**1. Introduction**

The term biocultural continues to gain momentum in research and conservation circles around the world, but the underlying concept of linked biological and cultural systems is something place-based and indigenous communities have known for generations. Broadly described in the literature as work at the intersection of biological, cultural, and linguistic diversity [1], research that examines the relationship between diverse cultures and their varied ecological contexts [2], and approaches that start with and are based upon cultural, place-based perspectives [3], a number of interdisciplinary and multifaceted efforts have attempted to characterize biocultural-oriented research. These studies, supported by social–ecological research exploring the feedbacks between humans and natural systems [4], highlight a broad-sweeping need to develop biocultural approaches to understand

the linkages and feedback between human well-being and ecological systems [5,6]. Yet there remains a need for case studies and programmatic examples sharing cultural approaches to building biocultural frameworks that are applicable at multiple scales.

A growing body of literature across academic disciplines asserts the importance of using a biocultural approach that recognizes the connections between people and place in order to inform adaptive management strategies [6,7], community-based management initiatives [7], and environmental literacy projects [8]. For example, Kimmerer (2011) uses the term "reciprocal restoration" to describe "the mutually reinforcing restoration of land and culture such that repair of ecosystem services contributes to cultural revitalization, and renewal of culture promotes restoration of ecological integrity" [9]. Winthrop (2014) uses the terminology "culturally reflexive stewardship" to describe stewardship practices grounded in cultural foundations, affirming social identity, and sharing cultural knowledge and motivations [10]. Pascua et al. (2017) use the concept of cultural ecosystem services as a mechanism to characterize "the ways place-based and indigenous groups interact with their surroundings to derive all forms of sustenance and maintain connection to place [11]".

Understanding sociocultural and ecological systems requires a holistic understanding of the relationships and feedbacks that encompass intangible cultural-ecosystem services [11–13]. Recognizing that humans and the environment are one system is integral to improving adaptive management and governance [5]. Indigenous approaches have been an important means to enhance this understanding and recognition by highlighting the importance of relationships, values, and principles in guiding equitable and effective long-term outcomes [14]. The health of the environment is inextricably and reciprocally linked to the spiritual, emotional, physical, and overall cultural health and well-being of indigenous people [6,15]. In Alaska's Inuit communities, climate change is threatening sea-ice ecosystems, a culturally and spiritually significant landscape, and subsequently contributing to the physical and emotional displacement of these groups to the landscapes that support their elements of social and cultural well-being [16]. In Hawai❛ i, these indigenous approaches have been applied on a larger scale managing biocultural seascapes, such as Papahanaumoku ¯ akea Marine National Monument and other large-scale marine protected areas [ ¯ 17].

Research that explores the restoration of social–ecological systems, and complementary efforts to better understand coupled human and environmental systems, require interdisciplinary tools and techniques as well as holistic perspectives that acknowledge reciprocal feedback between people and place [18,19]. In particular, social-ecological systems that encompass place-based and communities provide time-tested and context-specific insight into biocultural restoration in present day [15].

Putting aside preconceived notions of how science is defined in the modern-day context, in this paper we use the words "indigenous knowledge" and "indigenous science" interchangeably as a purposeful and meaningful way to respect the value of traditional knowledge. Traditional knowledge is a knowledge–practice–belief system that forms unmatched repositories of lived and experienced knowledge of natural resource management, acquired over generations, and often millennia, of interactions between people and place [20,21]. These repositories of long-term observations are born from indigenous inquiry and life experiences that shaped adaptive practices and allowed that culture to survive. It is crucial to be aware of how integration of traditional ecological knowledge into resource management can force indigenous people to fit into non-indigenous interpretations of what traditional and customary practices are and try to conform their knowledge systems into existing management systems [21]. Avoiding predetermined roles within collaborative research partnerships, it is critical to consider a mental shift from declaring the modern scientist as the principal investigator to declaring both indigenous peoples and academic scientists as co-researchers [22]. Indigenous science is a form of indigenous knowledge that "relates to both the science knowledge of long-resident, usually oral-culture peoples, as well as the science knowledge of all peoples who as participants in the culture are affected by the worldview and relativist interests of their home communities" [23]. We use "indigenous science" to honor the biocultural knowledge encompassed in indigenous knowledge–practice–belief systems perpetuated through cultural values and practices.

Indigenous knowledge has been widely recognized for its value in providing alternative approaches to create adaptive ecosystem-based management, providing mechanisms for cultural institutions, leadership capacity, and perpetuating values and practice through intergenerational knowledge transmission [5]. Biocultural approaches present an opportunity for indigenous communities to build adaptive collaborative resource management built on indigenous values, worldview, and knowledge while accounting for social, cultural, and ecological factors [24]. There is substantial potential to support the development of equitable two-way research partnerships to bridge knowledge systems and create solutions based on a local-level understanding of the cultural and social factors that support resilient communities. Co-management approaches should be considered a 'knowledge partnership' that has far-reaching impact into supporting resilience through social learning networks, trust building, knowledge exchange, and collaborative problem solving [6,25]. Some inherent challenges in merging two knowledge systems surround the nature of the process ensuring that both systems are valued and equally respected, and indigenous people are not further marginalized from the partnership process and subsequent management decisions [26,27]. Adaptive governance of social-ecological systems will only be successful through first recognizing that humans and the environment are interconnected in one coevolving system [6].

Bridging the gap between the local and global scale, indigenous communities are integral to the development of biocultural approaches that are relevant to the local social, economic, and political environments that communities live in [28–30]. At a local-level, place-based approach is essential to assess aspects of resilience in social-ecological systems and to identify how specific environments and geographies affect holistic health of people and place [31]. Socio-ecological frameworks should also expand to integrate measures of community health and development helping communities find their strengths, strengthening their social systems and sense of place, among other important aspects of resilience [32]. However, transparent communication about the trade-offs between biodiversity conservation and human well-being is necessary to develop realistic solutions [33].

### *1.1. Weaving Indigenous Research, Community Engagement, and Capacity Building into our Biocultural Approach to Restoration*

In building biocultural frameworks from the community level with applications for broader social-ecological systems, this paper presents a novel approach to weaving indigenous research, community engagement, and capacity building into biocultural restoration stemming from an indigenous worldview. As definitions of biocultural conservation continue to expand, and scholars and practitioners alike continue to weave ancestral and contemporary knowledge, technology, and philosophy, there is a critical need to demonstrate what these tools and approaches might look like in action, and from the perspective of indigenous communities. The Na Kilo ¯ ❛ Aina (NKA) ¯ Program represents one initiative to provide guidance for building measures and frameworks based on indigenous worldviews, perspectives, and values.

In this paper, we present a case study of the NKA Program, a programmatic approach to biocultural restoration of social–ecological systems that aims to address today's complex social, cultural, and biological management challenges through weaving biocultural research, community engagement, and capacity building to impact local resource management and influence national and global management and policies. First, we focus on how NKA addresses biocultural restoration through an indigenous-based framework that creates a platform to collectively address cultural and social behavior changes needed to improve the holistic health and well-being of ❛ aina, Hawai ¯ ❛ i's biocultural landscapes and seascapes. Second, we provide an overview of the biocultural monitoring tools and community engagement strategies of the NKA Program. The NKA biocultural approach is explained through a programmatic framework that operates through Native Hawaiian community networks and partnerships from local to statewide resource management. NKA community networks provide guidance for developing holistic measures of culture-based, social-ecological resilience based on local-community needs. NKA's work contributes to a recent movement to develop and implement

culturally grounded indicators of social–ecological resilience [34]. This highlights a novel contribution towards developing biocultural indicators of linked cultural and ecological health to develop effective place-based management and contribute to the creation of culturally grounded frameworks for social-ecological resilience on a broader scale. Lastly, we highlight the role of NKA in building capacity within Native Hawaiian communities to respond to the challenges of research and management partnerships. This approach and the tools addressing social, cultural, and ecological health are applicable to other programs that aim to utilize a place-based or culture-based approach to biocultural restoration of social–ecological systems.

#### *1.2. Strengthening Indigenous-Driven Initiatives to Support Resilient Social-ecological Systems*

Globally, there are many examples of how indigenous people can guide and improve adaptive ecosystem-based approaches, supporting social-ecological resilience [16]. Yet, in many instances, conservation has marginalized indigenous people through management strategies that displace and subsequently negatively impact the well-being of indigenous communities [28,35]. As a result of colonization, numerous indigenous peoples have been disconnected from their ancestral lands and stripped of the power to control decisions that affect the well-being of their indigenous culture and the environment to which they are connected [36]. This paper provides an additional case study of an indigenous group engaging in collaborations to confront the systemic disconnect between people and nature.

A growing body of recent work aims to develop culturally grounded sustainability well-being indicators to better understand how ecological and sociocultural factors and feedbacks operate on multiple scales [3,34]. Indigenous-driven biocultural frameworks from Australia [37] and Aotearoa (New Zealand) [24,38,39] provide important contributions to resource management that include cultural well-being. Maori from the Ng ¯ ai Tahu Iwi in South Island, Aotearoa (New Zealand) are at ¯ the forefront of working in partnership with the University of Waikato developing a Maori-based ¯ framework for management of freshwater systems [24,38,39]. These frameworks are based on understanding cultural well-being through intimate knowledge of the relationships between people and the environment [31].

Several case studies aim to provide guidance for empirical research that can address paired human and environmental health in the context of social-ecological resilience, yet more are needed [32,40]. Ens et al. (2016) showed that indigenous biocultural knowledge plays a key role in joint efforts in protecting cultural and biological-diversity hotspots in Australia's terrestrial systems [41]. Additionally, partnerships with small-island communities in Indonesia, the Philippines, and Timor-Leste demonstrated the potential for indigenous knowledge to inform biodiversity conservation, disaster risk reduction, and climate change adaptation strategies [42]. Local communities can increase the relevance of scientific information to a broader group of stakeholders, produce communication materials that depend on the sociocultural environment, while also revitalizing traditional knowledge systems and strengthening intergenerational knowledge transmission [42].

In the midst of innovating biocultural approaches to collaborative co-management of social-ecological systems on multiple scales, it is essential to share the perspective of indigenous-driven efforts highlighting the importance of relationships, values and principles in guiding equitable and effective long-term outcomes in mainstream conservation [14]. These types of partnerships also serve as a mechanism for social justice and require engagement around issues of community capacity building, differential power dynamics, and the lessons from research and management partnerships [13,16,22,26,40,41,43]. It is important to acknowledge the need to decolonize Western discourse in research and create space for indigenous people to represent themselves [36]. In Aotearoa (New Zealand), Maori are at the forefront of building and implementing culturally grounded ¯ frameworks of holistic freshwater stream system health through Maori worldview and practice [ ¯ 38,39]. These efforts, supporting a collective voice advocating for indigenous communities to gain more

control over their management decision making, fill a larger role than just consultation in cooperative, community-based, and collaborative management [21,27,36,40,44].
