During the final week of Colorado State University’s spring semester, students filed into Dr. Julia Klein’s Ecosystem Science and Sustainability 440: Practicing Sustainability class.

“Jal Jangal Jamin”–translates as water forest land– rhetoric, quipped by one of the interviewees, is closely tied to the local communities’ understanding of the sacred groves in the Eastern Himalayan region.

Although decolonial resources are growing, they remain scattered across various bodies of work and disciplines, often failing to be incorporated into conventional conservation understanding.