Stewart Huntington
ICT
When Heather Dawn Thompson joins the World Wildlife Fund in September as a vice president, she will be the top Native American executive at the renowned conservancy.
She will also become part of a small but growing cohort of Native leaders changing the complexion of conservation as Indigenous knowledge and values move ever frontward in organizations that long have favored Western approaches.
“If you want a job done correctly, you’re going to hire the people that have the most knowledge, the most experience in that area,” said Thompson, a Harvard-trained lawyer and citizen of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe who served as director of tribal relations for the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
“That means Indigenous people with the knowledge that they’ve collected about the land, plants, the animals over millennia,” she said.
Carter Roberts, chief executive of the World Wildlife Fund in the United States, agreed, even as he acknowledged that the trend is overdue.
“We have not historically hired the number of Indigenous leaders that we should have,” he said. “We are making up for lost ground. We cannot achieve our conservation mission without the partnership and leadership of Native nations and Indigenous people. … We’re looking forward to her leadership.”
A growing presence
Indigenous leaders are not absent in conservation circles.
Clara Lee Pratte, Diné, sits on the World Wildlife Fund’s board of directors and Alyssa Macy, Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, serves as chief executive of Washington Conservation Action in the Pacific Northwest.
And the ranks are growing.
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Fawn Sharp, a Quinault Nation citizen and past president of the National Congress of American Indians, was named to the board of directors at the Nature Conservancy this spring, bringing a powerful Native presence to that organization.
“In this defining decade for the planet, learning from and centering Indigenous voices in our work is critical,” said William Frist, the board chair of the Nature Conservancy and a former U.S. Senator from Tennessee. “As an experienced tribal leader, Sharp’s voice and leadership will help guide our efforts to amplify Indigenous-led conservation and to ensure that traditional knowledge informs policy and science-driven conservation decisions.”
In April, Barbara ‘Wáahlaal Gidaag Blake joined the Ocean Conservancy as vice president of Arctic Conservation. She said watching over Alaskan waters and landscapes fits in with the examples set by her Ahtna Athabascan, Haida and Tlingit forebears.
“My people have been doing that for thousands of years,” she said. “I just get to be one in a long chain of ancestors and future descendants who … pass on that responsibility of caretaking for our homeland up here in Alaska.”
Gidaag, who also goes by what she calls her “taxpayer name” of Barbara Blake, stressed the importance of bringing Indigenous knowledge and leaders to the forefront of conservation policy discussions.
“It’s extremely important to have Indigenous voices,” Gidaag said. “We should be leading the effort when it comes to this type of work.”
A balanced approach
The growing presence of Indigenous voices is changing the approach to conservation in many circles.
The world of conservation, as it has evolved over the decades, “has not always been a friend to Indigenous communities and has not always really led with the ideals and the perspectives that have been passed on for thousands of years from our ancestors,” Gidaag said.
Thompson agreed.
“Historically, there have been different tactics on how to best approach conservation from a Western perspective versus an Indigenous perspective,” she said.
The Western model primarily followed a “National Parks model,” which barred people from living on conserved land. The Indigenous approach is different.
“The Indigenous perspective takes a more holistic approach, more of a working lands approach,” Thompson said. “How can you best manage and take care of the land, the plants and the animals and utilize them in a balanced manner?”
It’s an approach from the past, for the future, Gidaag said.
“The more that we’re involved in the work that is being done, the more that the voices of our ancestors — and the way that we were taught to care for this place — can be passed on,” she said.
“It’s definitely taken a while for Indigenous knowledge to be seen in the same vein with that of Western science,” Gidaag added, “but I continuously see a growing understanding that these two knowledge systems can walk side by side, that there’s not one that is valued more than the other.”
As an example of how Indigenous knowledge could help determine better conservation practices, she points to a typical salmon run on the Kuskokwim River in Alaska. An elder who learned to watch the river as a child keeps an eye on the river, and when the fish are plentiful enough, gives the green light to the community to begin fishing.
“If the level of fish wasn’t strong enough, they would say, ‘No, it’s not ready,’” she said.
The elder then calls off the fishing as soon as the community has enough for its needs.
Contrast that with the modern, Western approach that sets catch limits based off of a three- or five-year fish-run average.
“You’re looking at a knowledge system that says, well, for three years I’ve seen how many fish have come into this river versus a knowledge system that spans multi generations,” Gidaag said. “And you can tell just from that one example that these individuals carry with them a knowledge system that is going to do a much better job of caretaking for that river.”
The Indigenous approach also keeps an eye out for future generations and the rest of the ecosystem.
“Our knowledge systems and our indigenous knowledge that we carry as a people are things that can help and also influence the current day way of seeing the world,” she said.
Looking ahead
At the World Wildlife Fund, Thompson will be serving as vice president for Native nations conservation and food systems, and will focus her initial efforts on supporting tribally-led buffalo restoration programs.
She is no stranger to such work. She comes from a long line of farmers and ranchers and just finished three-plus years at the Department of Agriculture, where as director of tribal relations she worked hand in glove with the Intertribal Buffalo Council on growing tribal buffalo herds.
“There is a renaissance in tribal-led buffalo conservation projects,” she said. “And one of my first assignments with the WWF will be to work with our team on their already existing projects and really lean into investing with tribal-led buffalo conservation efforts.”
The buffalo bring their own contributions to the effort, she said.
“The grasslands in the United States are one of the most-threatened ecosystems in the world,” she said. “And when you have a people that are natural conservationists, such as tribes, Indigenous people, and you have an animal that, as natural conservationists, are able to restore those prairie lands, it’s one of the most logical choices of investment.”
It’s a logic, Thompson said, that could be applied more broadly.
“As an elder told me, ‘Indigenous knowledge is no longer the back-up plan. It is the plan,’” she said. “I really do believe that the survival of our earth in a healthy way, the survival of us as people, is really dependent upon restoration of those Indigenous values and taking a more holistic and kinder approach with each other.”
And staying the course. Gidaag said she hopes the momentum won’t falter.
“There’s always that fear in the back of my mind,” she said. “We’re the popular girl at the dance right now – Native people in general. And, you know, there’s always that fear that that will be forgotten as soon as we’re not the popular girl at the dance anymore. But it’s my hope that we’ll see more and more of this type of Indigenous leadership.”
When asked if Western conservation organizations’ embrace of Native wisdom could someday diminish, as Gidaag fears, Roberts, the World Wildlife Fund leader, paused and reflected.
“I don’t think it’s a flash in the pan,” he said. “But I do think her worries should remind us to double down and not just hire people, but also to heed their advice, their vision, and to build programs based on those that last.”
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