See these cookbook recipes for ideas: http://code.djangoproject.com/wiki/CookBookCategoryDataModel http://code.djangoproject.com/wiki/ModifiedPreorderTreeTraversal
I use a custon template tag to make a tree-like navigation menu by turning the tree into a straight list with depth information on each item. My tree structure comes from Flatpages URLs though and not a recursive model. Anyway I thought it's wise to do all the complex stuff (be it recursion or otherwise) in Python in the view and have the template deal with just a straight list.
