Synthesis

INTRODUCTION

As concerns for the health and well-being of our planet and all its relatives (both human and more-than-human) continue to rise, collective calls for environmental and social justice are culminating. There is growing agreement that the issues affecting our planet are not scattered and isolated, but systemic, deeply rooted, and interconnected across diverse institutions, disciplines, and practices. Scholars and activists have identified historic and ongoing colonial systems of oppression as driving many of the social and environmental disparities we see today (Tuck and Yang 2012, Whyte 2018a, Gilio-Whitaker 2019, Eichler and Baumeister 2021, Curley et al. 2022). These colonial systems of oppression, which include settler colonialism, patriarchy, imperialism, capitalism, and white supremacy, among others, often converge to mutually reinforce the subjugation of peoples, animals, lands, and waters. More specifically, settler colonialism has been the pioneering force from which other oppressive systems often follow or build upon with the aim to sever Indigenous relationships with place (Table 1). As such, it is important to center settler colonialism and underlying colonial logics (i.e., logics that seek to minimize and erase Indigenous Peoples and ways of being) when addressing environmental and social injustice. For example, Kyle Powys Whyte (Potawatomi) clearly demonstrates the centrality of settler colonialism, stating that it “can be interpreted as a form of environmental injustice that wrongfully interferes with and erases the socioecological contexts required for indigenous populations to experience the world as a place infused with responsibilities to humans, nonhumans and ecosystems” (Whyte 2016:3, unpublished manuscript, https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2770058). Consequently, as the systems that reinforce settler colonialism persist and spread through imperialism and globalized capitalism, social and ecological relationships that support healthy and resilient ecosystems and peoples become further jeopardized on a global scale. Without fully understanding both the source and extent of settler colonial influence, disciplines that may aim to maintain and improve ecological well-being, can instead act as an arm of settler colonial destruction. Therefore, practitioners and scholars nested within environmental institutions, organizations, and governments, especially those based in the imperial core of the United States, have an undue responsibility to engage all relevant histories to fully understand and work to address the coupled social and ecological injustices driven by settler colonialism.

The fields of conservation and environmentalism more broadly have been continually critiqued for upholding and institutionalizing oppressive colonial ideologies (Dowie 2011, Whyte 2018a, Gilio-Whitaker 2019, Eichler and Baumeister 2021, Hessami et al. 2021). In response, however, energy has largely been allocated to initiatives and projects that do not directly hold institutions accountable and instead remain merely aspirational in their actualization of justice (Tuck and Yang 2012, Hird et al. 2023, Tripati et al. 2023). Rather than working to solve systemic issues, these often superficial initiatives have instead perpetuated a mismatch between decolonial recommendations and practice, underscoring the fundamental need to disentangle past and remnant harms in order to truly divest from what we refer to as the conventional (settler colonial) conservation model and instead invest in healing conservation futures. Although scholarship addressing equity and justice in conservation and environmentalism is growing (Eichler and Baumeister 2021, Busck-Lumholt et al. 2024), the scope of history covered remains limited, largely relying on readers to already have a grasp of the contexts that shape these fields and underlying disparities. Meanwhile, although these broader historic references are vast and ever-increasing, they remain scattered and often decontextualized across various bodies of work and disciplines. This lack of fundamental training and guidance poses an immense challenge for conservationists (practitioners, scholars, researchers, and professionals alike who are entangled with conventional conservation) to build the foundation of knowledge needed to more effectively center anti-colonial and decolonial processes in practice. Without deepening field-specific decolonial understandings, conservationists, even those who value justice, risk unknowingly perpetuating oppressive paradigms embedded within the field, such as by focusing on recruiting (assimilating) minoritized individuals into an oppressive field before working to uproot harmful settler colonial constructs (Hird et al. 2023). Taken as a whole, cultivating a decolonial lens offers an opportunity to reconstruct and re-envision conservation roles and futures outside the field’s pervasive colonial legacy and toward collective benefit.

In response to the growing need to contextualize decolonial guidance, here we bring together diverse bodies of knowledge and key references to reframe and re-orient conventional conservation practice. We define justice in the context of conservation as the healing and restoring of Indigenous relationships to lands, waters, and beings through field-specific anti-colonial and decolonial processes (Montgomery and Blanchard 2021). Orienting toward this definition of justice requires that we “frame issues in terms of their colonial condition” (Gilio-Whitaker 2019:25) by offering an expansive lens that “sheds a different light on the processes of history, providing irrefutable linkages between all eras and aspects of settler and Indigenous contact” (Gilio-Whitaker 2019:39). To achieve broadscale conservation justice also requires expanding conceptions of Indigeneity to be inclusive of Indigenous African Peoples exploited for chattel slavery, and Indigenous Peoples exposed to displacement, assimilation, adoption, and other forms of identity and land theft, such as through settler colonial legal or conceptual frameworks (e.g., blood quantum, reservation status, etc.) or after crossing colonial borders (Mays 2021, Curley et al. 2022). In this way, approaches to healing and justice can be transcendent across diaspora and inclusive of both Indigenous sovereignty and abolition to achieve, “a shared future-oriented solidarity that must understand history ...” (Mays 2021:16) across our various forms of oppressed and privileged identities to move toward collective resistance (rebellion, even) against settler colonialism and all its derived forms of oppression (Mays 2021, Curley et al. 2022).

In this synthesis, we explain settler colonial conservation’s proximity to pivotal developments in colonial control of Indigenous Peoples and landscapes across the Americas (Fig. 1) and offer ways in which conservationists can work toward a more restorative future (Fig. 2). Proceeding this introduction, we highlight Indigenous lifeways and knowledges as persistent through and beyond colonial narratives. We elaborate on the origins of settler colonialism in the U.S. and discuss conservation’s settler colonial and imperial legacies across the Americas. We assess contemporary manifestations of settler colonialism within the field, with implications to global landscapes. Finally, we offer strategies to apply anti-colonial and decolonial processes in conservation practice in support of Indigenous leadership and futures. These topics aim to provide a gateway toward deepening decolonial understandings in conservation while guiding the reader toward envisioning their role and sphere of influence within these larger systems. Overall, developing an understanding of the intersections between settler colonialism and conventional conservation generates pathways toward healing Indigenous landscapes and lifeways.

SUSTAINED INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGES AND LIFEWAYS

In contradiction to pervasive colonial myths, many Indigenous Peoples have been developing long held and deeply reciprocal relationships with their environments since time immemorial. Before the invasion of the Americas, Indigenous Peoples occupied every area of land across the region, establishing extensive networks of travel and trade (Dunbar-Ortiz 2014, Farrell et al. 2021). Through millennia, many Indigenous Nations and Peoples have also been developing mutually sustainable relationships with place and more-than-human kin, cultivating, adapting, testing, and refining robust, evidence-based knowledges of earth, water, and life (McGregor 2004, Fernández-Llamazares et al. 2021, Eichler and Baumeister 2021). Some models of Indigenous stewardship strategies and responsibilities to land and waters include sustainable hunting and fishing practices, fire treatments, erosion prevention, soil enhancement, agricultural techniques, management for mature and diverse forests, among more (Waller and Reo 2018, Whyte 2018b, Lake and Christianson 2019, Fernández-Llamazares et al. 2021, Whyte et al. 2021; Roberto Mukaro Borrero 2020 video discussion, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqLqwvYAo-c). For example, the Kwakwaka’wakw Peoples in what is now known as British Columbia are well practiced in marine farming techniques spanning generations, including by nurturing clam gardens that provide ideal habitat for butter clams and other edible shellfish (Deur et al. 2015). The Kwakwaka’wakw Peoples’ stewardship continues to increase productivity and resource security and has for thousands of years, all the while supporting healthy marine ecosystems. On lands, the Karuk Tribe in what is now known as California represents another sustained stewardship example, enhancing forest food systems through systematic fire regimes, with as much as 75% of species that the Karuk Tribe relies upon benefiting from these fire treatments in some way (Whyte 2018b). Meanwhile, there are thousands more diverse Indigenous Nations and Peoples across the globe that continue to steward landscapes and strengthen their ancestral and cultural lifeways despite settler colonial opposition and disruption (Fernández-Llamazares et al. 2021). As we continue to develop our understanding of the damage caused by settler colonialism, we respect and honor the persistence, resurgence, and recovery of Indigenous knowledge systems and lifeways first and foremost.

COLONIZATION, WHITE SUPREMACY, AND THE MAKING OF SO-CALLED “AMERICA”

To understand the links between settler colonialism and the conventional conservation model first requires an understanding of the foundational logics and systems of oppression that have and continue to disrupt Indigenous lifeways. Because settler colonialism fundamentally seeks to replace Indigenous Nations with illegitimate settler-states (i.e., outside governments attempting to usurp power, resources, and control of established Indigenous Nations), it relies heavily on structures of violence and oppression (Hird et al. 2023). We see this reflected in the building of what is now known as the Americas where, throughout history, settler colonial processes have repeatedly attempted to replace Indigenous sovereignties, ontologies, and cosmologies with those of settler society. As expressed by Paula Gunn Allen, “To that end the wars of imperial conquest have not been solely or even mostly waged over the land and its resources, but they have been fought within the bodies, minds, and hearts of the people of the earth for dominion over them” (Allen 1992:214). Although colonization and U.S. imperialism have plagued every continent of the world and share common features across time and space, here we focus on the colonial practices that informed the tenets of North American institutions, including conventional conservation, and the actualization of power and control over people, lands, and waters.

Colonization of the Americas and Indigenous resistance

Numerous mechanisms bolstered settler sovereignty and reinforced a logic of elimination (in that, Indigenous Peoples must be removed for settler colonialism to persist) that fueled colonization across the Americas, including capitalism backed by settler colonial law (Wolfe 2006). Capitalist ideals of progress, extraction, and exploitation have been used to fundamentally restructure landscapes as well as human relationships with each other, land, waters, and more-than-human kin (Whyte 2018a). Simultaneously, violent colonial tactics in the making of so-called America have been justified through the European-created and Christian-sanctified Doctrine of Discovery (Miller et al. 2010), which remains as International Law to this day (Getches et al. 2017). This doctrine gives legal precedence for explorers to claim “wildland” as “land belonging to no one” (Terra nullius), prescribing concepts of ownership across the world, while concurrently attempting to invalidate Indigenous customary rights and stewardship of lands and waters by deeming Indigenous Peoples as less than human (Wolfe 2006, Hendlin 2014).

Colonization of the Americas in the late 15th century was inspired by the capitalist urge for resources and labor and was endorsed by the Spanish monarchy and the Catholic Church (Wolfe 2006, Zinn 2011). In the words of Roberto Mukaro Borrero, a Taíno scholar and community leader, “the Spaniards didn’t come over to this side of the world [the Americas] to plant beans, they came over to get gold” (Roberto Mukaro Borrero 2020 video discussion). The Taíno (Island Arawak) were the first peoples to greet the Spaniards, offering them gifts, food, and water, while adorned in gold ornaments (Zinn 2011). The Spanish conquistadores, emboldened by a sense of superior civility, considered the ways of the Taíno Peoples, such as their well-established societies, complex networks of trade, and frequent bathing, “beneath” their comprehension (Roberto Mukaro Borrero 2020 video discussion). In response, the Spaniards used military forces financed by Western Europe to brutalize and enslave many Taíno Peoples, including women and children for sex and labor, in pursuit of material wealth (Forte 2006, Zinn 2011). Despite this extreme violence, Taíno Peoples, such as the Taíno cacique (chief) Anacaona, worked to implement diplomatic solutions to this invasion (Barreiro 2012), alongside numerous acts of resistance and rebellion. For example, many enslaved Taíno Peoples refused to plant their annual crops, resulting in severe starvation of the Spaniards who otherwise could not grow food (Paravisini-Gebert 2016). Meanwhile, other Taíno caciques, such as Enriquillo and Hatuey, led recurring, and in some cases successful, rebellions against the Spanish invasion, despite fierce militarized opposition (Forte 2006, Zinn 2011, Barreiro 2012; Roberto Mukaro Borrero 2020 video discussion). These rebellions, however, did not discourage the English from replicating this regime in North America nearly a century later, building the foundation for prominent colonial institutions that remain steadfast to this day.

Over the last 500 years since the origination of the Americas, Indigenous Peoples have been targeted by a settler colonial elimination agenda to build what is now known as the United States. During this time, cruel and violent tactics were enabled by Manifest Destiny—a settler colonial concept first coined in the mid-1800s to justify westward expansion in the name of God, and resulted in the exploitation of Indigenous lands, labor, women, children, animals, and the land (Getches et al. 2017). The Manifest Destiny rhetoric promoted the replacement of Indigenous Peoples with European settlement in North America and became the toehold for the U.S. Federal Indian Law and Policy, which aimed to fracture Indigenous relationships to lands and waters. For example, treaties (government-to-government agreements) that recognize select Indigenous Nations as sovereign were often coerced with the intention of broadening colonial control (Getches et al. 2017). However, many Indigenous Nations strategically ingrained their fundamental rights within these agreements, breathing life back into them through the generations despite continued colonial attempts to undermine Indigenous governance structures (Wilber and Lane 2025, podcast, https://www.allmyrelationspodcast.com/podcast/episode/7eaa83a3/sacred-promises-truth-and-treaty). Other legalized acts of attempted Indigenous genocide included the Indian Removal Act of 1830, which led to forced marches of Indigenous Peoples in the Trail of Tears, sterilization without consent, starvation, displacement, war, and rampant disease (Wolfe 2006, Zinn 2011, Whyte 2018c, Gilio-Whitaker 2019). Indigenous lands were also targeted through the creation of the Indian reservation system in 1851, followed by the end of treaty making in the U.S. in 1872, and the Dawes Act of 1887, which inaccurately assigned blood quantum to create categories of “Indian-ness,” and expedited sales of Indigenous land through allotments to settlers as private property (Rodriguez-Lonebear 2021, Schneider 2023). Indeed, westward expansion together with U.S. law have continued to work jointly to gain control of Indigenous lands and resources through the centuries, with every treaty ever made between the settler colonial government and Indigenous Nations broken in some way (Getches et al. 2017, National Park Service 2022). Consequently, the U.S. settler state has dispossessed over 98.9% of Indigenous lands to create an idealized America as a New World for European prosperity (Wolfe 2006, Getches et al. 2017, Farrell et al. 2021).

Alongside these direct and often physical attempts at Indigenous genocide and land theft came the frequent targeting of Indigenous social and cultural customs. One example of attempting to distort Indigenous customs was through shifting matriarchal and spiritually pluralistic governance systems to a heteropatriarchal (supreme male) system of control (though, many Indigenous Nations still maintain matriarchal governance systems and spiritual practices to this day; Allen 1992, Lugones 2016). This colonial tactic of patriarchal supremacy served to disempower those who did not identify as male from economic and political gain as well as suppress unique community roles and responsibilities to privilege a singular and elite male class instead (Allen 1992). The subjugation of Indigenous cultures and customs became quickly institutionalized through boarding schools that sought to erase Indigenous languages, spiritual practices, and community roles, while simultaneously degrading the status of women (Whyte 2018a, Bacon 2019). Colonial assimilation tactics also aimed to depreciate common Indigenous sexuality customs and gender pluralities, and, in turn, corresponding responsibilities within communities (Allen 1992, Lugones 2016). Pre-colonization, homosexuality and two-spirit peoples were nearly universal across Indigenous Nations, associated with key community contributions alongside elevated respect and honor (Allen 1992, Gilley 2006). In Anishinaabe communities, for example, two-spirit people would assume special roles, such as tending fire, leading ceremonies, and community healing (Chacaby and Plummer 2016). However, as expressed by a two-spirit individual, the “stigmatism on homosexuality is at the heart of the decline in our roles” (Gilley 2006:59). Through the settler colonial process that prioritized (and enforced) heterosexuality and a gender binary, homophobia and heteropatriarchy spread alongside Christianity (Allen 1992, Gilley 2006). Now, many two-spirit Indigenous Peoples fear, instead, that their social standing and respect will become replaced by alienation should their full identity become known within their community (Gilley 2006). The pervasive restructuring of gender and governance was used as a weapon against Indigenous ways of being and existence in and of itself and continues to shape prevailing colonial norms in conservation and related fields (Allen 1992, Lugones 2016, Collins et al. 2024).

Inception of white supremacy on colonized land and Afro-Indigeneity

In addition to attempting to eliminate Indigenous Peoples from landscapes, the European conquest for settler sovereignty created the most insidious ideology: white supremacy. This social construction was used to further embed the role of ownership beyond land to people and instill a logic of settler superiority into the colonial legal framework (Finney 2014, Lugones 2016, Taylor 2016, Getches et al. 2017, Gilio-Whitaker 2019). European elites had been well practiced in the control of people for capitalist gain before transferring systems of slavery to the Americas. The inception of private property and commercial industry in Europe displaced subsistence farmers, propagating poverty across Europe (Harvey 1974, Zinn 2011, Dunbar-Ortiz 2014). Many displaced farmers became indentured servants, promised settlement in North America in the early 1600s (assuming the absence/removal of Indigenous Peoples), but instead they experienced severe starvation on unfamiliar lands, even resorting to cannibalism (Dunbar-Ortiz 2014). With the exploitation of knowledge, labor, and land already entrenched in the colonial model to remedy settler struggles, enslavement of Indigenous African Peoples became an inviting means of bolstering this regime. This system of enslavement, which ripped Indigenous African Peoples from their ancestral lands, belongings, and familiarities, provided a foundation of vulnerability for exploitation (Zinn 2011, Williams and Holt-Giménez 2017). Enslaved Indigenous African Peoples also brought with them extensive agricultural and technical expertise of soils, water, herbal remedies, and several food crops (Williams and Holt-Giménez 2017). For example, South Carolina’s hugely profitable rice industry was built from the stewardship knowledge of enslaved Indigenous African Peoples (Carney 2001). Displaced Indigenous African Peoples also found success through their resistance, such as through cultivating what is now the Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge. This swamp, though extremely hazardous, became a place where runaway enslaved Indigenous African Peoples could grow crops, hunt, and build refuge (Finney 2014). These unified acts of resistance were not uncommon as “Black and Indigenous people used a variety of modes of resistance to obtain their freedom and to create the steps for liberations. They used nationalism and sovereignty, violence, the breaking of tools and poisoning of masters, the law, writing and forms of solidarity...” against their oppressors (Mays 2021:22).

In response to ongoing rebellions, European colonizers devised a false means of superiority to divide the laboring class and attempt to subdue the profound resistance embodied by diverse Indigenous Peoples and non-Indigenous comrades. Starting with the first permanent English colony in Jamestown, Virginia in 1619, Indigenous African Peoples worked side-by-side with indentured European servants, until White elites stoked a racial divide between them to prohibit cross-racial solidarity and rebellion of the laboring class (Allen 1994). For example, those who would revolt would receive higher penalties if they were Black, with additional penalties for White people who conspired with enslaved Black people (Zinn 2011). As instances of unified rebellion increased, white supremacy became codified, incentivizing White indentured servants to “stay in line” or police their Black neighbors through slave patrols. In this way, the legal privileging of Whiteness, coupled with the simultaneous penalization of Blackness, became a means of controlling White and Black collaboration for the benefit of capitalist expansion (Zinn 2011). Additionally, colonizers used similar tactics of subjugation and brutalization of Black women to reinforce the growing heteropatriarchal system of control. For example, Black women sold into slavery were sold as wives, assuming the role of sex slave, companion, child bearer, and caretaker, often from a young age (Zinn 2011). Rape of Black women, coupled with the “one drop rule” that dictated that any amount of Black ancestry (i.e., even a single drop of “Black blood”) determined someone’s identity as Black, served to create an unending and automatically enslaved laboring force (Allen 1994, Davis 2001, Wolfe 2006, Tuck and Yang 2012, Lugones 2016, Saini 2020). Therefore, the construction of the U.S. and its institutions and upper-class wealth were materially and ideologically predicated on the subjugation of Indigenous women, the exploitation of Indigenous bodies and labor, and the separation of Indigenous Peoples from their homelands (Wolfe 2006, Lugones 2016, Taylor 2016, Mendieta 2020, Mays 2021).

SETTLER COLONIAL UNDERPINNINGS OF THE CONVENTIONAL CONSERVATION MODEL

The colonial logics that built so-called America also became the ideological foundations of many U.S.-based institutions and disciplines, such as conservation, with centuries of evidence demonstrating their complementarity (Ghosh 2021). Since its origination, conventional conservation has followed closely in the footsteps of the colonial and imperial agendas of the U.S., often side-by-side, assuming the same false logics of settler superiority and Indigenous elimination. As such, settler colonial conservation has become a major driving force in the restructuring of ecosystems and relational ties to place across the Americas, with its influence swiftly broadened thereafter to global landscapes (Dowie 2011).

Conventional conservation and the logic of superiority

The conventional conservation paradigm, bolstered by colonial science, has a long history of enabling colonization for the benefit of settler prosperity (Ghosh 2021). Colonial science aided in creating a disconnected depiction of the world, separating nature from humans to be categorized, observed, and collected. This affinity for categorizing life became the basis of the European folklore that built the groundless biological construction of race in early 18th century Europe with Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus who, alongside his classification of nonhuman organisms, also racialized humans (Saini 2020). In his early work, he denoted humans by color, deeming Indigenous or “red” Peoples as naturally subjugated and Black people as “feral” or “monster-like.” Furthering these myths, German naturalist Johann Blumenbach created a hierarchical division of people, describing “Caucasian” (White) as the idealized human race. Meanwhile, influential scientists of the time, such as Charles Darwin, promoted the opinion that dark skinned people occupied “the lowest rungs of human hierarchy” and Whites the highest (Saini 2020:28). Indeed, Darwin’s cousin, Francis Galton, coined the term “eugenics” to advocate for the selective breeding of an “ideal” Caucasian society (Saini 2020). These elite White men promoted the rise of social Darwinism and eugenics, which assumed a sense of superiority of the “civilized” over the “primitive” (Yakushko 2019). Darwin’s followers, such as biologist Thomas Huxley and naturalist Ernst Haeckel, made unsubstantiated claims about the reduced brain size of Black people and even questioned their very humanness, suggesting them to be the “missing link” between Europeans and apes (Finney 2014, Saini 2020), claims that aimed to justify and bury the horrors of European colonization and the continued human rights abuses of Indigenous Peoples.

Unfortunately, the racist tropes upheld by early naturalists did not end with the abolition of slavery and instead became embedded and preserved in the conventional conservation model as it cultivated in the U.S. Although colonization-driven environmental degradation sparked the development of settler colonial conservation (Murdock 2021), instead of collectively battling these oppressive and destructive forces together, place-based realities became quickly eclipsed by colonial fallacies, leading to further harm. In fact, it was the conventional conservation forefathers, such as Madison Grant and Theodore Roosevelt among others, who drew parallels between conservation and race-based eugenics as joint efforts to preserve White America (Powell 2015, Ghosh 2021). For example, Madison Grant, who was well known for his initiatives in protecting buffalo (American bison) and the California redwoods, also championed the book The Passing of the Great Race (1916). This work served to uplift the Nordic people as supreme and propagate eugenicist ideals praised by Theodore Roosevelt alongside Adolf Hitler, validating widespread concerns about the diminishing pure White race (Tuck and Yang 2012, Taylor 2016). The work to conserve buffalo, which had become a symbol of the American frontier within settler imaginaries, was also fueled by the perceived loss of manliness and White racial dominance highly associated with the colonization of the American West (Powell 2016, Schneider 2023). Roosevelt, revered as the first environmental president (1901–1909), amplified this symbology through trophy and sport hunting by wealthy elites, effectively conquering species nearing extinction at both local and international scales (Taylor 2016). He was also a rancher who influenced the integration of capitalism into environmental priorities, such as by promoting free range cattle grazing through the U.S. Bureau of Land Management and deforestation through the U.S. Forest Service, which authorized the harvest of over 95% of old-growth trees in the U.S. in support of economic gain (Dowie 2011). Roosevelt claimed, “the rude, fierce settler who drives the savage from the land lays all civilized mankind under a debt to him. It is of incalculable importance that America, Australia, and Siberia should pass out of the hands of the red, black, and yellow aboriginal owners and become the heritage of the dominant world races” (Dowie 2011:259).

Other notable environmentalists perpetuated similar ideals early on, including John Muir, Gifford Pinchot, Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and others: White male elites in search of a mythical rugged (yet Godly) wilderness, while prescribing an American settler identity as the “first” peoples (Dowie 2011, Taylor 2016, Eichler and Baumeister 2021). Muir and Pinchot, in particular, infused social Darwinism and white supremacist views into their conceptions of wilderness, which did not interfere with their ability to rise in ranks within the field (Taylor 2016, Yakushko 2019). Muir, who described Indigenous and Black people as “dirty, lazy, and uncivilized,” became the founder of the Sierra Club (Dowie 2011, Kashwan 2020) and Pinchot, a leading figure in the eugenics movement, also headed the National Conservation Commission and the Forest Service (Purdy 2015). Meanwhile, although Thoreau and Emerson were known for opposing slavery, they made little effort to understand or reduce manifestations of settler colonialism (including slavery) in environmentalism, and instead, emboldened settler nativism and Indigenous replacement (Purdy 2015, Taylor 2016, Eichler and Baumeister 2021). These individuals, among others, shaped the tenants of settler colonial conservation, successfully instilling these ideals into many of the prominent environmental agencies we know today as well as creating the bedrock of academic teachings in the field (Morales et al. 2023). In doing so, they directed the conventional conservation agenda for decades to come (Murdock 2021).

Conventional conservation and the logic of elimination

The white supremacist and patriarchal ideologies perpetuated by the forefathers of conservation became infused into the conventional conservation model to continue centuries of violence against the land and its stewards for the preservation of a “pristine” and “rugged” American wilderness (Cronon 1996, Eichler and Baumeister 2021) agenda was also carefully tied to the logic of Indigenous elimination to extend Manifest Destiny. Settler colonial conservation was predicated on the construction of an idealized barren and sacred wilderness, devising several tactics for removing the influence of the lesser, “savage” Indian and intensifying Indigenous land theft, with a key example being “fortress conservation” (Hessami et al. 2021). Through a prominent preservationist rhetoric invented by settler colonial conservationists, such as John Muir and Henry David Thoreau, the inception of protected areas (PAs), a model of “fortress conservation,” began in the U.S. Yosemite Valley was the first PA, followed by the creation of Yellowstone National Park in 1872, the same year that treaty making ended in the U.S., further undermining the sovereignty of Indigenous Nations (Stark et al. 2022). Working in conjunction with PAs, settler colonial conservationists also aimed to disrupt Indigenous relations with more-than-human kin. For example, the American Bison Society (ABS), founded in 1905 by Theodore Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot, although charged with protecting buffalo, stood by as “surplus” buffalo were killed in droves at the newly formed PA at Yellowstone (Taylor 2016). This coordinated culling of buffalo extended the ongoing colonial attacks on Indigenous lifeways, where the near extinction of buffalo served in part as a military strategy to starve Indigenous Peoples who resisted colonial expansion and relied on buffalo to maintain cultural lifeways and responsibilities to more-than-human kin (Taschereau Mamers 2019, 2020, Reed 2020).

By 1916, the National Parks system was formalized, further inspiring forced removals of Indigenous Peoples for the preservation of idyllic nature, protecting what ought to be, rather than what has been continually cultivated by Indigenous Peoples (Cronon 1996, Bacon 2019, Murdock 2021), similar to how European settlements swept the nation in the 17th century. The creation of PAs, including forced evictions and denial of rights for Indigenous Peoples, worked alongside colonial land grabs in the movement westward (Colchester 2004). PAs, predicated on forced removal, also set precedent for the militarized protection of settler assets (e.g., stolen land) from Indigenous Peoples, often working in tandem with settler state policies to justify further displacement, imprisonment, and violence (Murdock 2021). Not only did these tactics promote colonization, but they also created a conservation paradox where the removal of Indigenous Peoples from their ancestral, cultural, and hunting territories opened areas up to heavy resource extraction, pollution, and sport hunting, thereby threatening habitats and facilitating species extinction, which PA’s and colonial conservationists have since failed to recover (Cronon 1996, Lele et al. 2010, Fletcher 2017, Eichler and Baumeister 2021, Liboiron 2021, Whyte et al. 2021). Instead, by uprooting the most qualified and knowledgeable ecosystem stewards, conventional conservation practices have paved the way for a long history of mismanagement by settler colonial government agencies, including the stocking of freshwater systems with invasive fish for sport and species misidentification leading to drastic native fish declines through the centuries (DeCicco 2005); fire suppression and villainization of cultural burning leaving forests more vulnerable to severe and uncontrolled fires (Whyte et al. 2021); and predator removal leading to disruptions in species interactions that transformed landscapes (Blossey and Hare 2022). The legacy of conservation, under the guise of protecting resources from humans, acted to instead enable settler colonialism and capitalism and enforce control of Indigenous lands and waters for the benefit of the few (i.e., White male elites) rather than the collective (Cronon 1996, Büscher and Fletcher 2020).

Colonial expansion through conservation mediated imperialism

As conventional conservation sanctioned the spread of settler colonialism across the U.S., it also promoted the expansion of U.S. imperialism to control people and environmental resources across the Americas and informally strengthen a U.S. empire (Ghosh 2021; Fox 2024, podcast, https://nacla.org/under-shadow-ep-1). Justified by the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, which relied on the prevailing “civilized” vs. “uncivilized” discourse to grant legal authority for the U.S. to invade foreign countries, U.S. interventions ramped up throughout the 20th century, contributing to militarized occupation and economic restructuring throughout Latin America (Fox 2024, podcast). With immigration from the South to the U.S. increasing substantially during this time to escape violent conditions (Fox 2024, podcast), anxieties began to rise amongst settler colonial conservationists who aimed to preserve a wealthy white wilderness. For example, alongside growing concerns about rising immigration, came the revitalization of the 18th century Malthusian argument that linked human bodies to resource depletion, which incited a fear of “overpopulated” lands, or, as Aldo Leopold put it, wilderness “pestered with inhabitants” (Fletcher et al. 2014, Powell 2015, Ojeda et al. 2020). The culminating xenophobia, coupled with the rise of Nazi Germany in the 1930s–1940s, inspired the eugenics foundation of conventional conservation to take on a more palatable form: population control (Powell 2015). Several literary best-selling works of their time moved conventional conservation’s population control agenda forward, such as the 1948 books Road to Survival by ecologist and ornithologist William Vogt that advocated for universal birth control to curb human overabundance and Our Plundered Planet by conservationist Henry Fairfield Osborn Jr. that touted similar concerns of overpopulation and environmental destruction (Powell 2015). In 1968, biologist Paul Ehrlich published another best-selling book The Population Bomb, which further placed blame on poor people, often non-White, for their own suffering and demise (Harvey 1974, Fletcher et al. 2014, Powell 2015, Hughes et al. 2023). In this same year, the “tragedy of the commons” narrative emerged, asserting that ungoverned or unmanaged commons of limited resources alongside greed will inevitably lead to overexploitation of those resources (Elías 2012, Shiva 2020, Ghosh 2021). Not only did this narrative serve to overshadow sustainable communal resource sharing practiced by diverse Indigenous Peoples across the Americas, but it also promoted the idea that resources can only be managed properly as private property, to enclose the commons to further settler colonial control (Wolfe 2006, Li 2007, Shiva 2020). Together, these two narratives harnessed the fear of resource limitation together with stereotypes of disease, unprovoked crime, and resource scarcity to further justify U.S. intervention alongside racist immigration policies (Connelly 2008, Fletcher et al. 2014, Ghosh 2021).

With decades of conservation discourse contributing to justifications for U.S. intervention, by the end of the 20th century, conventional conservation received a return on its investment with a steep rise in international conservation interventions (Kashwan et al. 2021, Busck-Lumholt et al. 2024). During this time, valuation of natural assets, such as biodiversity and associated ecosystem services, became weaponized against Indigenous lifeways across the Americas to instead promote privatization and the expansion of fortress conservation for U.S. capital benefit (Escobar 1998, Kashwan et al. 2021, Murdock 2021, Busck-Lumholt et al. 2024). The growing infatuation with biodiversity contributed to a reductive story denoting universal threats (e.g., overpopulation) and solutions (e.g., protecting biodiversity) that allowed conventional conservation to leverage the growing imperial (and militarized) power of the U.S. to control global lands and resources (Harvey 1974, Li 2007, Büscher and Fletcher 2020). By viewing Latin America as increasingly wasteful, polluting, and inefficient, this allowed the U.S. to shift blame for the global environmental crisis onto Latin America and the Global South more broadly to impose sustainable development solutions to preserve the reservoir of natural resources and biological diversity for settler exploitation (Goldman 2005, Li 2007, Fletcher et al. 2014, Adams 2017, Taconet et al. 2020, Anguelovski and Corbera 2023). In turn, the frontline communities to the South have become largely responsible for mitigating the world’s most prevalent environmental concerns, placing the onus for change onto the most disempowered communities (Ojeda et al. 2020, Taconet et al. 2020) despite mounting evidence demonstrating that wealthy nations and people, particularly in North America, have a much larger relative negative impact on the environment (Motesharrei et al. 2016, Nielsen et al. 2021, Green et al. 2022, Hughes et al. 2023). Unfortunately, this perverse narrative is perpetuated by like-minded settler colonial scholars from the U.S. who continue to blame marginalized people for biodiversity decline, although their arguments have been consistently and substantially refuted (Green et al. 2022, Hughes et al. 2023). Therefore, these colonial conservation ideologies are not simply historic artifacts, but remain as guideposts for ongoing violations to lands, waters, and human rights on a global scale (Connelly 2008, Oberhauser et al. 2018, Ojeda et al. 2020).

ONGOING MANIFESTATIONS OF SETTLER COLONIAL CONSERVATION

As a result of the oppressive settler colonial legacies and ongoing harms described (and summarized in Fig. 1), Indigenous communities, scholars, and activists have pointed to conservation as a major destructive force of Indigenous lifeways and associated ecosystems (Dowie 2011). However, settler colonial ideologies and mechanisms of control remain complexly interwoven into the conventional conservation model, such that how land and resources are allocated and whose knowledges are validated versus evaluated in the field largely mirrors these historic legacies. Below we discuss examples of how settler colonial conservation dynamics continue to emerge across contemporary and globalized landscapes and practice, emboldened and broadened by U.S. imperialism.

Transformation of access and control of lands and waters

The legacy of settler supremacy rooted in the conventional conservation model is reflected in the dissolution of Indigenous land and resource rights today, with associated consequences to human and ecosystem health. In the words of Dr. Kaitlin Reed (Yurok/Hupa/Oneida), continued “violence against Indigenous bodies has been paralleled as violence against the natural world and non-human kin” (Reed 2020:36). With colonial governments and conventional conservation often working in harmony against Indigenous lifeways, Indigenous Peoples, alongside connected lands and waters stewarded for resource gathering, hunting, and cultural practices, are continuously under threat (Dowie 2011, Long and Lake 2018). As a result of regular displacements for conservation privatization, over 15% of the global surface area is under the control of international conservation activities and complex arrangements of governance and militarization, generating millions of Indigenous conservation refugees around the world (Dowie 2011, Dempsey and Suarez 2016, Shiva 2020). Meanwhile, the severe reduction and dismissal of Indigenous stewardship has led to detrimental changes in landscapes and ecosystems, such as through shifting forest structure and habitat, transforming ecosystems, changing community compositions and species range distributions, altering soil quality and temperature regimes, and more (Shiva 2005, Long and Lake 2018, Pigott 2018, Liboiron 2021, Whyte et al. 2021, IPCC 2023). Although the consequences of Indigenous land dispossession on Indigenous stewards and relational ties are well documented, conventional conservation continues to broaden settler colonial control of lands and waters. For example, both inside and outside of designated protected areas, there is a continued privileging of White male sport hunting over Indigenous subsistence or ritual hunting as well as colonial environmental management decisions that fundamentally ignore Indigenous ecosystem knowledge and responsibilities to more-than-human kin (Huntington and Watson 2012, Kermoal and Altamirano-Jiménez 2016, Eichler and Baumeister 2018, Hird et al. 2023). Together, these prevailing colonial norms not only undermine the sovereign rights of Indigenous Peoples worldwide (United Nations General Assembly 2007), but also continue to erode social and ecological well-being.

Adding to the impacts of displacing Indigenous stewards is conventional conservation’s long-lived history of promoting capitalist ventures under the neoliberal fallacy that, through capitalist development, nature can be conserved, rather than destroyed (Adams 2017, Kashwan et al. 2021). For example, colonial conservation aims to further accelerate the privatization of lands and waters on a global scale, as exemplified by the “30 by 30” plan or the more ambitious “Half-Earth” project that aspires to put 50% of global land and water into reserves (Noss et al. 2012, Dinerstein et al. 2019, Jung et al. 2021). These and other “green-grabbing” initiatives, largely facilitated by Euro-American conservation organizations, often infuse for-profit models into biodiversity protections, such as through carbon trading and offsetting (Kashwan et al. 2021). For example, The Nature Conservancy, which touts protecting over 125 million acres of land largely across the Americas, continues to sell areas of this land to artificially offset the carbon production of big businesses, thereby actually allowing them to exceed their carbon emission quotas without accountability (Elgin 2020). Other demonstrations of conventional conservation’s close ties to corporations include partnerships with the oil, gas, and mining industries, such as the Energy and Biodiversity Initiative and the Fauna & Flora International-Anglo American mining partnership of the early 2000s, both of which claim to embed biodiversity protection into industrial operations (Adams 2017).

Compounding these concerns is that strategically opening up certain areas of the landscape to industrial practices, as achieved through the settler state, conservation agencies, and corporations working together, can heighten land and human rights abuses in areas largely occupied by Black and Indigenous Peoples (Grogan et al. 2011, Whyte 2018a, Gilio-Whitaker 2019). For example, recent evidence shows that Indigenous Peoples are directly impacted by over one-third of worldwide environmental conflicts, 75% of which are caused by mining, fossil fuels, dam projects, and the agricultural, forestry, fisheries, and livestock sector (Scheidel et al. 2023). Therefore, as conservationists continue to ignore or even facilitate social inequities, the global majority of Black and Brown Indigenous Peoples worldwide experience increased environmental risk (Kermoal and Altamirano-Jiménez 2016, Jacobs 2019, Tripati et al. 2023). As a result, a settler colonial conservation agenda continues to shape the planet and relationships to place, often to the detriment of both (Reo and Parker 2013, Eichler and Baumeister 2018, Whyte 2018a).

Perpetuating extractive relationships and co-opting knowledge

Because of the underlying settler colonial ideology that often goes unnamed, when conservationists do aim to consider social disparities in practice, their efforts may be undermined by an ignorance of positionality and power of researchers who are mostly White, male, and from U.S.-based institutions. These power imbalances can create a chasm of misunderstanding and misapplication of conservation initiatives through conceptions of “white saviorism.” The “white savior” complex can manifest when privileged scholars, practitioners, or professionals speak on behalf of Indigenous Peoples with which they have no shared lived experience, understanding, or relationships, rather than providing a means for them to speak for themselves. Not only does this dynamic undermine Indigenous sovereignty, but it also distorts Indigenous knowledges, worldviews, and understandings, while granting false credit to settler colonial scholars for “rescuing” or “saving” them. Meanwhile, although there are mechanisms for crediting Indigenous knowledge holders (Carroll et al. 2022), these standards are minimally applied, with who leads and who benefits from projects often left to the discretion of settler colonial institutions and researchers (David-Chavez and Gavin 2018, Busck-Lumholt et al. 2024). Overall, conservation projects based in Indigenous contexts that still rely on the conventional model may propagate uneven power dynamics, even if aimed at addressing injustices. As a result, settler colonial research priorities may (intentionally or unintentionally) take precedence over the interests and realities of Indigenous Peoples (Baker et al. 2019).

In bolstering a savior complex and research elitism, a largely extractive and top-down approach to engagement arises in the conventional conservation model. These extractive projects largely serve to appropriate knowledge from their bearers for settler colonial uses, such as through claims of scientific discovery or sole authorship (Tuck and Yang 2012, Baker et al. 2019, Hird et al. 2023), while simultaneously minimizing decision-making opportunities for Indigenous Peoples (Adams et al. 2014, David-Chavez and Gavin 2018, Emanuel and Bird 2022). Even in projects that may or may not use an extractive mode of engagement (David-Chavez and Gavin 2018), another barrier to ethical collaboration with Indigenous Peoples is the assumed need to evaluate Indigenous knowledges using colonial science before it can be “incorporated” into the settler-constructed ecological story (Simpson 2004, Tengö et al. 2014, Whyte 2018b). In this way, scholarship that predominantly centers the history and context of White settlers is made the central appraiser of all ways of knowing across numerous diverse Indigenous Nations and Peoples (Hird et al. 2023). As a result, Indigenous knowledge systems, which are extensive and pluralistic, are subject to filtration and appropriation through a singular lens based on their perceived utility to the settler colonial conservation management objective (Agrawal 1995, Whyte 2013, 2018b, Tengö et al. 2014, Baker et al. 2019, Thompson et al. 2020, Bingham et al. 2021). While conventional conservation is amidst a current awakening to ethically engage Indigenous Peoples, these pursuits too often fail to recognize Indigenous science as equal and valid in its own right. Instead, researchers prioritize a rigid scientific method, often associated with the “myth of scientific objectivity” (Halpin 1989, Bauer 1992, Leonelli 2015), that engages with the natural world as an “object” (Halpin 1989) and exists in contrast to Indigenous relational ethics. This disconnect further emphasizes how Indigenous concepts and languages can become misrepresented and largely discounted to fit into settler colonial worldviews (McGregor 2004, Simpson 2004). Processes such as these, especially with respect to environmental policy, can separate Indigenous Peoples from controlling their own outcomes and contributions to science and sovereignty by undermining locally relevant systems of knowing. Not only does this often lead to misaligned and ineffective action, but also reinforces distrust between researchers and Indigenous Peoples by perpetuating settler colonial assimilation practices (Tengö et al. 2014, Bingham et al. 2021).

TOWARD HEALING AND BUILDING A RELATIONAL MODEL OF CONSERVATION

In the words of Pōkā Laenui (Waiʻanae), “True decolonization is more than simply placing Indigenous or previously colonized people into the positions held by colonizers. Decolonization includes the reevaluation of the political, social, economic, and judicial structures themselves and the development, if appropriate, of new structures that can hold and house the values and aspirations of the colonized people” (Laenui 2000:84). Decolonization and justice, i.e., healing of relationships between ecosystems, peoples, and more-than-human kin, requires turning knowledge into action (Fig. 2). To embody decolonial action, conservationists (academic, governmental, non-governmental, and private industry practitioners, and other professionals) must not only question and work to disrupt settler colonial ideologies and practices within their own institutions, but also actively adopt anti-colonial strategies that center those most negatively impacted by historic and ongoing colonial harms (Reo et al. 2017, Muller et al. 2019, Liboiron 2021, Hird et al. 2023, Stein et al. 2023). Ultimately, there is no single ready solution, but conservationists must critically examine the nature of their work, such as by evaluating how projects might reinforce existing inequalities within their scientific fields and the communities with which they work. This re-evaluation must also be coupled with a conscious effort to de-center the settler colonial agenda and re-center Indigenous leadership and ways of knowing in conservation (Zanotti et al. 2020). Below we offer some guidance, strategies, and initiatives to aid in this process.

Politicizing and contextualizing conservation

The first step to transforming conventional conservation is to recognize how it has been fundamentally shaped by settler colonialism and an anti-Indigenous and anti-Black rhetoric throughout history and across the globe. Conservationists must also recognize the politics and power of knowledge and the role of capitalism and imperialism in the attempted erasure of diverse knowledges, histories, realities, and lived experiences (Agrawal 1995, Aswani et al. 2018, Hird et al. 2023). Because the current conventional model of conservation is largely centered around so-called objective science, this relieves settler colonial scientists and practitioners from their responsibilities as oppressors, thereby limiting what can be discussed or mobilized to change this dynamic (Simpson 2004, Hird et al. 2023). This injustice ignorance is exacerbated when social inequities are deemed as unrelated or tangential to ecological inquiries, with scientists rarely branching out of their field unless required (Simpson 2004, Baker et al. 2019). To ameliorate this unhelpful cultural norm, the social and political components of ecological research, such as influences of race, class, ability, sexuality, and gender, need to be elevated and prioritized to better connect intentions with realized social and ecological outcomes (Agrawal 1995, Adams et al. 2014, Baker et al. 2019). In doing so, conservationists themselves must also acknowledge their positionality with respect to their research and collaborators, so that power dynamics and privileges can be addressed rather than insidiously invisibilized (Whyte 2018b, Baker et al. 2019). There must also be an intentional effort made by professionals across all roles and sectors of conservation to challenge and work to uproot settler colonial paradigms, inclusive of state policies that seek to erase Indigenous Peoples and lifeways, white supremacist institutional norms, militarization and policing, and commercialization, to fundamentally transform and decolonize the field (Agrawal 1995, Simpson 2004, Mays 2021, Tripati et al. 2023). For example, joining and amplifying often politicalized efforts led by Indigenous Peoples that stand against colonial oppressions offers pathways toward building trust and accountability. Some of these initiatives could include standing against oil development and promoting dam removal (Rowe et al. 2017, Diver et al. 2024), with several other opportunities to engage and build momentum toward broader, mutually beneficial conservation action.

Centering Indigenous knowledges, values, and relationships to place

To heal relationships and responsibilities to land, waters, and more-than-human kin requires an intentional shift in power in support of Indigenous sovereignty and the recovery of place-based knowledges (Agrawal 1995, Simpson 2004, Schneider 2023). Indigenous knowledges facilitate relational healing by embodying “... the way of living within contexts of flux, paradox, and tensions, respecting the pull of dualism and reconciling opposing forces.... Developing these ways of knowing leads to freedom of consciousness and to solidarity with the natural world” (Battiste and Henderson 2000, as cited in McGregor 2004:390). In redirecting power, there first must be an immediate appreciation of Indigenous knowledge systems as legitimate and relevant to ecological and social processes, while maintaining that these knowledges exist in their own contexts and for their own purposes without the need to assign them within colonial science or extract them for settler colonial gain (Mistry and Berardi 2016, Whyte 2018b). In this way, the holders of diverse Indigenous knowledges and languages must always determine their use, relevancy, transfer, verification, and recovery, transcending and often directly opposing the settler colonial model (Agrawal 1995, Simpson 2004, Muller 2012, Whyte 2018b, Eichler and Baumeister 2021). Additionally, in respecting Indigenous knowledge holders and stewards, it is the responsibility of conservation scholars and practitioners to honor the intellectual property rights of Indigenous Peoples, affording proper Indigenous attribution, credit, and authorship in the generation of knowledge (Carroll et al. 2022, David-Chavez et al. 2024, Layden et al. 2024).

Alongside appreciating and reaffirming Indigenous knowledges and knowledge holders is the need to elevate Indigenous lifeways and value systems in the working definition of, and processes embedded within, conservation. Knight et al. (2019:1532) define effective conservation as “any purposeful activity that involves people successfully working toward achieving their explicitly stated goal of ensuring the persistence of nature, in ways that do not compromise human well-being.” This definition could be made even more explicit by acknowledging that perspectives on what is effective varies by values, beliefs, and context. Values-based approaches that apply anti-colonial value systems make conservation relevant to both conservationists and Indigenous Peoples (Chan et al. 2016). Specifically, a relational values approach may strengthen cultural, academic, and Indigenous government institutions while simultaneously heightening the resiliency of communities against rapid economic and environmental change (Whyte 2018b, Tripati et al. 2023). For example, the recently published values-led relational science model offers guidance for attuning conservation efforts to strengthen Indigenous sovereignty, self-determination, and environmental governance (David-Chavez et al. 2024, Layden et al. 2024).

Transferring power: Indigenous-led environmental stewardship

Alongside working toward disentangling deeply rooted settler colonial norms within research and conservation dynamics, there must also be an intentional rematriation of lands, waters, resources, and authority from settlers to Indigenous Peoples (Fig. 3; Tuck and Yang 2012, Middleton Manning 2019, Eichler and Baumeister 2021). The transfer of lands and waters must include that which is managed or owned by conservation organizations and government agencies, with opportunities to reclaim and rebuild “home” extended to displaced peoples and communities, such as through rebuilding access to green space and traditional lifeways (Mays 2021, Anguelovski and Corbera 2023, Tripati et al. 2023). Concurrently, there must be an immediate disinvestment in colonial and imperial driven projects, particularly partnerships with industry, and a direct reinvestment in Indigenous Nations and community partners (Kashwan et al. 2021, Layden et al. 2024). To facilitate the transfer of power and control, conservation scientists, practitioners, and professionals must immediately respect and uphold the inherent sovereignty of Indigenous Nations, as reaffirmed by the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), by promoting Indigenous leadership and communal governance, as rights-holders, throughout each stage of conservation projects (United Nations General Assembly 2007, Busck-Lumholt et al. 2024). Cultivating reciprocal partnerships that center Indigenous worldviews and value systems are key to supporting Indigenous-led conservation movements and activism to continue to shift resources, power, lands, and waters back to Indigenous Peoples (Wheeler and Root‐Bernstein 2020, Zanotti et al. 2020, Eichler and Baumeister 2021, Gardner-Vandy et al. 2021, Kūlana Noiʻi Working Group 2021). These relationships must confront the settler colonial foundation of conservation to facilitate grassroots change and decision making. To re-orient away from the settler colonial conservation model, conservationists must apply high-level ethical standards and data governance protocols unique to Indigenous contexts, such that Indigenous Peoples define the use and creation of different sciences and knowledges to address ecological questions in support of Indigenous governance and self-determination (Agrawal 1995, Battiste et al. 2008, Martin et al. 2013, Pascual et al. 2014, Suiseeya 2014, Reo et al. 2017, David-Chavez and Gavin 2018, Whyte 2018b, Artelle et al. 2019, Tauli-Corpuz et al. 2020, Collaboratory for Indigenous Data Governance 2021, Carroll et al. 2022, Jennings et al. 2023, David-Chavez et al. 2024, Layden et al. 2024).

There are several examples that bring ethical, socially just guidelines into practice, including environmental restoration by, and in partnership with, the original stewards, with rematriation efforts increasing on a global scale and across diverse contexts (Youdelis et al. 2021, Vogel et al. 2022; Cannon 2019, reading list, https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4429220). For example, Indigenous parks and protected areas are expanding across the U.S. and Canada (Carroll 2014), such as Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas (IPCA) in Canada, which elevate Indigenous rights and leadership in long-term conservation goals (find more stories and experiences related to IPCA here: https://ipcaknowledgebasket.ca/; Indigenous Circle of Experts 2018). Meanwhile, to further strengthen these initiatives, recent works outline considerations for the continued reimagining of parks and protected areas in alignment with Indigenous value systems and sovereignty (Fisk et al. 2021, Jacobs et al. 2022). There are also numerous examples demonstrating shared knowledge generation and contemporary Indigenous stewardship, such as a Decolonial Model of Environmental Management and Conservation and its application in Indigenous-led wildlife stewardship of Grizzly bear in British Columbia (Artelle et al. 2021). Other examples that aim to address complex environmental issues following Indigenous leadership include the Witness, Acknowledge, Mend, Protect, Unite, and Move (WAMPUM) climate change adaptation framework (Leonard 2021) and the Menominee Sustainable Development Institute (SDI). The Menominee Nation’s sustainable forestry practices reach back centuries and include utilizing both Indigenous and academic sciences to meet long-term sustainability goals, as determined by Indigenous experts (Dockry et al. 2016, Muller et al. 2019).

The infrastructure for strengthening respectful relationships, elevating Indigenous methodologies and sovereignty, and sharing diverse knowledge systems can also be extended from land to water ecosystems (Arsenault et al. 2018, Galappaththi et al. 2021, Leonard et al. 2023). Among examples of Indigenous-centered collaborations in water governance, we observe the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission (CRITFC) and the Whanganui Iwi of Te Awa Tupua. The CRITFC represents a coordinated effort between four Indigenous Nations of the Columbia River Basin in the Pacific Northwest region of North America to ensure treaty fishing rights and restoration of Indigenous fisheries in perpetuity (CRITFC 2021). In Aotearoa New Zealand, Māori activism led to the legal designation of the Te Awa Tupua (Whanganui River system) as a “legal person” (Leonard et al. 2023), thereby securing Whanganui Iwi sovereign rights to the river after years of denial by the Crown (Muller et al. 2019). The examples presented here are just some of many bodies of work that detail approaches to building relational and anti-colonial conservation practices across diverse Indigenous contexts and geographies. For cases like these to become more commonplace, the settler colonial conservation model must fundamentally shift toward reaffirming Indigenous science and sovereignty (van Uitregt 2021). Conservation may then be contextualized within a broader and more robust understanding of ecologies and ecosystems, grounded in justice and equity for the land, waters, and beings.

CONCLUSION

This synthesis highlights how historical and contemporary manifestations of settler colonialism in conservation are inextricably intertwined, leading to broadscale and enduring social and ecological inequities. Specifically, conventional conservation science and practice remain largely centered in settler colonial ideologies, although the field maintains the capacity to combat this legacy through anti-colonial and decolonial approaches, including strengthening Indigenous sovereignty and relationships. Before a decolonial shift can occur, conservationists must grapple with how the dislocation of people from land and power has transformed landscapes and disrupted the ecosystems they desire to protect, including settler colonial conservation’s role within these histories and ongoing realities. Conservationists must also engage with the evidence highlighting the link between social justice, and healthy economies, ecosystems, and cultures (Wilder et al. 2016, Schuster et al. 2019, Dawson et al. 2021). Recovering and maintaining Indigenous knowledges and stewardship practices, while re-evaluating colonial social and political structures, is central to achieving justice for both lands and peoples (Fernández-Llamazares et al. 2021, Smith 2022).

This synthesis also highlights pivotal opportunities for conservationists to explicitly center Indigenous rights, governance, and rematriation in the conservation mission, instead of colonial logics, to better align with stated goals and resist furthering attempts to erase Indigenous lifeways, landscapes, and futures (Tuck and Yang 2012; Whyte 2016, unpublished manuscript). In this pursuit, conservationists can grow ethics and justice in environmental research and policy to work to reconcile imbalances created by the colonial forefathers of the field. Specifically, conservationists, depending on their role within an agency or institution, hold tremendous power to re-orient narratives, policy, and access to land by applying anti-colonial and justice-centered frameworks. In practice, this requires an intentional redirection of inquiries from how Indigenous Peoples can support conservation goals to how academic science and conservation practice can support sovereignty and abolition in initiatives defined by Indigenous Peoples. In particular, centering Black and Indigenous women in the actualization of power and decision making is key, alongside uplifting their frequent roles as leaders in resistance against white supremacy and colonial violence since its inception (Allen 1992, Oberhauser et al. 2018). Therefore, conservation, and all its agents of change (scholars, practitioners, professionals, students, affiliates, etc.), have a responsibility to fuel resistance from the ground up rather than suppress it, to transform landscapes of oppression into landscapes of liberation.

AUTHOR POSITIONALITY STATEMENT

All authors are U.S.-based academics at institutions that stole ancestral lands from the Ute, Arapaho, Cheyenne, and many other Indigenous Nations and Peoples for the prosperity of settler colonialism. Most authors are affiliated with the land-grant institution of Colorado State University (Lee and Ahtone 2020). The authorship includes several multicultural and femme-presenting individuals connected to diverse and expansive homelands. In order, Tamara Layden (she/her or they/them) is a descendant of displaced South Asian (Indian) farmers and Western European settlers. Dominique David-Chavez (she/her) is a multicultural (Afro-Indigenous, Spanish, and Eastern European) Indigenous Caribbean (Arawak/Taino/Boricua) woman holding accountability to multiple homelands, including her Indigenous island community, Borikén (Puerto Rico), and her current diaspora home community in the Colorado front range. Emma Galofré García (she/her or they/them) is a multicultural Mexicana and Catalan woman descended from Mexican migrants, Catalans, and Western European settlers. Gemara Gifford (she/her) is a multicultural Chicana woman of Tiwa (Picuris Pueblo), Indigenous Mexican, and Western European descent with deep ties to the Southern Rocky Mountains, in what is now known as Southern Colorado and Northern New Mexico. Anna Lavoie (née Santos; she/her) is of Brazilian Afro-Indigenous (Tupi) and Azorean descent of parents who lived from the land. Erin Weingarten (they/them) is Ashkenazi Jewish, descending from Ukraine and Poland. Sara Bombaci (she/her) is Chicana, specifically a woman descended from Mexican and European settlers with cultural ties to Chicano communities in central New Mexico. Together we hold accountability to our communities and comrades, both near and far, fighting for justice across colonial borders.

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