Wilderness Watch recently alerted its membership to an important new paper entitled “Wilderness, Indigenous land zones and regionality in North American forests,” that contributes an important—and often missing—perspective to current conversations about wilderness conservation and Indigenous land stewardship. This paper directly challenges the assumption that “Wilderness” is a purely European construct that is inherently incompatible with Indigenous relationships to the land. Drawing on Indigenous languages, land classifications, archaeology, and historical evidence, the authors show how many Indigenous nations recognized distinctions between settled lands and places where people visited but did not remain—concepts that closely parallel the language Congress incorporated in the 1964 Wilderness Act. This paper is a thoughtful contribution that broadens the conversation. Click here to navigate to the paper.
