Abstract

The desire to weave Indigenous values into land-use planning and protected areas is growing. Mapping the full array of ecosystem services and cultural resources that Indigenous people value across a landscape is one way of connecting people to conservation planning efforts, but has been proven to be a difficult task. Here we discuss the use of a modified Indigenous land use and cultural mapping approach split into provisional, income and cultural services and future protection visioning with Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in in Yukon, Canada as they progress in their own land-use planning strategies. We show the benefits of land use and cultural mapping as a planning tool that is feasible for Indigenous communities to capture their values when describing the importance of resources across a landscape. We also show how this mapping can contribute to a land-use planning process using Zonation prioritization software and enhance land use designations. Our hope is to empower the land-use planning community to use Indigenous value mapping with spatial prioritization analysis to help leverage Indigenous traditional knowledge and worldviews into environmental management.

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