Sustainable Development Institute Approach

As in the past, present, and future, Menominee survival and sustainability depends on the land and forest that is so closely tied to Menominee culture. Menominee believe that all living things are created in the same way and that each life is to be respected. The Sustainable Development Institute applies these values, wisdom, and practices to a comprehensive approach of sustainability that supports and balances the needs of the Menominee.

Menominee approach to sustainable development is an integration of tribal wisdom, knowledge, values, understandings, and practices that views sustainability as a continual process by which Menominee affinity to place balances dimensions of community life. These dimensions illustrate inextricable linkage amongst the historical, social, cultural, and spiritual foundations of Menominee life.

The Menominee model of sustainable development is a theoretical model that conceptualizes sustainable development as the process of maintaining the balance and reconciling the inherent tensions between the various dimensions of sustainability. Each dimension is understood to be dynamic, both in respect to its internal organization and in relationship to each of the other enablers of sustainable development. The model takes its point of departure that change within one dimension will impact other dimensions in an ever-unfolding diffusion of responses to change, whether externally driven or inherent to the dynamism of a specific dimension. It is this interactive process, which bounds the education, research, and engagement agenda of the Sustainable Development Institute, and situates both the academic programming and scholarly inquiry of Institute initiatives.