Indigenous peoples, with long experience, are leading the way now through tyrannies resurfacing around the globe. Keeping their focus on the future, organizations in Canada, Australia and Alaska prioritize regenerative ways of being rather than trying to face down every new challenge that arises. For the planet, and for people, this visionary approach to today's necessary work is a welcome way forward.

Elder Copper Joe Jack, a Ta'an Kwäch'än Council land management planner from the Yukon, created the Land & Peoples Relationship model to rebuild healthy relationships and respect between land and peoples, knowing that reconciliation can happen when people view themselves as part of nature. The Model rebuilds respectful relationships between peoples, where no knowledge system, gender, or group is superior to another. This planning process works with three keys--Respect, Care, and Share--and explicitly includes those without voices. That perspective holds space for the voices of future generations, non-human relations, Mother Earth and others in the decision-making process. Without those perspectives, colonial processes typically fail to maintain a reciprocal connection between people and lands.

With Alaska's Bristol Bay Guardians, Yup'ik Mary Hostetter shares the many mutual benefits of the organization's stewardship goals. Local residents become informed land and water stewards through monitoring and testing protocols, and with projects that restore animals and plants and rejuvenate cultural connections. Participants gain professional skills and support their families, not just with decent wages but through renewed pride in culture and language and in healing from generations of wounds and scars.

In Australia, the brand new 700,000 hectare Tiwi Islands Indigenous Protected Area was celebrated at the end of 2025. Similar to the Guardian programs, Australia organizations support indigenous Rangers in both terrestrial and marine environments. They work in carbon management with traditional fire programs, address invasive species, educate young people, and amplify the varied stewardship initiatives across the continent through strong communications networks. As Heiltsuk Hereditary Chief Frank Brown, of the Canadian Guardians program notes, these forward-looking programs are all "undoing colonial harms and reconnecting to our responsibilities with land, water and natural resources in a reciprocal relationship." May we all find the clarity of vision to do the same.