In 2014, Sam Bayley, Karajarri Indigenous Protected Area Coordinator with the Kimberley Land Council in Australia visited TNC sites in Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, Canada and the U.S. as a part of the 2013-14 Winston Churchill Memorial Trust Fellowship to investigate ways to build capacity for indigenous-led natural resource management. Bayley’s fellowship took him to four locations to research the question: how can we better enable Indigenous communities to increase social and human capital for improved management of natural resources? The project sites were Manus Island and Kimbe Bay in Papua New Guinea, Berau province in East Kalimantan, Indonesia, coastal British Columbia in Canada and the Olympic Peninsula, Washington in the United States of America. These were chosen based on:
- Places that have reported success at rebuilding social and/or human capital within programs;
- An interest in comparing sites of similar and different colonisation histories and Indigenous community displacement and marginalisation; and
- An interest in comparing wealthy developed nations with undeveloped poorer nations.