In the age of big data and open science, what processes are needed to follow open science protocols while upholding Indigenous Peoples’ rights? The Earth Data Relations Working Group (EDRWG), convened to address this question and envision a research landscape that acknowledges the legacy of extractive practices and embraces new norms across Earth science institutions and open science research. Using the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) as an example, the EDRWG recommends actions, applicable across all phases of the data lifecycle, that recognize the sovereign rights of Indigenous Peoples and support better research across all Earth Sciences. Using the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) as an example, this perspective discusses actions that recognize the sovereign rights of Indigenous Peoples and support better research across all Earth Sciences.

1 National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO, United States of America, 2 Livelihood Knowledge Exchange Network, Lexington, KY, United States of America, 3 University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, United States of America, 4 National Disaster Preparedness Center at The University of Hawaii and The Olohana Foundation, Paauilo, HI, United States of America, 5 NOAA Office for Coastal Management, North Charleston, SC, United States of America, 6 Haskell Indian Nations University, Lawrence, KS, United States of America

Presently coastal areas globally are becoming unviable, with people no longer able to maintain livelihoods and settlements due to, for example, increasing floods, storm surges, coastal erosion, and sea level rise, yet there exist significant policy obstacles and practical and regulatory challenges to community-led and community-wide responses. For many receiving support only at the individual level for relocation or other adaptive responses, individual and community harm is perpetuated through the loss of culture and identity incurred through forced assimilation policies. Often, challenges dealt to frontline communities are founded on centuries of injustices. Can these challenges of both norms and policies be addressed? Can we develop socially, culturally, environmentally, and economically just sustainable adaptation processes that supports community responses, maintenance and evolution of traditions, and rejuvenates regenerative life-supporting ecosystems? This article brings together Indigenous community leaders, knowledge-holders, and allied collaborators from Louisiana, Hawai‘i, Alaska, Borikén/Puerto Rico, and the Marshall Islands, to share their stories and lived experiences of the relocation and other adaptive challenges in their homelands and territories, the obstacles posed by the state or regional governments in community adaptation efforts, ideas for transforming the research paradigm from expecting communities to answer scientific questions to having scientists address community priorities, and the healing processes that communities are employing. The contributors are connected through the Rising Voices Center for Indigenous and Earth Sciences, which brings together Indigenous, tribal, and community leaders, atmospheric, social, biological, and ecological scientists, students, educators, and other experts, and facilitates intercultural, relational-based approaches for understanding and adapting to extreme weather and climate events, climate variability, and climate change.

Here, we expand on the term “ecomimicry” to be an umbrella concept for an approach to adaptive ecosystem-based management of social-ecological systems that simultaneously optimizes multiple ecosystem services for the benefit of people and place. In this context, we define ecomimicry as a strategy for developing and managing cultural landscapes, built upon a deep understanding of the structure and function of ecosystems, that harnesses ecosystem processes for the purpose of balancing and sustaining key ecosystem services, rather than maximizing one service (e.g., food production) to the detriment of others. Ecomimicry arises through novel, place-based innovations or is adopted from elsewhere and adapted to local conditions. Similarly, precontact Hawaiian socialecological systems integrated a variety of ecomimicry schema to engender a complex system of adaptive resource management that enhanced biocultural diversity and supported resilient food systems, ultimately sustaining a thriving human population. In addition to presenting a synopsis of how ecomimicry was employed in the design and management of Hawaiian social-ecological systems, we identify and characterize specific ecomimicry applications. Within this context, we explore a revival of ecomimicry for biological conservation, biocultural restoration, resilience, and food security. We conclude with a discussion of how revitalizing such an approach in the restoration of social-ecological systems may address issues of conservation and sustainability in the Anthropocene.

Globally, an increasing recognition of the importance of ecosystem-based management (EBM), Indigenous resource management (IRM), and Indigenous-led research and management is emerging; yet, case studies within scholarly literature illustrating comprehensive application of these theories and philosophies are scarce. We present the collaborative management model for the He`eia National Estuarine Research Reserve (NERR) as a contemporary Indigenous Community and Conserved Area (ICCA) that has synergistically operationalized these principles, as well as one that approaches research as a reciprocal collaboration with the Indigenous people and local community (IPLC) of place. The He'eia NERR was designated in 2017 through a process led by IPLC members in Hawaii. This research framework is aimed at informing EBM within social-ecological systems. It, therefore, serves as an example of a program designed to demonstrate and provide practical solutions for adaptive resource management. The framework of the He`eia NERR embraces the values, perspectives, and IRM strategies that have been foundational for the people of the Pacific to thrive sustainably in the context of limited resources for millennia. As a program, the He`eia NERR aims to build bridges between coexisting worldviews as a means of informing policy in the realms of conservation and sustainability. We do this by weaving together conventional and Indigenous science to collaboratively develop research and collaboratively produce new knowledge. We examine these issues through the lens of holistic ecosystem services that consider both the reciprocal benefits that humans provide to nature as well as the full range of existential benefits that humans gain from nature. Research collaborations between the He`eia NERR and its partners (University of Hawaii, state and federal agencies, and Indigenous-led NGOs operating in the community) are grounded in Indigenous and local knowledge (ILK) with applications that will guide a future of enhanced ecosystem services in a changing world.