My dissertation explores the evolving relationship between conservationists and indigenous peoples in Alaska and the Canadian Yukon in the second half of the twentieth century. It argues that by deploying distinctive political strategies that linked their local ecological knowledges to transnational movements for human rights and social justice, native groups in these regions played pivotal roles in the creation of new participatory management models for North American national parks. My research is structured by three case studies of conflicts between indigenous peoples and officials from Parks Canada and the United States National Park Service. These case studies will demonstrate how northern native activism evolved after World War II and facilitate a comparative analysis of native park relations in two national contexts. The main objectives of my research are twofold: to account for the creation of cooperative management arrangements between northern conservation officials and native peoples in recent decades, and to provide an historical perspective on current efforts to institutionalize participatory planning models a protected areas across North America and around the world.