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With climate, biodiversity and inequity crises squarely upon us, never has there been a more pressing time to rethink how we conceptualize, understand and manage our relationship with Earth's biodiversity. Here, we describe governance principles of 17 Indigenous Nations from the Northwest Coast of North America used to understand and steward relationships among all components of nature, including humans. We then chart the colonial origins of biodiversity science and use the complex case of sea otter recovery to illuminate how ancestral governance principles can be mobilized to characterize, manage and restore biodiversity in more inclusive, integrative and equitable ways. To enhance environmental sustainability, resilience and social justice amid today's crises, we need to broaden who benefits from and participates in the sciences of biodiversity by expanding the values and methodologies that shape such initiatives. In practice, biodiversity conservation and natural resource management need to shift from centralized, siloed approaches to those that can accommodate plurality in values, objectives, governance systems, legal traditions and ways of knowing. In doing so, developing solutions to our planetary crises becomes a shared responsibility. This article is part of the theme issue 'Detecting and attributing the causes of biodiversity change: needs, gaps and solutions'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Feedbacks between social and ecological processes can lead to sustainable stewardship practices that support ecological resilience among harvested populations. This is evident along the world's coast lines, where Indigenous knowledge systems have facilitated millennia of human–nature coexistence. However, social–ecological conditions globally are quickly shifting, posing challenges for coastal Indigenous communities where customary harvest of ocean resources, such as kelps, needs to adapt to growing markets, novel climates and changing governance regimes. Consequently, a pressing need exists to determine how specific ecological and social variables drive key dynamics within coupled human–ocean systems.Motivated by the information needs of an Indigenous community on Canada's Pacific Coast, we co‐designed a traditional harvest experiment, field surveys and semi‐directed interviews with Indigenous resource users and managers to measure the ecological resilience of the feather boa kelp Egregia menziesii to harvest and determine what environmental variables most affected its recovery. We wove these results with information on current stewardship practices to inform future management of this slow‐growing perennial kelp based on Indigenous knowledge and western science.We found that Egregia recovered from traditional harvest levels faster than expected with minimal impact on its productivity because plants sprouted new fronds. In fact, traditional harvest levels of Egregia mimicked natural frond loss. Indigenous knowledge and empirical ecological evidence revealed the importance of individual plant size, site‐specific seawater temperature and wave exposure in driving Egregia recovery. Indigenous stewardship practices reflected these ecological relationships in the practice of selecting large plants from sites with healthy patches of Egregia. While we documented key social controls of harvest, current self‐reported harvest levels of kelp fronds were two times greater than the stated social norm, but only 1.2 times greater in terms of kelp biomass.Consequently, traditional harvest protocols facilitate Egregia recovery and promote its sustained use. However, its ecological resilience is susceptible to the erosion of customary practices and warming ocean temperatures.Co‐produced research that mobilizes multiple bodies of knowledge can enhance our understanding of social–ecological resilience, empower local decision makers and democratize the science and practice of natural resource management. ​ A free Plain Language Summary can be found within the Supporting Information of this article. A free Plain Language Summary can be found within the Supporting Information of this article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]