Transforming Restoration Science: Multiple Knowledges and Community Research Cogeneration in the Klamath and Duwamish Rivers.

AbstractRacism and colonialism within restoration science continue to perpetuate exclusionary and oppressive paradigms in ecosystem restoration and in wider societal contexts, from setting scientific agendas to translating findings into policy. These paradigms impair progress and cause harm by (1) tokenizing epistemic diversity, (2) perpetuating injustice in frontline communities by ignoring power dynamics and other local contexts, and (3) rejecting "unconventional" methods for connecting knowledge to action. To challenge exclusion, biological scientists must listen to path-making conversations in Native American and Indigenous studies on grounded normativity, an ethical framework informed by place-based practices that make respectful, nonexploitative coexistence between human and nonhuman communities possible.