Kiliii Yüyan — Indigenous Knowledge in Conservation: A Journey Through Photos
National Geographic Explorer and photographer Kiliii Yüyan presents visual evidence of how Indigenous communities are Earth's most effective environmental protectors.
Why we picked this
Yüyan is among the rare photographers who works across both the scientific and Indigenous worlds with equal credibility — his images carry arguments that prose can't easily make about stewardship, belonging, and the politics of land.
Kiliii Yüyan’s photography has taken him from Palau’s coral reefs to Greenland’s sea ice, from Mongolia’s steppes to the Amazon rainforest — always with the same underlying argument: that Indigenous communities are not simply living near ecosystems but actively managing and sustaining them through knowledge systems that Western conservation has been slow to recognize. The Seattle-based photographer, of Chinese and Nanai/Hèzhé descent, is a National Geographic Explorer who has toured with the National Geographic Live speaker series and delivered at TEDx, but this Town Hall evening goes deeper than a standard photo lecture.
Guardians of Life — the work he presents — draws on more than two dozen Indigenous voices, including activist Quannah Chasinghorse and Palauan statesman Tommy Remengesau Jr. Together they make a visual and intellectual case that the communities most often excluded from conservation policy are also the ones with the deepest understanding of what protection actually requires. The presentation shows how traditional knowledge and contemporary science converge, and why that convergence matters at a moment when both ecosystems and Indigenous sovereignty are under pressure.
Presented as part of Town Hall’s Town Green environmental series in partnership with Braided River, the evening is aimed at anyone interested in conservation, visual storytelling, or the relationship between knowledge systems — and specifically at Pacific Northwest audiences for whom questions of land stewardship are not abstract.