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An important symbolic and subsistence animal for many Native American Tribes, the moose (Alces alces; mos in Algonquin, Penobscot language) has been under consistent threat in the northeastern United States because of winter tick (Dermacentor albipictus) parasitism over the past several decades, causing declines in moose populations throughout the region. This decline has raised concern for Tribes and agencies that are invested in moose. Given this concern, it is increasingly important to effectively monitor and develop strategies to manage winter ticks to address consistent population declines of moose due to winter ticks. The Penobscot Nation developed a novel strategy to sample questing winter ticks (i.e., ticks that are actively seeking hosts) using a plot‐based sampling protocol that may be suitable for heterogeneous habitats. We deployed this protocol in the northeastern United States in 2022 during the tick questing period (Sep–Dec) on Penobscot Nation sovereign trust lands, the White Mountain National Forest and Umbagog National Wildlife Refuge, and western‐central Massachusetts, USA. We analyzed the data using occupancy and N‐mixture models. Detection probability peaked during mid‐October and tick occupancy and abundance were greatest at sites with intermediate understory vegetation height. The sampling protocol was successful at sampling ticks in Massachusetts, where abundances were expected to be low, indicating that it may be useful for studies planning to monitor winter tick distribution and abundance in areas with sub‐optimal moose habitat and where winter tick abundance is expected to be low. This approach may also benefit managers or researchers intending to monitor many species of hard ticks, and where imperfect detection is expected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Shellfish have supported Indigenous lifeways on the Pacific Coast of North America for millennia. Despite the ubiquity of clamshells in archaeological sites, shell size measurements are rarely reported due to a lack of applicable basis for generating size estimates from fragmentary remains. We present a linear regression-based method for determining shell length from hinge and umbo measurements of littleneck (Leukoma staminea; n = 239), butter (Saxidomus gigantea; n = 274), and horse (Tresus nuttallii; n = 92) clams using both contemporary and archaeological shells collected from three regions in coastal British Columbia, Canada. We examine the accuracy of these size estimations, which indicate that 83%–97% of the variability in dorsal shell length is predicted by umbo thickness and hinge length. Hinge length generated higher R2 values yet exhibited greater intra- and inter-observer error. While the predicted dorsal length for each species differed by region, this size difference was smaller than intra- and inter-observer error, suggesting broad applicability for these simple measurements. We applied these formulae to a Tseshaht First Nation archaeological clamshell assemblage (n = 488) on western Vancouver Island spanning 3000 years and observed profiles that resemble contemporary legal size limits, which suggests the sustained use and maintenance of local shellfisheries. The accuracy of these regression models for determining shell length from fragments highlights the utility of this approach as a basis for assessing past shellfish management practices.

Indigenous stewardship of lands and waters has been suppressed around the world for centuries by colonization, but it has nonetheless persisted. Specific places that are cared for through such stewardship are known as Indigenous and community conserved areas (ICCAs). Some ICCAs are formally recognized in bureaucratic government systems, whereas others are not. In Hawaiʻi, communities have been reviving various aspects of Indigenous stewardship, which is Place-based and holistic in nature, extending from the mountains to the sea. However, these attempts to engage in Indigenous stewardship have confronted countless obstacles and hurdles within the American form of centralized governance in the process. Some communities have found novel ways to engage in Indigenous stewardship via formal recognition of ICCAs through collaborative management agreements with various governmental authorities, both state and federal, as well as with large landowners. As scholars and knowledge keepers of Place, we have synthesized our intergenerational knowledge of the communities we have lived and/or worked in within the context of other studies that we have led or otherwise collaborated on spanning the past 30+ years. We focus on exploring how three Hawaiʻi communities (Hāʻena, Kauaʻi; Heʻeia, Oʻahu; and Kaʻūpūlehu, Hawaiʻi Island) have navigated bureaucracy to get formal recognition of their ICCAs in ways that have garnered governmental support for community-based revival of Indigenous stewardship practices. These three communities have all achieved biocultural resource management successes using a compartmented approach to stitch together various ICCAs as a means to holistically work across contemporary land-ownership boundaries, with one of these communities forming a “collaboratively managed meta-ICCA” to increase synergistic effects. These communities are the first in Hawaiʻi in the modern era to be engaging in Indigenous stewardship via a patchwork of ICCAs from the mountains to the sea, and, therefore, demonstrate that this is a viable, albeit arduous, avenue for communities to holistically engage in Indigenous stewardship within an American system of governance.

Indigenous revitalization includes community-led healing from intergenerational land-based trauma. Yet given colonial legacies that perpetuate the devaluation of Indigenous knowledge and dispossession of Indigenous lands, healing in Indigenous communities presents particular challenges. Such challenges can include responding to western models of bureaucratic governance that replicate historical trauma in governance relations. Building on existing frameworks of Indigenous political ecology, we consider the importance of resisting colonial legacies that can influence Indigenous environmental governance. We do so by discussing community-led revitalization and resurgence in the Karuk tribal community, and an exemplar case of family-based management systems for caretaking ceremonial trails in the mid-Klamath (Northern California, USA). Through this case, we consider the interdependent functions of family-based governance and tribal government institutions for collective decolonization and healing. Our analysis of family-based management provides insights into the sociopolitical and ecological dynamics of healing in diverse Indigenous communities, and explores more inclusive models for Indigenous environmental governance.

Resource sustainability requires recognising and developing pathways to integrate local and Indigenous knowledges alongside conservation and sustainability sciences within management practices and governance. However, knowledge never occurs in a vacuum, and is always mediated by the beliefs, values, or stances towards its possession or use within particular contexts. Focusing on the unprecedented renewal of a traditional practice of natural resource management in French Polynesia called rāhui, this article investigates the local conceptions, perceptions, and expectations (CPE) that mediate between community knowledges, plans, and actions, and inputs from conservation and sustainability sciences. Drawing on a multi-year ethnographic study focused on the CPE of two coastal communities around Tahiti's Taiarapu coast, our results show the CPE that shape relationships between conservation sciences' inputs toward decision and policy-making and community governance and management over nearshore marine resources can differ meaningfully. Moreover, we suggest that evidence of such differences that exist despite socioeconomic, cultural, or demographic similarities indicates that the specificities of local communities' CPE around conservation and sustainability sciences should be carefully considered before and alongside any conservation or management action. In the context of a resurgent Indigenous resource management practice called rāhui on Tahiti's Taiarapu coast, this study analyses the local conceptions, perceptions, and expectations (CPE) which mediate between the community-led resource management and inputs and insights from conservation and sustainability sciences. Meaningful differences between similarly-situated local communities indicate that local communities' CPE around conservation and sustainability sciences should be carefully considered before and alongside any conservation or management action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Indigenous resource management (IRM) is dynamic and ever evolving, in part because it is based on co-evolutionary relationships between Indigenous cultures and the biodiversity around them. Forms of conservation imposed on Indigenous people and places by settler-colonialism tend to idealise pre-human and human-excluded environments, leading to conflicts between settler-coloniser conservationists and Indigenous communities detrimental to conservation goals. Conservation efforts that align with IRM and acknowledge the co-evolutionary relationships at the foundation of Indigenous culture can lead to more effective conservation efforts. In Hawai'i, the evolving relationship between Kānaka (Hawaiians) and pua'a (pigs; Sus scrofa) has been the flash point of conflicts between settler-coloniser conservationists and Hawaiian communities. This paper examines the co-evolving relationships between Hawaiians and pigs in an effort to better balance the conservation efforts aimed at controlling invasive species with the State of Hawai'i's obligation to support Indigenous practices and public hunting. We conducted this research by investigating archival Hawaiian language resources, which allowed us to resurrect knowledge lost to time and pinpoint key historical changes over the past 250 years. Our results elucidate this co-evolutionary relationship that shifted from an animal-husbandry relationship to a hunter–prey relationship in the first half of the 19th century. This change in the trajectory of the co-evolutionary relationship was a result of various shifts throughout Hawaiian socio-ecological systems, and therefore necessitates adaptive governance relating to management of and access to pigs. We conclude that Indigenous perspectives offer opportunities to transform conservation biology through multi-objective approaches that address both hunting and conservation goals. Our study analysed the co-evolving relationships between Hawaiians and pigs in Hawai'i over the past 250 years using archival resources and Indigenous perspectives. Understanding the dynamics of biocultural relationships can be used to develop socially-informed policies for both wildlife management and conservation biology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the distressing midst of global extinction and environmental crises, changes to the ways that places are managed and cared for are vital and urgent. We offer here an Indigenous-led model of cross-cultural collaboration based on lessons shared by Darug custodians in Sydney, Australia, embedded in the making of buran nalgarra (stringybark rope). The Buran Nalgarra model of collaboration is not a simple cut-and-paste model nor panacea for effective collaboration. Rather, embedded deeply in Darug Ngurra (Darug Country), we share what we have learnt and value through our Caring-as-Darug-Ngurra project in the hope that others will find our guiding principles and processes useful, and perhaps adapt our learning to their own places. We strive for strength and learning through togetherness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Companion animal management in Australian remote Aboriginal communities (rAcs) is a complex problem, with multiple stakeholders involved with differing needs, knowledge, power and resources. We present our CoMM4Unity approach, a participatory systemic action research process designed to address such problems. In the first step, frame analysis is used to analyse stakeholders’ perspectives, knowledge types and power dynamics to determine their relative roles in animal management. Twenty individuals were interviewed from stakeholder groups involved in animal management in the remote, island rAc of Wurrumiyanga, Tiwi Islands. Frame analysis indicated that stakeholders aligned into four groups with distinct identity frames, knowledge types and power frames: Indigenous Locals, Indigenous Rangers, Non-Indigenous Locals and Animal Managers. All four groups shared overlapping perceptions about companion animals in Wurrumiyanga, and agreed that dog overpopulation was the primary issue. However, the groups differed in their strength of opinions about how dogs should be managed. Therefore, the situation is not one of diametrically opposing frames but more a misalignment of goals and values. Our application showed that frame analysis can reveal subtle variations in stakeholder groups’ identities, goals and values, and hence how they prioritise management measures.

Human settlement into new regions is typically accompanied by waves of animal extinctions, yet we have limited understanding of how human communities perceived and responded to such ecological crises. The first megafaunal extinctions in New Zealand began just 700 years ago, in contrast to the deep time of continental extinctions. Consequently, indigenous Māori oral tradition includes ancestral sayings that explicitly refer to extinct species. Our linguistic analysis of these sayings shows a strong bias towards critical food species such as moa, and emphasizes that Māori closely observed the fauna and environment. Temporal changes in form and content demonstrate that Māori recognized the loss of important animal resources, and that this loss reverberated culturally centuries later. The data provide evidence that extinction of keystone fauna was important for shaping ecological and social thought in Māori society, and suggest a similar role in other early societies that lived through megafaunal extinction events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the socioeconomic phenomenon of Chinese migrants capitalizing on indigenous Hawaiian foodways around the turn of the twentieth century. By examining fishponds and poi factories, I investigate multiple strategies of survival and success including community organization, interracial communion, and cultural appropriation. I use family histories and territorial reports to reconstruct a history of Chinese and Hawaiian economic intimacy and argue that certain ventures that have been recorded as categorically "Chinese" must be reinterpreted as creolized. These joint enterprises, which combined diasporic networks of labor and capital with indigenous knowledge and resources, demonstrate an alternative path from plantation capitalist modernity. I conclude that credit must be restored to indigenous participants when evaluating the success of migrant enterprise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Protecting valued attributes of a river’s socio-ecological system demands a more holistic approach to freshwater management. Effective communication is critical to convey the breadth of values and the state of water systems to decision-makers if they are to make meaningful decisions. Worldwide, environmental report cards are being used to define and measure progress towards environmental sustainability and promoted as an effective communication and engagement tool to galvanise commitment and action. This paper discusses the value of environmental report cards and contends that they can be a valuable integrative tool to support restoration strategies, as well as a way of conveying monitoring results to increase understanding about the health and well-being of catchments. We present two case studies from the Waikato and Waitaki River in New Zealand where report cards based on eco-cultural frameworks have been developed that explicitly link indicators that assess the state or condition of the catchment with the vision and goals articulated by iwi/hapū. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Guassa area of Menz in the Central Highlands of Ethiopia is an Afro-alpine ecological community with an indigenous resource management system. The local community harvest different resources including collecting grass and firewood from the Guassa area. Cattle and other livestock are also grazed in the Guassa area, especially during the dry season. Several sympatric species of endemic rodents dominate the small mammal ecological communities in the Guassa area, and form most of the diet of the endangered Ethiopian wolf. This study aimed to determine if current levels of resource use by the local community through the indigenous resource management system had any discernible effect on rodent community structure. We found that the structure of the rodent community differs between habitat types, and that different species of rodents show diurnal variations in their patterns of activity. We also found that populations of different species show variable responses to each type of resource use in different habitats; some species show increases in abundance in relation to use while others show decreases. Although the indigenous resource management system was not specifically designed to conserve wildlife, it has nevertheless allowed wildlife, specifically small mammals or rodent communities, to co-exist alongside the ongoing resource use by the local community. We conclude the Guassa area represents an interesting model of community-led resource management of an Afro-alpine habitat which supports populations of endemic and threatened species.

The Guassa area of Menz in the Central Highlands of Ethiopia is an Afro-alpine ecological community with an indigenous resource management system. The local community harvest different resources including collecting grass and firewood from the Guassa area. Cattle and other livestock are also grazed in the Guassa area, especially during the dry season. Several sympatric species of endemic rodents dominate the small mammal ecological communities in the Guassa area, and form most of the diet of the endangered Ethiopian wolf. This study aimed to determine if current levels of resource use by the local community through the indigenous resource management system had any discernible effect on rodent community structure. We found that the structure of the rodent community differs between habitat types, and that different species of rodents show diurnal variations in their patterns of activity. We also found that populations of different species show variable responses to each type of resource use in different habitats; some species show increases in abundance in relation to use while others show decreases. Although the indigenous resource management system was not specifically designed to conserve wildlife, it has nevertheless allowed wildlife, specifically small mammals or rodent communities, to co-exist alongside the ongoing resource use by the local community. We conclude the Guassa area represents an interesting model of community-led resource management of an Afro-alpine habitat which supports populations of endemic and threatened species. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper elaborates, analyzes, and partly defends the normative and empirical foundations of a “social ecology” model for natural habitat and resource management. This model treats human societies as being irreducibly integrated with the natural systems in which they are embedded. It argues that any concept of biodiversity necessarily embodies cultural values for it to be operationalized for conservation decisions. It accepts the legitimacy of tradeoffs between biodiversity conservation and other values including human resource development. It prioritizes local control of decisions in regions which are often targeted by Northern conservationists: areas of the South, where cultural choices have led to the persistence of high biodiversity. This model is used to analyze an ongoing dispute over biodiversity conservation and natural resource control in Perú: the conflict over Kandozi territory in the Abanico del Pastaza. What the Kandozi want is more than just a rejection of what has been criticized as the national park/fortress model of conservation. It consists of an assertion of local institutionalized control over traditional lands which goes well beyond the purview of the usual alternative of the fortress model: the biosphere reserve model of external and internal joint control of natural resources. To the remarkable extent that Kandozi resource management practices have succeeded in maintaining biotic richness and variety in spite of multiple encroachments, the empirical evidence demands that today’s conservationists pay adequate attention to these practices and the social institutions in which they are embedded. But, beyond such prudential concerns, the social ecology model of habitat conservation accepts the normative claims that resident communities should have control over their lands and livelihoods and that they should be allowed to maintain their habitats as cultural landscapes of their choice. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Archaeological data on the long history of interaction between indigenous people and salmon have rarely been applied to conservation management. When joined with ethnohistoric records, archaeology provides an alternative conceptual view of the potential for sustainable harvests and can suggest possible social mechanisms for managing human behavior. Review of the ~7,500-year-long fish bone record from two subregions of the Pacific Northwest shows remarkable stability in salmon use. As major changes in the ecological and social system occurred over this lengthy period, persistence in the fishery is not due simply to a lack of perturbation, but rather indicates resilience in the ecological--human system. Of several factors possibly contributing to resilience, low human population size and harvesting pressure, habitat enhancement, and suppression of competing predators do not appear to be of major importance. Flexible resource use, including human use of a range of local resources, many of which are linked in a food web with salmon, likely contributed to resilience. Most important were the beliefs and social institutions (including ownership, regulation, rituals, and monitoring) that placed restraints on salmon use as a common pool resource. In contrast, only a small fraction of our modern society relies economically on or has direct interaction with the fish, which limits our concern and willingness to fundamentally change behaviors that contribute to habitat degradation and loss, the main challenges facing salmon populations today. Salmon recovery efforts may benefit substantially from investing more resources into establishing links between community groups and actual fish populations, which would create a sense of proprietorship, one of the keys to resilience in the indigenous salmon fishery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Indigenous communities are particularly sensitive to the use and development of freshwaters, as they hold distinct perspectives on water which reflect their identity, and their custodial obligations to manage tribal waters. Within New Zealand, Maori (the indigenous people) have, for generations, voiced their concerns about the continual modification of waterways within their tribal territories. Until about the mid-nineteenth century, water quality was at the forefront of issues concerning human manipulation of rivers and streams. A range of new issues then arose that were increasingly concerned with reduced river flows. Of the many techniques developed to address these issues, many rely heavily on professional expertise and objective, scientific philosophies, which often fail to recognize cultural values, and benefit from cultural knowledge. This essay presents examples of the knowledge of streams and rivers held within Maori communities that could benefit contemporary resource management if it can be determined how cultural knowledge and practices and scientific approaches can be communicated and integrated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The international movement toward recognition of indigenous rights over the past thirty years has created a number of complex and compelling issues in planning for the use of land and natural resources. Planning should have much to say about many of these issues, given its concern for the use of land and resources, its focus on problem-solving, and its normative disposition. There is, however, only a modest literature on indigenous planning. Thus, we draw on the planning literature, but also call heavily on work from associated disciplines to introduce to planning scholars some of the problems and opportunities indigenous communities face with respect to land and resource management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the historical importance of fire as a savanna land management tool, much controversy still surrounds discussions on anthropogenic fire utilization and the sustainability of indigenous land management practices in African savannas. This controversy is arguably a result of a discord between official fire policies and actual indigenous fire practices – a discord based on a gap in existing knowledge of, and a lack of informed literature on, the importance of fire for socio-economic and environmental survival in savanna environments. Addressing a continuing lack of research on the political ecology of fire, this study investigates the historical and present day socio-economic, environmental and political frameworks that affect anthropogenic burning regimes and land management in the Kafinda Game Management Area and Kasanka National Park in Zambia. A series of participatory research activities revealed the continuing importance of fire to rural livelihoods, but that a mismatch in desired burning regimes exists between local stakeholders. The paper argues that local power relations are preventing the local communities from adopting burning regimes that would be more environmentally sustainable and more in line with present day farming systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Indigenous agroforestry systems are important reservoirs of biodiversity, and ecosystem services with a potential contribution for conservation of biodiversity while sustaining the livelihood of the rural populace. Pineapple (Ananas comosus) agroforestry systems (PAFS) form an essential constituent of the rural landscape in the Indian Eastern Himalayas and other parts of Asia. The traditional PAFS management in southern Assam is unique in that it involves shifting cultivation transitioning from native forests to a PAFS. Scarcity of information on the functioning and services in terms of species diversity and carbon storage potential in the traditional PAFS has restricted the opportunities for consideration under the nature-based solutions of climate action including REDD+. Therefore, the present study assessed the tree diversity and ecosystem carbon storage in a chronosequence from swidden agriculture through different phases of PAFS establishment. The result demonstrated that basal area in the PAFS increased with age. The most dominant species in the native forests was Palaquium polyanthum , while agricultural land use and PAFS aged <5, 11–15 and > 15 years old were dominated by Gmelina arborea , Albizia procera , Areca catechu and Hevea brasiliensis , respectively. The highest value of Shannon-Wiener diversity index (H) was recorded in native forests (2.71), and lowest in 5–10 years old PAFS. The ecosystem carbon storage declined from 261.43 Mg ha−1 in native forests to 181.07 Mg ha−1 in <5-years old PAFS. In <5 years old PAFS, the ecosystem carbon storage was 30 % lower than the native forest; while at >15 years it was merely 5 % less than the native forests. The traditional PAFS maintains a steady ecosystem carbon stock while reducing land use related carbon emission and providing additional co-benefits to the communities. Therefore, the traditional PAFS constitute a good opportunity for REDD+. [Display omitted] • The Shannon-Wiener diversity index (H) was the highest in native forests (2.71), and the least in 5–10 years PAFS. • Forest clearing and burning prior to the establishment of PAFS caused a decline of 30 % of the ecosystem C. • The bush density of the pineapple increased with the increase in the PAFS age. • At >15 years of PAFS ecosystem carbon loss was merely 5 % compared to native forests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Archaeological data on the long history of interaction between indigenous people and salmon have rarely been applied to conservation management. When joined with ethnohistoric records, archaeology provides an alternative conceptual view of the potential for sustainable harvests and can suggest possible social mechanisms for managing human behavior. Review of the ~7,500-year-long fish bone record from two subregions of the Pacific Northwest shows remarkable stability in salmon use. As major changes in the ecological and social system occurred over this lengthy period, persistence in the fishery is not due simply to a lack of perturbation, but rather indicates resilience in the ecological-human system. Of several factors possibly contributing to resilience, low human population size and harvesting pressure, habitat enhancement, and suppression of competing predators do not appear to be of major importance. Flexible resource use, including human use of a range of local resources, many of which are linked in a food web with salmon, likely contributed to resilience. Most important were the beliefs and social institutions (including ownership, regulation, rituals, and monitoring) that placed restraints on salmon use as a common pool resource. In contrast, only a small fraction of our modern society relies economically on or has direct interaction with the fish, which limits our concern and willingness to fundamentally change behaviors that contribute to habitat degradation and loss, the main challenges facing salmon populations today. Salmon recovery efforts may benefit substantially from investing more resources into establishing links between community groups and actual fish populations, which would create a sense of proprietorship, one of the keys to resilience in the indigenous salmon fishery.

Simple Summary: The management of dogs and cats in remote communities is challenging due to limited availability of veterinary services and high reproductive rates in companion animal populations. Support for animal management within communities is also weak, and consequently, programs delivered by external providers rarely achieve sustainable outcomes. An alternative approach whereby communities are engaged in analysing and understanding the issues, and designing solutions themselves, may help to achieve sustainable improvements in animal populations and health management. To test this approach, stakeholders involved with animal management in a remote Australian Aboriginal community were interviewed to gain their perspectives on animal management. By applying frame analysis to understand stakeholders' perceptions, knowledge and power, interviewees fell into four distinct groups: Indigenous Locals, Indigenous Rangers, Non-Indigenous Locals and Animal Managers. The most important issue identified by all groups was the overpopulation of dogs, but there were differences in their framing of the problem and its causes. Frame analysis achieved the important first step of the process, identifying "What is the issue?". Companion animal management in Australian remote Aboriginal communities (rAcs) is a complex problem, with multiple stakeholders involved with differing needs, knowledge, power and resources. We present our CoMM4Unity approach, a participatory systemic action research process designed to address such problems. In the first step, frame analysis is used to analyse stakeholders' perspectives, knowledge types and power dynamics to determine their relative roles in animal management. Twenty individuals were interviewed from stakeholder groups involved in animal management in the remote, island rAc of Wurrumiyanga, Tiwi Islands. Frame analysis indicated that stakeholders aligned into four groups with distinct identity frames, knowledge types and power frames: Indigenous Locals, Indigenous Rangers, Non-Indigenous Locals and Animal Managers. All four groups shared overlapping perceptions about companion animals in Wurrumiyanga, and agreed that dog overpopulation was the primary issue. However, the groups differed in their strength of opinions about how dogs should be managed. Therefore, the situation is not one of diametrically opposing frames but more a misalignment of goals and values. Our application showed that frame analysis can reveal subtle variations in stakeholder groups' identities, goals and values, and hence how they prioritise management measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Globally, there is growing recongition of the essential role indigneous people have in biocultural conservation. However, there are few cases of applied indigenous resource management today, especially from the indigenous standpoint. In this paper, we provide an example of the maintenance and adaptation of an indigenous resource management system in Hawai'i from the perspective of an instrumental 'Ōiwi (Indigenous Hawaiian) social institution, Kamehameha Schools. Kamehameha Schools is not only the largest private landowner in Hawai'i, but is uniquely tied to a lineage of traditional ali'i (chiefs) resulting in present-day influence, decision-making authority, and wealth to fund a perpetual vision for its ancestral lands and communities. Notably, we share our journey from the perspective of indigenous resource managers, using the 'Ōiwi methodology of mo'okū'auhau (genealogy and continuity) to guide our (re)discovery of what it means to steward in an indigenous way. First, we ground ourselves in 'Ōiwi worldviews, recognizing our genealogical and reciprocal connections to 'āina (land and sea). Then, we examine the functions of the traditional institution of the ali'i and the chiefly principle of 'āina kaumaha—a heavy obligation to steward the biocultural health of lands and seas in perpetuity. We detail how 'āina kaumaha has manifested and transferred over generations, from traditional ali'i to the royal Kamehameha line, to Kamehameha Schools as an ali'i institution. Finally, we discuss how we endeavor to meet inherited obligations through Kamehameha Schools' resource management approach today, which includes active stewardship of vast tracts of native ecosystems and Hawai'i's most important cultural sites, influencing biocultural well-being through representing 'Ōiwi perspectives in diverse industries, and developing the next generation of 'Ōiwi stewards. We provide a guide for indigenous organizations (re)defining their ancestral ways of stewardship, as well as for the many non-indigenous agencies with obligations to native lands and people today working to incorporate indigenous systems into their current management. Given that much of the world's lands are indigenous spaces, we argue that the restoration of effective biocultural resource management systems worldwide requires the maintenance, and in some cases reestablishment, of indigenous institutions at multiple levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]