Earlier this fall, the Indigenous Food Systems Resilience project shared an impact report and two videos that explain the work and progress of a partnership between Wisconsin’s Tribes and UW–Madison. The project, which was established in 2023 and includes nine Tribal partners and 14 UW–Madison units, is working to build relationships and conduct strategic research that can help bolster traditional food systems.

The Indigenous Food Systems Resilience project is funded through UW–Madison’s Rural Partnerships Institute and works to support Tribal producers, land managers and communities in their efforts to strengthen food sovereignty. The project is co-led by Dan Cornelius, research and outreach program manager with CALS and the UW Law School’s Great Lakes Indigenous Law Center, and Tricia Gorby, director of UW–Madison Extension’s Natural Resources Institute.

The recently released impact report outlines the key activities of the project, including co-organizing community events, hosting equipment demonstrations and safety trainings for Tribal producers, as well as providing guidance and support with planting, harvesting, and processing corn and cover crops at Ho-Chunk training farms. These activities provided key opportunities to build lasting relationships.

The videos produced by the project highlight the process of building effective partnerships and explain how project partners are working together to build capacity around food sovereignty. One aspect of that is through funding and supporting Tribal-led efforts. To date, the project has provided over $140,000 in funding to the Wisconsin Tribal Conservation Advisory Council and the Menominee Tribal Department of Agriculture and Food Systems.

The project team also works closely with the Great Lakes Intertribal Food Coalition, which manages the Tribal Elder Food Box Program providing healthy, culturally important food to Tribal communities, and communities around the St. Louis River Estuary in northern Wisconsin to understand the safety of restored wild rice in polluted waters.

“These research projects are Indigenous led—not the other way around,” says Cornelius, an enrolled member of the Oneida Nation. “All of these actions add up when it comes to creating a process of intertribal collaboration. And it gives me great optimism to see UW–Madison as a true reciprocal partner in this work. Other states are looking to us as a model for how to do intertribal work in a meaningful way.”

The Wisconsin Rural Partnerships Institute at the University of Wisconsin–Madison is supported by the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and should not be construed to represent any official USDA or U.S. Government determination or policy.