Confronting colonial history: toward healing, just, and equitable Indigenous conservation futures

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Copyright © 2025 by the author(s). Published here under license by the Resilience Alliance. Open Access. CC-BY 4.0
Layden, T. J., D. M. David-Chavez, E. Galofré García, G. L. Gifford, A. Lavoie, E. R. Weingarten, and S. P. Bombaci. 2025.
Confronting colonial history: toward healing, just, and equitable Indigenous conservation futures. Ecology and Society 30(1):33.
https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-15890-300133
Synthesis
Confronting colonial history: toward healing, just, and equitable Indigenous
conservation futures
Tamara J. Layden 1 , Dominique M. David-Chavez 2 , Emma Galofré García 3 , Gemara L. Gifford 4 , Anna Lavoie 4 ,
Erin R. Weingarten 4 and Sara P. Bombaci 1
ABSTRACT. Against the backdrop of growing concerns for environmental and social justice, interest in developing effective strategies
that support social and ecological resilience and recovery are mounting. To pursue these strategies requires cultivating a shared
understanding of the full scope of settler colonial legacies that continue to impede justice efforts in conservation and environmentalism
more broadly. However, although decolonial resources are growing, they remain scattered across various bodies of work and disciplines,
often failing to be incorporated into conventional conservation understanding. Discounting these resources in mainstream science
literature creates an immense challenge for conservation practitioners, scholars, and other professionals aiming to build their
environmental justice and decolonial understanding. In alignment with these decolonial needs, we provide a brief primer of the origins
of settler colonial conservation, resulting broadscale disparities, and pathways toward a more just conservation future. This synthesis
of conservation’s colonial roots draws from diverse bodies of work, across disciplines and expert voices, and provides an entry point
for cultivating a deeper understanding of justice and decolonization in conservation while centering the histories, realities, and futures
of Indigenous Peoples worldwide.
Key Words: conservation; decolonization; Indigenous; justice; settler colonialism
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
1Department of Fish, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, United States, 2Department of Forest &
Rangeland Stewardship, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, United States, 3Department of Environmental Studies, University of Colorado
Boulder, Boulder, United States, 4Department of Human Dimensions of Natural Resources, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, United State

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Table 1. Glossary.
Term Definition
Indigenous Peoples Peoples and their collectives (Indigenous Nations) who share intergenerational cultural or kinship ties with the pre-
colonial stewards of ancestral lands and waters in a specific region of the world, holding distinct rights-based status
irrespective of recognition by colonial governments (United Nations General Assembly 2007, David-Chavez and
Gavin 2018, Whyte 2020, Wheeler and Root‐Bernstein 2020).
Indigenous knowledges/Indigenous knowledge
systems/Indigenous ways of knowing/Indigenous
science
Dynamic systems of knowledge collectively held and renewed by Indigenous community members that draw from
intergenerational, place-based, culturally grounded relationships and experiences, which inform interactions between
living beings and their surrounding environment (Cajete 2000, Whyte 2013, David-Chavez and Gavin 2018,
Thompson et al. 2020, Wheeler and Root‐Bernstein 2020).
More-than-human kin Nonhuman life, plants, rivers, and other parts of the environment, which are closely tied to Indigenous (human)
relatives through shared habitats, responsibilities, and reciprocal relationships. A term based in Indigenous ontologies
that refers to the beingness of our surroundings (Kimmerer 2013, Stoffle et al. 2016, Gilio-Whitaker 2019, Whyte
2020).
Indigenous sovereignty The international recognition of Indigenous Nations as political bodies that hold inherent power to govern
themselves, their lands, waters, data, and citizen membership (Darian-Smith 2010, Rodriguez-Lonebear 2021).
Abolition The complete uprooting and eradication of the settler carceral state structures, institutions, and policies that produce
violence against Black, Indigenous, and additional people of color and other minoritized identities (Davis 2003,
Curley et al. 2022).
Settler colonialism A social and political structure that relies on interrelated systems of violence and oppression to remove Indigenous
Peoples from landscapes to stabilize an illegitimate settler sovereignty (Wolfe 2006, Tuck and Yang 2012, Whyte
2018a, Mays 2021, Curley et al. 2022, Hird et al. 2023).
Colonial science A relatively small subset of knowledge characterized by a positivist approach that emphasizes objective empirical
measurements, written and quantitative evaluation of abstract principles to test hypotheses, and is deeply intertwined
with colonial processes, including separation of people from place (Agrawal 1995, Simpson 2004, Baker et al. 2019).
Conventional/settler colonial conservation Conservation of lands, waters, and wildlife stemming from a positivist praxis and is centralized and associated with
colonial and imperial attempts to increase settler statehood, sovereignty, and dominion over Indigenous landscapes
(Agrawal 1995, Simpson 2004, Baker et al. 2019).
Imperial/neoliberal conservation Globalization and expansion of settler colonial conservation through market-based capitalism and militarized
approaches (Dowie 2011, Adams 2017, Kashwan et al. 2021).
Settler nativism Assumed Native identity by settlers, while envisioning a settler-as-native future (Tuck and Yang 2012, Eichler and
Baumeister 2021).
White supremacy A false ideology that White people and their ideas, thoughts, beliefs, and actions are superior to that of people of
color (Bonnett 1997, dRworksBook 2021).
Racism A social and institutional system of power and race-based prejudice. A system of advantage and oppression based on
the social construction of race and white supremacist ideology to preclude cross-racial solidarity (Bonnett 1997,
Vaughan and Allen 1999, dRworksBook 2021).
Patriarchy/heteropatriarchy/heteropaternalism A system of control based on the perceived normalization of cis-male dominance, heterosexuality, nuclear-domestic
arrangements, and gender binaries (Allen 1992, Arvin et al. 2013).
Rematriation An Indigenous and decolonial framing of repatriation that specifically honors Mother Earth and Indigenous women.
Rematriation involves the reclamation and revitalization of Indigenous lifeways, cultures, customs, spiritualities,
knowledges, and reciprocal relationships to lands and waters through the resurgence of Indigenous sovereignty and
self-determination (Tuck and Yang 2012, Kermoal and Altamirano-Jiménez 2016, Middleton Manning 2019,
Leonard et al. 2023; Wilber and Lane 2023, podcast, https://www.allmyrelationspodcast.com/podcast/
episode/79f99dfe/rematriate).
Decolonization The uprooting of colonial legacies through intentional rematriation and healing of relationships (Tuck and Yang
2012, Shiva 2020, Smith 2022).
Anti-colonial The active resistance against and disruption of colonial systems of power and oppression and their manifestations in
individual and collective actions, relationships, and thinking (Liboiron 2021, Curley et al. 2022, Schneider 2023).
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

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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).

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Fig. 1. Time line of Indigenous resilience, resistance, and resurgence through colonization. Displayed are key historic events in
colonial history and the making of settler colonial conservation, from pre-colonization through to a decolonial future.
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

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Fig. 2. Ten ways to begin to heal from settler colonial conservation legacies. Offered are 10 strategies to move away from the
harmful, colonial legacies and norms of conservation and toward healing, just, and equitable Indigenous conservation futures.

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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).

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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).
Fig. 3. “Reversing Manifest Destiny: Marking the return of
Indian Lands to Indian Hands” by Charles Hilliard, 2021 ©
Indian Land Tenure Foundation (https://iltf.org/).
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

Ecology and Society 30(1): 33
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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.
Acknowledgments:
We would like to thank Ariana Gloria-Martinez for initial feedback
on our manuscript and the Ecology & Society editors and anonymous
reviewers for their thoughtful feedback and insights during the editing
process. We also extend our deepest thanks and unending gratitude
to the many activists, scholars, and leaders, especially Black and
Indigenous women, who continue to speak out against injustice and
cultivate pathways toward collective healing. This project was funded
by Colorado State University. Emma Galofré García was supported
by the Environmental Studies Department and CU Population Center
at the University of Colorado Boulder and the Howard Hughes
Medical Institute’s Gilliam Fellowship. Tamara Layden, Gemara
Gifford, and Erin Weingarten were supported by NSF Graduate
Research Fellowships.
Data Availability:
Not applicable: there is no data or code associated with this manuscript
submission.
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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