(Keshena, Wisconsin)
The Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin is investing in sustainable agricultural practices and education to restore ancestral planting and dietary practices. The College of Menominee Nation and the Tribal Department of Agriculture are developing techniques using indigenous wisdom to defend and sustain the food supply on a community scale. The research and policy are developed in the Menominee’s Sustainable Development Institute (SDI), where efforts are focused on reconnecting the population to the traditional values and practices of growing food sustainably. By combining ancestral values and techniques with current technology, the Menominee tribe plans to protect food security and cultural values, for generations. The SDI research joins ancestral practices and scientific systems to be applied with guidance from the people’s history and institutions.
Capitalism is unsustainable, contaminating the air, water and soil. It leaves behind the depleted soil, wounded climate, and dependent masses. In the search for alternative means for sustainable food production and its equitable distribution, the masses have looked to the past for answers.
Traditional methods including raised-field agriculture, rotational agro-forestry, soil amendments and no-till gardening are being brought together and researched. These methods are capable of long-term sustainability and restoration of the combined forest and field ecosystems. The use of no-till raised fields reduces the energy input for planting and harvested used by current methods, which are petroleum and electricity dependent. Integrated within the context of the traditional values of the Menominee people, the techniques emphasize food sovereignty and sustainability, meant to be passed down from one generation to the next. The Menominee College and Tribal department of agriculture offer community education on sustainable farming, seed keeping and healthy eating.
The Menominee institute’s model “is guided by the community’s experience and focuses on balancing dimensions like land, environment, institutions, economics, technology, and human behavior.” The traditional values of the Menominee emphasize physical health and wellness as a result of harmony with natural cycles of culture, season and shared heritage. The Menominee have lead the establishment of community and inter-tribal networks for equitable food distribution and community treatment of health and wellness. Access to healthy, local foods is a primary means of reversing the damaged health and communities left behind by capitalism. Cultures now threatened by the modern, predatory practices will be defended along with their land and food sources.
Current archaeological research suggests that sustainable agriculture practices are capable of feeding much larger populations than was previously assumed. Northern Wisconsin’s growing season is short, cold and is woven between tracts of old growth forests beside dense old growth forests.
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