The Indigenous communities with traditional territory in and around the park — the Champagne and Aishihik First Nations, the Yukon First Nations with adjacent territories, the Tlingit communities of the Alaska Panhandle — are not simply adjacent to this landscape.

They are the people whose knowledge of it is deepest, whose connection to it is oldest, and whose responsibility for it is most direct.

The Champagne and Aishihik First Nations have governance rights over their traditional territory under the Final Agreement that formalized their self-government relationship with Canada — a modern treaty that provides the legal framework for the kind of authority they exercised over the Kwäday Dän Ts’ìnchi research.

Their First Nation government has been actively engaged in the management of cultural heritage in their territory, including the monitoring of archaeological sites and the development of cultural heritage programs that integrate traditional knowledge with contemporary management approaches.