‘Wáahlaal Gíidaak, who is Indigenous Haida, Tlingit, and Ahtna Athabascan, grew up on Prince of Wales Island in Alaska that was home to about 6,000 people.

She spent her career working in government and public policy advocating for Indigenous peoples and when she was first approached to work for the Ocean Conservancy, a nonprofit dedicated to protecting oceans, she initially hesitated.

A lot of our conservation organizations in the U.S. and Alaska have not always had a great history of working with Indigenous peoples in a healthy way,” she said.

She eventually took the job and is now the vice president of the Ocean Conservancy’s Arctic and Northern Waters program where she’s helping to convene conversations about what it would mean to create an Indigenous Law of the Sea.

The Law of the Sea typically refers to international law described in a 1982 United Nations Convention that governs what states can and can’t do in the ocean, and it serves as the basis for modern-day international law governing the ocean. The newly ratified “high seas treaty” creating a framework for ocean conservation builds upon the foundation set by the Law of the Sea. But like other U.N. treaties, only recognized states were able to sign onto that law, and not Indigenous peoples like Gíidaak’s. The U.N. system prioritizes the perspectives and voices of governments that are internationally recognized, which makes it difficult for Indigenous peoples who have lost their lands and political independence to ensure their concerns are considered.

Gíidaak thinks that vacuum leaves opportunity for Indigenous peoples to organize and create their own version of international law that governs the oceans. Inspired by the Māori law of the sea in Aotearoa New Zealand, Gíidaak envisions a more expansive document that spans geographies and nationalities that could help Indigenous peoples more effectively organize and advocate around critical ocean issues like climate change and deep-sea mining.

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