to permaculture, and it gives a lot of information about how to do permaculture on a scale that is not too overwhelming.  In short, permaculture is a way of designing, growing, and maintaining your 'yard' that is beneficial for all players -- the land, the soil, the animals (insects, birds, mammals, microbes, worms, etc.), and the humans.  It is a fair bit of work up front, but in the long run, the landscape takes care of itself -- much like a mature forest takes care of itself, is highly productive, and looks beautiful without a gardener weeding, fertilizing, tilling, etc.  The end result can be a stunning, productive landscape from which everyone benefits!

One complaint I've read about permaculture is that it advocates for planting a lot of non-native plants and even some that have been known to become invasive.  In our climate, however, can we really use all native plants and still end up with a favorable result that provides food, materials and beauty for us to enjoy without hurting the land?  Or, are the complaints about permaculture and non-native plants coming from people who haven't quite mastered the correct arrangements of plants to prevent the non-natives from taking over?  One book I read mentioned planting bamboo since it can be used for so many things and also does so many great things for the environment around it, but bamboo is known to spread quite easily.  The author suggested places to plant it to prevent the spreading (around a pond, near a paved path, etc.), and also suggested just paying attention to it.  When you see small shoots emerging, harvest them and eat them -- the baby shoots are the best anyway.  I guess I'm just not sold on introducing a lot of potentially invasive non-native plants to my property....we have enough Asian bittersweet as it is!  

I'm about to take a permaculture design course, so I'm hoping to get a lot of my questions answered there, but I'm impatient (hence I'm already almost done with one of the class texts).  Anyone have any experience with permaculture and how to do it with all native plants?