Rooted in place like radicles that nourish plant seeds, Indigenous Peoples’ relationships to their territories of life re-emerge despite the legacy of colonialism.
Faisal Moola and Kanna K. Siripurapu

Aerial view of heathlands and ponds on the exposed highlands of Miawpukek Traditional Territory. Photo: Alexander Johnston
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Over the last decade, the conservation community has begun to recognize the often-devastating impacts of traditional parks and planning processes on Indigenous Peoples. In so doing, it has been moving away from the conventional notion that parks are best managed by bureaucrats and scientists and toward acknowledging the harmful impacts of colonial conservation policies and practices on Indigenous Peoples while recognizing the key role that community-led conservation, guided by Indigenous Peoples’ worldviews, rights and responsibilities, and knowledge and governance systems, plays in global conservation policy.
In this context, two central concepts that have emerged from the worldviews of Indigenous Peoples are the notions of “territories of life” and “biocultural stewardship.” Indigenous territories are described as territories of life because their stewardship protects not only biodiversity but also elements of cultural diversity that are just as important to Indigenous Peoples. Territories of life are thus cradles of biocultural knowledge and diversity, embodying the reciprocal relationships that Indigenous Peoples have with their local environment. Such biocultural knowledge and diversity are often encoded in Indigenous languages, cultural traditions, and spiritual practices, which are transmitted from one generation to the next. These notions lie at the core of the establishment of Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas (IPCAs), which Indigenous Nations in Canada and elsewhere have developed as a means to reclaim their ancestral stewardship over their lands and waters.
Territories of life are cradles of biocultural knowledge and diversity.
We tell the story of territories of life and biocultural stewardship at three levels: the local and national levels in Canada and the global level internationally. We begin at the local level with an inspiring story of Indigenous-led conservation in one of the most impacted places on the planet: the ancestral home of the Dunne_Zaa First Nations of northwestern North America (or Turtle Island, as it is known to Indigenous Peoples).
We then describe the Conservation through Reconciliation Partnership (CRP), an Indigenous-led initiative that has brought universities, environmental organizations, and Indigenous Peoples together to radically transform the conservation sector in Canada by advancing Indigenous-led conservation of nature.
Last, we touch on opportunities to scale up biocultural stewardship, including education and capacity building, through the implementation of global biodiversity policy — namely, through the Kunming–Montréal Global Biodiversity Framework (KMGBF), which was adopted by nearly 200 countries in December 2022 at the fifteenth meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP15) to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). The KMGBF is reflective of the transformative changes that are underway, driven by Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities around the world.
Indigenous Nations represent only 4.9 percent of the total population of Canada, yet their traditional territories stretch across the entire country from the Atlantic to the Pacific to the Arctic Oceans, encompassing forests, mountains, grasslands, and ice, as well as urban areas. Indigenous rights and stewardship over these lands, including rights to traditional activities such as hunting, trapping, and fishing, as well as other cultural and spiritual practices, are enshrined in, and in principle protected under, different treaties as well as the Canadian Constitution.
Indigenous Nations have often been stripped of their customary stewardship of biodiversity and alienated from the right to manage their territories of life.
In reality, however, Indigenous Nations have often been stripped of their customary stewardship of biodiversity and alienated from the right to manage their territories of life under their own forms of Indigenous governance and legal traditions. Such is the case, for instance, with the Dunne_Zaa peoples, who have lived, hunted, and traded within the Peace River Valley and the larger Peace Region, in what is now northeastern British Columbia (BC), for well over ten thousand years. The Peace Region is a vast land of boreal forest, rolling grasslands, and majestic rivers. Its namesake, the Peace River, is an irreplaceable pinch point within the Yellowstone to Yukon corridor in western North America, and as such is a conservation priority to protect core wildlife habitat and animal movement corridors for large migratory mammals such as wolves and endangered grizzly bear populations, in addition to other culturally significant wildlife.

The Peace River Valley, Canada. The Dunne_Zaa peoples have lived, hunted, and traded within the Peace River Valley and the larger Peace Region for over ten thousand years. Photo: tuchodi / Wikimedia Commons
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In 1899, the Dunne-Zaa peoples signed a Peace and Friendship Treaty with the British Crown, called Treaty 8. Treaty 8 enshrined a solemn and binding promise that the Dunne_Zaa would be able to continue their traditional subsistence activities and their cultural and spiritual practices for, as the treaty so eloquently says, “as long as the sun shines, the rivers flow, and the grass grows.” In return for the necessary consent to develop any lands in Dunne_Zaa territory, the Crown vowed that traditional practices would be allowed to continue without forced interference or forced dependency on the Crown.
Yet, since signing Treaty 8, the Dunne_Zaa have seen their lands irrevocably damaged by logging, oil and gas extraction, mines, large dams such as the controversial Site C project, and other resource development. Across their ancestral territories, forestry, energy, and mineral leases and licenses are now widespread and overlapping across the entire Peace Region. As various industries have exploited these industrial tenures, a sprawling patchwork of large clearcuts, oil wells, dams and reservoirs, fracking operations, and thousands of kilometers of seismic lines, roads, and pipelines have come to dominate the landscape.

The controversial Site C dam was built on the ancestral territory of the Dunne_Zaa, damaging their lands and leaving little intact habitat for wildlife. Photo: Jason Woodhead / Wikimedia
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Today, more than sixty-seven percent of Dunne_Zaa territory in northeastern BC is impacted by industrial development, leaving little intact habitat for sensitive and imperiled species such as caribou — an iconic and cultural keystone species — to feed, breed, or roam. For example, five out of seven caribou herd ranges that occur within Dunne_Zaa territories have been diminished by over fifty percent through a combination of roads, mines, settlements, pipelines, well sites, and other industrial and infrastructure activities. The Burnt Pine herd was extirpated in 2009, and neighboring herds remain at risk, despite recovery efforts under Canada’s Species at Risk Act and by the Dunne_Zaa themselves.

Caribou, an iconic and cultural keystone species, is now threatened by industrial development. Photo: ThartmannWiki / Wikimedia Commons
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The Dunne_Zaa, who have relied upon caribou as their primary source of food for thousands of years, can no longer hunt them. Moose populations have also crashed, and fish in the Peace River and its tributaries have become so tainted with mercury since the river was dammed that they are no longer safe to consume. The loss of these and other culturally important species has led to the severance of reciprocal relationships that Indigenous Peoples have had with the non-human life they share their lands and waters with, which has had negative impacts on the health and well-being of the local communities. The loss of their ability to hunt and fish culturally important species that have crashed due to the impacts of development in their territory also represents an infringement not just of the Dunne_Zaa’s treaty rights but also of their Aboriginal rights as enshrined in Canada’s Constitution and international agreements that Canada has signed — such as the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP).
Consequently, in 2011 Dunne_Zaa community members traveled from northeastern BC to the city of Victoria in the south, the seat of BC’s provincial government, to deliver a declaration drafted by community members. The declaration called for the establishment of a 95,000-hectare Tribal Park that straddles the BC–Alberta border and is right in the heart of one of the biggest natural gas plays (accumulations) on the continent — the Montney Formation, whose vast shale rock contains reserves of 449 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and more than one million barrels of oil. Known as K’ih tsaa?dze, which means “old spruce” in the Dunne_Zaa (Beaver) language, the area is held in great reverence by the community as a sacred place. Indeed, K’ih tsaa?dze and other proposed Tribal Park nearby are among the few remaining places in which the Dunne_Zaa peoples can still partake in traditional activities as their ancestors did for thousands of years before Treaty 8 was signed — activities that are crucial to maintaining their cultural and spiritual identity and connection to the land.
There has been a proliferation of Indigenous governments declaring Tribal Parks and other types of IPCAs in their territories. Concomitant with the resurgence in Indigenous-led stewardship of customary lands and waters in IPCAs, Indigenous Peoples are fostering innovation in other areas of biocultural stewardship. One of the most exciting recent developments in conservation has been the rise of Indigenous Guardians Networks across Canada and globally. Indigenous Guardians are guided by both Indigenous and Western knowledge systems, braided together to promote biocultural stewardship. The Guardians monitor wildlife populations, assess the impacts of climate change on ecosystems and communities, conduct water testing, track hunting and other activities on the land, and carry out other types of research and stewardship in the management of Indigenous territories, including existing and proposed IPCAs.
The establishment of IPCAs and the resurgence of other biocultural stewardship activities are unfolding in the context of rapid change in the colonial conservation policy landscape in Canada and globally.
The establishment of IPCAs and the resurgence of other biocultural stewardship activities, such as cultural burning, are unfolding in the context of rapid change in the colonial conservation policy landscape in Canada and globally. In Canada, the Pathway to Canada Target 1 process is a federal initiative that is meant to help Canada achieve its domestic and international targets to protect a minimum of thirty percent of its terrestrial and water area by 2030 under the CBD. As a part of this process, in 2018 a national advisory body called the Indigenous Circle of Experts (ICE) produced a groundbreaking report called “We Rise Together,” which articulates how Indigenous-led conservation can help achieve national conservation goals while advancing reconciliation among Indigenous Peoples and settler-Canadian people and institutions, including colleges and universities. ICE advocated for the advancement of IPCAs as both a conservation mechanism and a tool to advance self-determination and sovereignty for Indigenous Nations.
The CRP was established also in 2018 to support the implementation of the ICE recommendations to uplift Indigenous Peoples in stewarding their ancestral lands and waters according to traditional knowledge systems and under their own forms of legal protocols and governance. The CRP is an Indigenous-led initiative hosted by two Indigenous organizations, the IISAAK Olam Foundation and the Indigenous Leadership Initiative, alongside the University of Guelph. It is governed by a seven-person Leadership Circle, five of whom are Indigenous conservation leaders from across Canada. The remaining two CRP Leadership Circle members are settler-Canadian scholars based at the University of Guelph, including Prof. Faisal Moola.

Faisal Moola’s lab (Alexander Johnston, Kyomi Mitsui, and Mia Ni) conducting quadrat vegetation sampling on a culturally significant heathland above the Conne River, Newfoundland. The lab can be seen measuring the functional traits of various ethnobotanicals. Photo: Alexander Johnston
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The work of the CRP includes biocultural and other types of research as well as the creation of tools and resources to inform conservation policy and practice that re-centers Indigenous knowledge systems, leadership, rights, and responsibilities. The CRP will end in 2026 but its innovative work will continue with three Indigenous-led legacy projects, two of which are centered on advancing biocultural education: the IPCA Knowledge Basket — a digital space that holds and shares resources to inform, guide, and advance Indigenous-led conservation initiatives — and the IPCA Centres of Innovation, which are biocultural campuses that emphasize land-based learning opportunities in support of capacity building in Indigenous-led conservation. Youths, postsecondary students, policymakers, and others will have opportunities to learn from Indigenous Knowledge Holders in all aspects of Indigenous-led conservation, from classes in ethnobotany with Elders to the application of innovative technologies in conservation, such as eDNA (environmental DNA) and use of drones in remote sensing of biodiversity.
Colonial conservation has long played a significant role in the displacement of Indigenous communities from their traditional territories.
The work of the CRP and others to actively decolonize conservation, including in higher education, is important because colonial conservation — particularly the establishment of “fortress-type” protected areas — has long played a significant role in the displacement of Indigenous communities from their traditional territories, in Canada and around the world. Study after study has documented the alienation of Indigenous Peoples from important food sources, cultural sites, and livelihood activities in the name of conservation.
At the global level, the KMGBF offers a promising policy opportunity for the integration of biocultural approaches to conservation, such as the protection of ethnotaxa. While the framework does not explicitly reference ethnotaxa or biocultural diversity by name, it “recognizes the important linkages between biological and cultural diversity” and advances strong enabling measures that uphold the rights of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities and their customary use of wild species, including those with biocultural significance.

Left: Western bunchberry (Cornus unalaschkensis). Bunchberry is an important ethnobotanical species for Mi’kmaq in Newfoundland and elsewhere in the Boreal Forest. Center: Crowberry (Empetrum nigrum). Empetrum heathlands are characterized by mats of crowberries, an edible and medicinal plant. Right: Bakeapple berry or cloudberry (Rubus Chamaemorus) is a culturally significant berry and an important food source to the Mi’kmaq found in boggy and marshy areas. Bakeapple is consumed fresh, preserved in jams, and used in various dishes. Photos: Kyomi Mitsui
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Seven of the KMGBF’s twenty-three targets for policy action over the decade to 2030 reference IPLC, their rights, traditional ecological knowledge, and customary practices, which are critical to the effective stewardship of biodiversity, including ethnotaxa. For example, Target 3 (to ensure that thirty percent of areas are effectively conserved) commits signatories to protect thirty percent of the globe’s terrestrial and marine ecosystems by 2030 in “protected areas and other effective area-based conservation measures, recognizing Indigenous and traditional territories.” Target 9 (to ensure that the management of wild species is sustainable and benefits people) recognizes and supports the practices of IPLC, which both enhance biodiversity and provide spiritual, cultural, economic, and subsistence functions, along with other reciprocal benefits.
Global conservation leaders will reconvene in Cali, Colombia at COP16 in the fall of 2024 to accelerate the implementation of the KMGBF. That will require adopting critical capacity measures such as much-needed funding for Indigenous Peoples to protect their lands and waters under their own forms of conservation governance, including IPCAs. The process also calls for establishing rules for access and benefit sharing to protect the traditional knowledge of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities that are at the heart of a biocultural approach to conservation.
Indigenous Peoples’ relationship to their territories of life is not only ancient but, like a plant’s radicle, deeply rooted in place.
The great American poet Gary Snyder has been quoted as saying, “The most radical thing you can do is stay home.” This phrase is a testament to the power of place and the profound relationships that IPLC have with their lands and waters. The word “radical” originates from the Latin for “root” or “having roots.” In botany, the radicle is the first part of a seedling to emerge from the seed during germination. The radicle is the embryonic root of the plant and as it grows downward, it anchors the seed in the soil, thereby allowing it to suck up water and send out its leaves so that it can begin photosynthesizing and give life. Indigenous Peoples’ relationship to their territories of life is not only ancient but, like a plant’s radicle, deeply rooted in place. Despite the legacy of colonialism and its harm to people and place, that radicle is not easily removed. It is germinating and giving life again.
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Support the Cause: One of the most exciting developments in global conservation has been the rise in Indigenous Guardians Networks across Canada and globally. Indigenous Guardians are guided by both Indigenous Knowledge Systems and Western science. They are involved in monitoring wildlife populations and assessing the impacts of climate change and are the eyes and ears of Indigenous communities on the land. Learn more about Indigenous Guardians and add your voice calling on the Canadian government to invest in Indigenous Guardians programs at landneedsguardians.ca/addyourname
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Acknowledgments: The authors would like to acknowledge Alexander Johnston for his help with photos and captions.
Faisal Moola is an associate professor in the Department of Geography, Environment, and Geomatics at the University of Guelph. He is the director of the People Plants and Policy Lab, which researches the ecology and ethnoecology of cultural keystone species in Canada and overseas. Faisal also coordinates the University of Guelph’s professional Master of Conservation Leadership, which is focused on supporting Indigenous-led conservation in Canada and globally.
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Kanna K. Siripurapu is a graduate student at the University of Guelph, pursuing a doctoral program at the People, Plants, and Policy Lab with a research focus on the biocultural diversity of the First Nations of Newfoundland and ethnic and pastoralist communities in India.
Read more from Kanna K. Siripurapu:
- Wellsprings of Territories of Life
- Women Do It Differently: Realizing the Responsibilities of Rights in an Indigenous Community of India
- A Chicken for Every Occasion: Exploring the Significance of India’s Native Poultry Breeds
- Locking Horns to Save the Sacred Cow: India’s Indigenous Pastoralists Fight for Their Livelihoods and Cultural Traditions
- Monocultures of the Fields, Monocultures of the Mind | The Acculturation of Indigenous Farming Communities of Odisha, India