Creating a Tribal National Park: Barriers that Constrain and Mechanisms that Promote Landscape Scale Conservation

Learning is a key component of landscape scale conservation because it allows collaborating organizations to share knowledge, reflect on challenges and opportunities, and create novel solutions to social and environmental challenges. Participatory evaluation is a research process that promotes social learning as participants design the research program, create research questions, and assess the process and outcomes of change (Sherman et al., 2012). We conducted participatory evaluation with the Oglala Sioux Tribe and the National Park Service as a learning process to identify and augment their adaptive capacity as they engage in landscape scale conservation. As part of this evaluation, we explored the barriers that constrained and mechanisms that promoted the integration of indigenous and scientific knowledge systems and the sustainability of collaborative management in this case. We identified several barriers. These included a lack legitimacy for indigenous stewardship, a lack of accountability between organizations, and conflicting motivations for landscape-scale conservation. Adaptive mechanisms such as social learning, reciprocity, and bridging organizations encouraged a more collaborative and adaptive management process. As the National Park Service and Oglala Sioux Tribe work toward their shared goal; to create the nation’s first Tribal National Park on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation; they must recognize the benefits of diversity, build networks within and between collaborating organizations, and iteratively evaluate their relationship to learn from the mistakes of the past and adapt to the uncertainties of the future.