College of Menominee Nation
SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
INSTITUTE
P.O. Box 1179, Keshena, Wisconsin 54135
(715) 799-5600
Introduction
The
College of Menominee Nation (CMN) as one of the thirty tribal colleges
designated as "1994 Land Grant Institutions," is committed to the
philosophy which has long underpinned the role of land grant institutions of
higher learning. That philosophy is premised on the principle that land grant
institutions through research, demonstration, and outreach can assure that the
products of higher education be made accessible to the citizenry. This
philosophy presupposes that the production of knowledge benefits communities
removed from the orthodox constituencies of higher education, and that one of
the principal responsibilities consequent to its land grant status is the broad
dissemination of knowledge. Historically, land grant institutions were first
enabled by the political state through the allocation of public state lands.
From those allocations and the revenues derived from their alienation, the role
of the University was expanded and the State University also charged with the
responsibility of not only producing knowledge and expertise, but also as the
vehicle by which that expertise was ‘extended’ to the citizenry for direct
application. This extension mission was typically operationalized by a parallel
College of Extension Services either as an autonomous unit of the University, or
as a College within the University administration. The mechanism by which those
first, "1862 Land Grant Institutions" met this challenge was what
today we refer to as a University’s Cooperative Research, Education, and
Extension Service (CREES). Typically, the CREES was designated as a separate
College of the University and appropriated funding directly from the legislature
of the sponsoring political state, working through its own, and other University
faculty initiatives to meet its mission. A common model was the development of
joint appointments, by which an individual faculty member might hold a partial
appointment in extension as well as a partial appointment in the cognate
discipline of their expertise. The success of that model is indisputable, and
the early land grant extension initiatives performed an admirable service in
disseminating research findings, especially in respect to agricultural
techniques to practitioners. Communities founded on agrarian ideals and related
market economies have been well served by the traditional mechanism of land
grant university extension services. Regrettably, not every community -- for
both geographic and sociological reasons -- was then positioned to take
advantage of those services. In 1890, colleges historically serving African
American communities were similarly designated as land grant institutions and
launched research and extension services which made important gains for the
Black agrarian communities of the Southeast. Subsequently, institutions serving
significant numbers of Spanish speaking communities received similar designation
as land grant institutions. Not until the advent of the Tribal College movement
were American Indian reservations and communities well positioned to fully
realize the benefits of the Cooperative Research, Extension, and Education
model.
Institutional Model & Theoretical
Premise
The
research and extension mission of the CMN will be housed within SDI. SDI
represents the centerpiece of the College’s mission and curriculum as a
reflection of the Menominee experience as forerunners to what today is referred
to as Sustainable Development. That experience is best described as the process
of responding to shifting ideologies about and external pressures to their
forested homelands, and successfully negotiating their oversight of those lands
in manner consistent with their own cultural premises. Ever a woodlands culture
group, the Menominee have not only persisted in their relationship to their
forested homelands, but have today, the premier sustainable development model of
forest management. The success of the Menominee model is evidenced by their 1995
designation as the first awardee of the United Nations Award for Sustainable
Development, and the 1996 designation as the recipient of the United State’s
Presidential Award for Sustainable Development.
SDI
of CMN was initiated by the leadership of the Menominee Nation to forward two
distinct missions. On the one hand, the Institute serves as the venue by which
the Menominee reflect upon their relationship with the forest, on the other
hand, the Institute is charged with conveying that body of knowledge to the
world.
SDI
serves the College directly through professional development activities,
interaction with faculty and staff, design of new institutional models and
initiatives, and as the primary author of the research agenda and priorities for
scholarly inquiry. SDI formulates the philosophical, theoretical, and
methodological premises of sustainability around which curriculum is developed.
That theoretical model is premised on the Menominee experience of
sustainability, and is ontologically expressed as a process of human interaction
with the natural environment through six discrete, but highly inter-related
dimensions: the natural environment; land and sovereignty; economics;
technology; institutions; and human perception, activity, and behavior (Figure
1.)
Figure
1. Sustainable Development Institute Theoretical Model & Logo
This
theoretical model 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 five dimensions of the sustainable development process. The
model takes as 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 research agenda of the SDI and
situates both the academic programming and scholarly inquiry of Institute
initiatives. Topics which reflect the interface of any two or more dimensions of
sustainability are central to the Institute’s interests, and are engaged
through independent, collaborative, and sponsored research and dissemination of
information.
Research Agenda & Priorities
CMN
recognizes that the long and successful Menominee experience in sustained yield
forestry is the cornerstone of its community’s sustainable development, and
therefore has prioritized forest products, forest ecology, enhanced commerce of
timber products, and value added forest products as immediate topics relevant to
its scholarship and research and extension mission. This prioritization reflects
the inherent and frequently most contentious of tensions which exist between the
various dimensions of the theoretical model, the inherent tension between the
natural environment and human perception, activity, and behavior. The interface
between these two dimensions has suggested the importance of developing a broad
range of extension activities, which complement the success in sustained yield
forestry. While timber harvest for commercial sale has proven a crucial element
of the Menominee relationship to their forested lands, Menominee autochthony has
forged a reliance on subsistence hunting, gathering, and harvesting strategies.
Appropriately then, a priority for research and extension services in mediating
the tension between the natural environment and human perception, activity, and
behavior lies in projects, which assure access to safe and reliable food
resources. To that end, we anticipate complimenting research efforts in
sustainable forestry with new initiatives in permaculture, ethnobotany, and
preliminary investigation of the feasibility of aquaculture and hydroponics
production.
A
third dimension of sustainable development, which has garnered much of our
interest and attention in service to our institutional constituency, is the
dimension of technology. SDI of CMN has joined in the collaborative efforts of
the Menominee Telecommunications Design Team to enable a multi-media
telecommunications infrastructure capable of serving our rural and reservation
community institutions. The Menominee Design Team includes not only CMN, but
also Tribal and County governments, Menominee Tribal Enterprises, the tribally
owned forest management and lumber mill. Sustainability in a rapidly changing
and increasingly globalized village necessitates the design, construction, and
coordination of information infrastructure. Our perception is that given the
nature of that sociological climate, rural and reservation communities, once
again, are at risk. In that population densities do not warrant commercial
investment in conventional delivery of services, rural and reservation
communities are dependent on the foresight of their institutions to assure
access to the new wave of information technology. We are committed, therefore,
to a research and extension mission which forwards the development of
information infrastructure, is attuned to the potential of electronic commerce,
medicine, and judicial practice, advances local access to technological
innovations, and complements our academic goal of advancing technological
literacy.
The fourth dimension of sustainable
development to which CMN has committed itself is the economic arena. Initial
entry into extension services to forward this dimension are in nascent
development, with an initial emphasis on cooperating with the local business
incubator, offering workshops for potential entrepreneurs and service as a
research resource for tribal enterprise.
In respect to the fifth dimension of
sustainable development, land and sovereignty, the Menominee Nation has a firm
experiential basis for their understanding of how integral these attributes are
to the process of sustainable development. They know first hand the horror of
termination, and the struggle for restoration of their status as a federally
recognized Indian tribe. While political restoration has been accomplished,
other aspects of restoration are yet unattended. Central to our research and
extension mission is the commitment to those topics and activities that
re-affirm tribal sovereignty and preserves the tribal estate. We would work
pro-actively with the tribal government, its divisional units, and authorized
initiatives in support of those efforts which promote economic restoration,
social restoration, institutional restoration, and psychological restoration.
Finally, the sixth dimension of
sustainable development, that of institutions, is the scale of constituency
which the research and extension mission has been designed to serve. In aiding
in the development and maturation of the institutional life of the rural and
reservation communities which we serve, we ensure the longevity of our efforts,
maximize the impact of our initiatives, and position our own institution firmly
within the community context which has chartered our mission.
Research & Extension through</FIN
Institutional Cooperation
The Research and Extension mission of CMN
has been conceptualized as a delivery mechanism parallel to that of the
State’s University of Wisconsin Extension Service (UWEX) in a complementary
role uniquely suited to the needs of the Menominee Nation and other native
nations located in proximity to the CMN. While the state’s mission has been
the delivery of university-based research findings to benefit individual
citizens, the applied research mission of the CMN is directed toward a
constituency of a different scale. Whereas the orthodox land grant extension
mission is directed toward individuals and individual farmsteads, the extension
mission of CMN is dedicated to building the infrastructure of Indian Country,
and has, therefore, dedicated its extension effort toward strengthening the
institutional life of the reservation and surrounding communities. The direct
beneficiaries of our extension mission will be units of governance, educational,
cultural, social, and economic institutions of the county and reservation and
the surrounding communities. In contributing to the well-being and maturation of
the institutional infrastructure of the county and reservation communities, CMN
will, we believe, ultimately best serve individuals and households. The research
and extension mission of the College through its SDI is to conduct, facilitate,
and forward scientific and other research efforts relevant to Menominee
sustainable development, and to disseminate those findings to the institutions
of Menominee County and Reservation, its neighboring community institutions, and
other communities of interest.
As a young and evolving center for
research and scholarship, SDI of CMN welcomes collaborative research
opportunities with other institutions of higher learning which share the
theoretical premises which have informed the Menominee model of sustainable
development. Other land grant institutions, private and community colleges, and
nonprofit organizations committed to those topics which lie at the interface of
the six identified dimensions of Sustainable Development identified by the
Institute are encouraged to invited to explore the opportunities for cooperative
research and extension services.
Implementation Plan
The research and extension mission
defined by SDI is both extensive and ambitious, and will require an operational
strategy which meets its goals through institutional cooperation and extramural
collaboration as well as strategic staffing which forwards the Institute’s
mission while meeting the faculty needs of CMN. To that end, our initial faculty
appointments will be intramural joint appointments targeted to meet the teaching
requirements of the academic programming in the Associate of Arts and Science in
Sustainable Development degree program. In addition to such intramural joint
appointments, we are exploring the potential of extramural joint appointments
with sister land grant institutions, private, and community college campuses.
Our intramural institutional relations transcend the boundaries of the College,
and the SDI will work actively with the Menominee Research Review Council,
Menominee Tribal Enterprises, Tribal and County units of governance, and with
the Sustainable Communities Advisory Board to develop joint appointments which
forward CMN’s research and extension agenda and enhance the institutional
infrastructure of the communities which the College serves.
Future plans include obtaining funding to
support sponsored research, providing opportunities for native post doctoral
research, and creating both intramural and extramural articulation agreements
which would facilitate collaborative research initiatives. Our plan for engaging
these relationships include affiliation with communities of interest,
constituency building among organizations dedicated to sustainable development,
and convening symposia and other networking opportunities by which extramural
cooperative agreements can be formalized around specific project activity.