The Heritage and Future of Indigenous Rights within Settler-Colonial Commonwealth Nations in the Environmental Emergency

Canada and New Zealand have both pledged to align their laws with the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, creating a rare opening to reshape how environmental and heritage decisions are made. This research works directly with Indigenous communities in British Columbia and Aotearoa New Zealand to put that commitment into practice. The problem is that the environmental emergency hits Indigenous communities hardest, and existing legal and management systems often ignore how landscapes sustain Indigenous cultures and heritage. The gap is that no one has systematically tested what Indigenous-led environmental stewardship looks like when backed by national law. If this succeeds, it could change how cultural heritage and ecosystems are managed in both countries—shifting from top-down government decisions to community-led priorities. That might mean new legal frameworks for protecting sacred sites, different rules for resource extraction on traditional territories, or heritage management that treats land and culture as inseparable. The research is action-based, not theoretical: it aims to produce real governance models that could be adopted elsewhere in settler-colonial Commonwealth nations facing similar tensions between Indigenous rights and environmental crisis.