About Tallgrass Institute

Tallgrass Institute is a Center for Indigenous Economic Stewardship. We create pathways between Indigenous leaders and investors to ensure respect for Indigenous Peoples’ rights – including their rights to self-determination and free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) – in development projects that impact Indigenous lands and communities. By centering Indigenous Peoples’ power, participation, and self-determination, we integrate Indigenous priorities and perspectives to solve today's most pressing global challenges.

Programatic Pillars

Training

We train Indigenous Peoples about shareholder advocacy strategies to protect their land, communities, resources, and intellectual property and support their engagement with investors and corporations.

Research & Publications

Our research leads with Indigenous Peoples' enterprise visions, advances respect for Indigenous Peoples’ rights in business operations, and centers and amplifies Indigenous-led solutions to systemic economic exclusion.

Corporate Engagement & International Advocacy

We work directly with Indigenous Peoples and Indigenous organizations to design and deploy targeted corporate engagement campaigns. In parallel, we work within the Indigenous rights movement globally to advocate for investors, international mechanisms, and standard-setting bodies to mainstream the business case for Indigenous Peoples’ rights.

Networks & Partnership

We provide strategic partnership and network activation around rights-based approaches to sustainable economic development, equity in deal-making, and socially responsible investment.

Tallgrass Institute is…

  • Navigating the complex, interconnected web of economic realities to address challenges and create opportunities.

  • Collaboration and equity between all stewards in investment ecosystems.

  • Driving values-based solutions through Indigenous knowledge and rematriation.

  • Strong, deep roots that enrich a sustaining foundation and allow life to thrive at all levels.

Tallgrass is…

  • One of the world's largest and most complex ecosystems.  

  • Long root systems (up to 15 ft.) contribute to singularly rich soil health and rare in-ground carbon sequestration.

  • Fire is integral to the ecosystem's life cycle, via lightning before human history and then by Indigenous-led controlled burning for millennia.

  • Indigenous Peoples–with plant, animal, water, and fire relatives–were co-creators and co-stewards of the 6,000-10,000 year old ecosystem.

  • Only 4% remains of North America’s tallgrass prairie–which stretches from Manitoba to Texas and from the Mississippi River to the eastern Rocky Mountains–after colonization and forced displacement allowed conversion of most grasslands into farmland in the 1800s. Despite this, tallgrass soil is still some of the richest soil on the continent nearly 200 years later.