Affinity of American Indian Communities to Forested Lands
A College of Menominee Nation and Center for First Americans Forestlands Research Project

The College of Menominee Nation Sustainable Development Institute’s initiative, Center for First Americans Forestlands, is engaged in a research project designed to better assess the relationship of American Indian communities to their forested tribal lands.  The Center’s Project Research Team includes faculty and staff of College of Menominee Nation’s Sustainable Development Institute and Pennsylvania State University’s Department of Rural Sociology and College of Forestry, and the USDA Forest Service. The purpose of the research effort is to gain better insight into the breadth and multiple perspectives of native nations actively engaged in management of forest lands.   This is particularly important in respect to how native owned forest lands are evaluated under the Montreal Process, an international accord to promote sustainable forests globally.

Since the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, many initiatives have focused on criteria and indicators to track sustainable forest management.  Of all the criteria and indicators initiatives, the Montreal Process is geographically the largest, encompassing most of the world's temperate and boreal forests.  Criteria and indicators characterize the essential components of sustainable forest management, and provide a framework for understanding the importance of forests.  Montreal Process Criterion #6 is the Maintenance and enhancement of long-term multiple socio-economic benefits to meet the needs of societies.  Montreal Process Criterion #7 is the Legal, institutional and economic framework for forest conservation and sustainable management.  Each criterion contains several indicators developed to measure sustainability.  While the use of criteria and indicators to assess sustainability is widely accepted, the measurement of social indicators outlined in the Montreal Process may not be the most appropriate for sustainability assessments, especially for American Indian communities.  It is critical that indigenous people have a voice in determining how the relationships between their communities and forests are best expressed in sustainability assessments.  This research project is one attempt to understand and incorporate American Indian views into sustainability assessments.

To assure the broadest possible participation in that discussion, the research project team will convene four focus groups during the period of October, 2007 – May, 2008 to examine three indicators under Criterion #6 and #7 :Resilience of Forest-dependent communities; Forest managed primarily to protect the range of cultural, social, and spiritual need and values; and Importance of forests to people, and Management of forests to conserve special environmental, cultural, social, and/or scientific values. Discussion groups will be convened Wisconsin, Montana, Washington, and New Mexico and draw participants from the 100 native nations with the most substantial forest holdings.  Based on the results of the focus groups, a survey will be disseminated to the 302 native nations with forest and woodland holdings.  Focus group and survey results will be distributed among the members of the Intertribal Timber Council, the Indigenous Environmental Network, and the larger community of interest in sustainable forests.

For additional information, contact

Holly YoungBear-Tibbetts, Ph.D., Principal Investigator: [email protected] or Melissa Cook, Director, Sustainable Development Institute: [email protected]

Click here for May 27, 2008 discussion group flyer