The Women Who Hold the Land: How Indigenous Knowledge Is Reshaping Global Conservation

The Sacred Sites Where Biodiversity Thrives — And The Women Who Protect Them

On the traditional lands of Scandinavia's Indigenous Sámi people, something remarkable has been documented: their sacred natural sites contain greater biodiversity, more intact vegetation, and healthier ecosystems than the surrounding landscapes. Long before national parks and environmental agencies existed — before Yellowstone in 1872, before Sweden's Sarek National Park in 1909 — peoples across the world protected landscapes through religion, customary law, and Indigenous stewardship.

In Japan, Shinto shrine forests have stood for centuries. In India, villagers maintain sacred groves. Ethiopia's churches are encircled by protected forests. Now, a growing movement is finally recognizing what Indigenous communities have always known: traditional knowledge and enduring relationships with the land sustain environments where both humans and other living beings can thrive.

In the Brazilian Amazon, Indigenous women are putting this knowledge into action. Working alongside the Krahô, Krahô-Kanela, and Avá Canoeiro peoples, the Agrobiodiversity in Tocantins project combines productive landscape restoration with traditional territorial management. "When we care for our territory, we are caring for our own lives and for the future of the generations to come," says Indiarrury Cãn Krahô, a leader of the Krahô People and member of ACT-Brasil's technical team. For these communities, restoring land means protecting water sources, managing biodiversity, sustaining traditional agriculture, and ensuring cultural continuity — a practice the Krahô call biocultural conservation.

Thousands of miles away, in Canada's Niagara Peninsula, a landmark agreement was signed this August between the Niagara Academy for Indigenous Relations and the Niagara Peninsula Conservation Authority. The partnership will advance ecological conservation, habitat restoration, and the integration of Indigenous knowledge with contemporary environmental practices. "This partnership represents an important step toward bringing Indigenous knowledge systems alongside contemporary conservation practices in ways that benefit both people and the environment," said Phil Davis of the Niagara Academy for Indigenous Relations. The agreement draws on principles from the Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address, which teaches gratitude, reciprocity, and responsibility toward the natural world.

This year also marks a significant milestone in South Africa: 70 years since more than 20,000 women marched to the Union Buildings on August 9, 1956, to protest the extension of pass laws to women under apartheid. Lilian Ngoyi, Helen Joseph, Sophie Williams-de Bruyn, and Rahima Moosa led that historic demonstration — and this summer, women leaders from across Africa gathered at the Pan-African Transformational Leadership Summit to honor that legacy while charting new pathways forward.

"The young women of today are succeeding academically and professionally, because of the fights those women in 1956 fought," said Minister Sindisiwe Chikunga at the summit. South African women now occupy top leadership positions in Parliament, the judiciary, and the corporate sector — though advocates acknowledge that representation has recently declined and must be rebuilt.

Meanwhile, in Australia's Northern Territory, Indigenous women are weaving together cultural heritage and economic opportunity. The Bábbarra Women's Centre, in the remote community of Maningrida, partnered with India's Tharangini Studio to create a collaboration that won NIFA's Community Collaboration award this year. The partnership helps First Nations clans pass cultural knowledge to younger generations through traditional textile printing.

"[We can] teach our children for the future and [show] the old people, to see how they print the design," said Janet Marawarr of Bábbarra Women's Centre.

Across continents, through centuries of resistance and resilience, Indigenous and women leaders are carrying forward knowledge systems that sustain communities and ecosystems alike — proving that the most effective conservation often begins with those who have cared for the land longest.