The Indigenous Peoples' Restoration Network's (IPRN) mission is:

• to support native and tribal communities in need of technical assistance for environmental restoration and cultural rehabilitation, and 
   
• to assist leaders and practitioners in their efforts to apply traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) within their own vision of political, economic, and cultural sovereignty.  

Indigenous peoples bear a cultural and spiritual tradition that integrates culture and nature. While this tradition has been badly fragmented under the impacts of modern industrial civilization, it persists to some degree in most traditional communities and has been maintained largely intact in remote places scattered throughout the world.

- 1995 IPRN Founding Mission Statement

The primary goals of the IPRN are:

• to develop and use the tools of ecological restoration to enhance the survival of indigenous peoples and their cultures, and 
   
• to incorporate the TEK of indigenous tribes and native communities into newly emerging models of sustainable agro-ecosystem management.

Thanks to a generous grant from the Leslie Jones Foundation, SER received the resources to launch this web portal to help the IPRN to connect indigenous communities worldwide and bring centuries of knowledge to the field of restoration. SER would also like to thank Heiko Wittenborn for his photographs in the banner, menu bar, and throughout the site.

The IPRN Resource Center features annotated links to organizations and communities advocating traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) principles and applying them in their restoration projects and ongoing environmental practices. The IPRN Resource Center endeavors to become the most comprehensive portal for TEK references on the web (books, articles, guides, documents, statements, discussion papers, journals, magazines, news sources, databases, and listservs) as well as links to training and technical assistance, education and outreach, university programs and funding sources.

In the future, the IPRN Resource Center will create and facilitate a real time network for practitioners and academics via a bulletin board, sponsor initiatives like the Earth in Transition conference, and develop web- and pod-casts featuring TEK restoration projects and practitioners. Please click here for a welcome from IPRN founder and chair, Dennis Martinez.

All comments, corrections and suggestions related to the IPRN website are most welcome. Mail to: iprn@ser.org