BY SOPHIE TSAIRIS

While Western conservation tends to quantify success through data and discourages the role of emotion in policymaking, Indigenous wisdom remembers and illuminates what these metrics often overlook: that humans are not separate from ecosystems, and everything is connected. INDIGENOUS LED, a new podcast released in April, reminds us of this.

“Buffalo is, to me, my way of helping to bring back a big part of our culture that was taken away, and helping restore that,” said INDIGENOUS LED co-founder Ervin Carlson in the inaugural episode. This perspective becomes a thread woven throughout each conversation as guests help reframe wildlife management through the lens of cultural revitalization, spiritual practice and ecological healing.

Through its podcast, the organization of the same name amplifies voices of Native contributors essential to a healing land movement anchored in the sacred connections that bind land, people and culture together. This work is a return to relationship-centered land stewardship that predates modern environmental movements.

The podcast’s first season, “Voices of Belonging,” weaves rich conversations exploring Indigenous science, conservation practices, cultural continuity and ecological relationships. Listeners hear from a thoughtfully gathered circle of voices, including Indigenous Led co-founders Ervin Carlson and Cristina Mormorunni, ecologist Stephanie Barron, youth leaders Sarah Little Bear and Ethan Running Crane, and First Nation Kainai Elder Shane Little Bear.

Host Lailani Upham guides these conversations with reverence and care, creating a listening experience that transcends the conventional podcast format. An Amskapi Pikuni (Blackfeet Nation) tribal member and descendant of the Aaniiih, Nakoda and Dakota tribes, Upham’s background in journalism, filmmaking and entrepreneurship adds a unique lens through which she interviews show guests. Each episode unfolds more like a council gathering than an interview, with stories of belonging, restoration and relational responsibility that invite listeners into a circle of mutual care.

What distinguishes INDIGENOUS LED is its unwavering commitment to holistic understanding. Rather than compartmentalizing discussions about land, culture, spirituality and ecology as separate topics, each episode demonstrates how these elements remain inseparable within Indigenous worldviews. Upham’s thoughtful facilitation allows conversations to breathe and develop organically.

In episode 2, “Braided Science,” ecologist Stephanie Barron reflects on how Indigenous mentorship guided her toward a more holistic, land-based approach to wildlife and resource management. After many years of working within the Western framework of the field, a trip to Tanzania prompted her interest in community-based conservation and led her to realize the dissonance she felt working within the Western paradigm of conservation.

“There was no recognition of the spiritual; there was no recognition of animals as being whole, independent beings themselves,” she said. “They were just numbers and just data, pieces of an ecosystem that rarely were acknowledged as beings that cooperated together, and that we were a part of that system too.”

While the series thoughtfully examines differences between Western conservation models and Indigenous approaches, these comparisons never become divisive. Instead, they open pathways toward understanding how different knowledge systems might complement one another in service of shared goals.

INDIGENOUS LED serves as both a witness and a road forward, documenting healing land movements already underway while creating pathways for broader understanding and participation. For those who approach these episodes with open hearts and curious minds, the podcast offers medicine for our collective journey toward what one guest eloquently describes as “remembering our belonging to each other and to Earth.”

Through careful listening to this groundbreaking series, we are invited to recognize Indigenous leadership not as a novel approach to modern challenges, but as the continuation of time-tested wisdom that offers essential guidance for restoring balance in our relationships with the living world.

Sophie Tsairis is the deputy editor of Mountain Outlaw.