Land-based methodologies and disrupting settler colonial legacies in parks and protected areas: lessons from Tracking Change

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper examines how land-based methodologies in parks and protected areas can serve Indigenous priorities while challenging settler colonial logics and conventional aims of Eurocentric research. We report on collaborative research with the Łutsël K’é Dene First Nation (Northwest Territories) as part of a six-year (2016–2021) international partnership project entitled Tracking Change. Focus is placed on a multi-day canoe journey along an ancestral water route within Thaidene Nene National Park Reserve. We interpret lessons learned during the canoe trip to underscore how land-based methodologies prioritize outcomes of observing change, storying land, and fostering community capacities. Accordingly, land-based methodologies focus less on accumulating knowledge or claiming truths, and more on facilitating and transmitting Indigenous knowledges, histories, relations, and practices. Incorporating land-based methodologies into parks and protected areas research can therefore amplify Indigenous contributions to management and interpretation discourses and support the critical project of decolonizing the leisure field.