Abstract
Parks and reserves are geographically demarcated and socially constructed. They are often celebrated as public places that are accessible to all. But are they places that honour and respect Indigenous values, especially those in more urban settings, managed by local and provincial governments? In Aotearoa New Zealand, legislation enshrines the involvement of Indigenous Māori in the management of these defined spaces, but particularly in the non-national park environments, historically, these have often been places of disenfranchisement, alienation, and removal. This scoping review explores how Indigenous peoples engage with state and local parks and reserves across four settler colonial countries (Aotearoa New Zealand, Australia, the United States of America, and Canada). After screening more than 5,000 articles, the analysis of 102 articles revealed three core themes: (1) a dominance of binary depictions of nature and culture; (2) evidence that conservation is used as a colonial tool; (3) that existing and historical policy depict the dominance of Western policy frameworks and the scale of legislative control. By mapping the current field of research, this review demonstrates that, for the non-national park context, regulatory and legislative requirements alone are often insufficient to ensure parks and reserves depart from their histories of Indigenous disenfranchisement.