Rewilding and Indigenous Community-Led Land Care

Abstract

In the 1990s, pioneers of rewilding described a bold vision of wilderness connected at the continental scale, with thriving populations of large, wild animals. Much of the resulting discourse has emphasized uninhabited places or has promoted a “hands-off” approach to environmental management. This clashes with many Indigenous (e.g., First Nations) perspectives and has made rewilding largely irrelevant to Indigenous communities, especially in colonized countries. Yet rewilding can support Indigenous community aspirations for sovereignty, health, and justice. Moreover, Indigenous communities and their traditional ecological knowledge are vital to conservation. We suggest two principles by which rewilding can align with, and support, Indigenous communities: shifting focus from wilderness to the creative agency of wild beings, and framing restoration as a collaborative endeavor between humans and wildlife. As an approach to conservation policy and practice, rewilding should seek opportunities to place Indigenous communities in leadership positions, in terms of both practical restoration and the conceptual reshaping of rewilding itself. We relate two case studies of Indigenous community-led conservation which exemplify the potential of such an approach: the Buffalo Treaty in North America, and the Lungtalanana Cultural Restoration Project in southern Australia.