INDIGENOUS WOMEN PARK RANGERS IN THE UNITED STATES: BELONGING, RESISTANCE, AND REMATRIATION IN COLONIAL PARK SYSTEM WORKPLACES

Abstract

Despite escalating ecological crises, conservation and natural resource management (NRM) remain constrained by colonial and gendered systems that limit the full inclusion of Indigenous women and their knowledge. This dissertation explores how Indigenous women park rangers in the United States (U.S.) experience, navigate, and resist these colonial workplace structures. Using a Two-Eyed Seeing methodological approach, guided by Indigenous and Western ways of knowing, the chapters in this dissertation explore the challenges and barriers these women face, their acts of resistance against colonial systems, and their methods for rematriating the Landscapes under their protection. Although research shows that equity and diversity advance conservation outcomes, conservation and NRM workplaces continue to uphold colonial structures and social norms that marginalize minority employees and underutilize their knowledge and stewardship. Chapter two, titled “Barriers to Belonging for Indigenous Women Rangers in the United States of America,” provides an overview of how the U.S. was colonized through the ideology of Manifest Destiny, which rooted protected area management in a problematic legacy that continues through systemic racism, cultural erasure, and toxic management practices. This chapter addresses the discrimination and barriers Indigenous women encounter in their park system workplaces and how these challenges are modern manifestations of the ‘frontier violence’ that their ancestors faced during colonization. Yet, despite these challenges, these women continually protect the Landscapes their people have inhabited and managed since time immemorial. Chapter three, titled “Embedded Resistance: Indigenous Women Navigating Colonial Structures in Natural Resource Management,” provides an overview of the colonial doctrines that were used as the framework for protected area management and resource protection within the U.S. and how the legacy of these frameworks has created unsafe workplaces for modern Indigenous women. It then describes the importance of Indigenous women’s representation in park management, but that representation is not enough; park systems need a restructuring of governance. It also explores how these women navigate and resist the systems in place while finding resilience through connection through cultural grounding, kinship, social movements, and Land-based practices. Chapter four, titled “Indigenous Women Rangers Rematriate Stewardship in Protected Areas,” repositions Indigenous women park rangers as essential to the future of protected area management in the U.S. Through shifting the structure of protection away from colonial Western management and towards the practice of rematriation by reintroducing Indigenous Traditional Ecological Knowledge and stewardship to the Landscapes. Through healing, cultural continuity, and bringing their Tribal communities into the parks, these women serve not only as park rangers but also as vital knowledge holders and cultural connectors. By centering the experiences of Indigenous women, this dissertation contributes to scholarship by examining the structural inequities and marginalization they face in NRM and conservation, and by highlighting how these conditions limit agencies’ ability to fully leverage diverse knowledge during a period of ecological crisis. The findings underscore the need for structural changes in governance that meaningfully center Indigenous women’s knowledge and leadership in Land management practice.