About SDI
The Sustainable Development Institute (SDI) was organized in 1993 by community leaders representing a broad spectrum of institutional interests including governance, commerce, education, and natural resource management. Menominee expertise in forest management has gained widespread attention, receiving commendation by the United Nations in 1995, and designation as the first awardee of the Presidential Award for Sustainable Development in 1996.
The Institute fulfills its mission through scholarship, research and demonstration projects, policy recommendations, and academic preparation in Sustainable Development and Timber Harvesting. 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.
Indigenous Wisdom
At the center of everything we do, there is indigenous knowledge.
Our institutional identity is directly influenced by our learning from and reflecting upon the Menominee land ethic and the culture of respect for all relatives, human and non-human alike. This is reflected in the way that we integrate traditional ecological knowledge into our research, the intergenerational knowledge-sharing we build into our educational practices, the storytelling and consensus-building in our outreach, and the traditional languages and cultural teachings that inform every stage of our actions.