Background/Question/Methods Adequate analysis and policy regarding ecosystem management needs to use both social and ecological sciences. Current academic structures, incentives, and disciplinary differences discourage integration across these broad areas. Indigenous world views do not recognize the separation of humans and nonhumans; in addition, Indigenous peoples treat all entities in the landscape as alive, conscious, deserving respect, and able to join relationships. Indigenous knowledge, therefore, integrates natural and social science. How can that knowledge assist current academic knowledge organizations to integrate their separate disciplines? Does the requirement to respect all conscious beings, leading to establishment of good relationships among all living and conscious beings, provide ways to integrate social and ecological sciences? Logical analysis of Indigenous protocols regarding relationality provides guidance in addressing the division that hampers the integration of social and natural sciences. Explore processes of collaboration rather than focusing on differences among world views. Results/Conclusions Focusing on relationality means the units of analysis become relationships among conscious beings rather than individuals. Recognizing widespread consciousness on the landscape brings the double hermeneutic of social science to the natural sciences; namely, the entities under study can react to human action and communication, making prediction difficult while changing approaches to explanation. A second consequence is recognition that entities in good relationships create powerful forces that can change the emergent structures of ecosystems. Emergent structures have their own powers that affect the actions of persons, human and nonhuman, in the immediate action arena; but those structures themselves can be changed by conscious and coordinated actions. Attention should focus not on correlations among events but upon the powers of structures. Based on a worldview that emphasizes connections and the importance of creating and maintaining relationships, traditional ecological knowledge provides processes for the co-existence of different world views through development of good relationships and implementation of epistemic justice. Integration of the two sciences means changing the sciences. Natural sciences such as ecology, which does recognize structures, need to recognize the agency of nonhumans. Social sciences need to recognize the powers of emergent structures instead of focusing only on events caused by human agency. One should expect conflict and dissension within each of the separated fields because of the implications of integration. The benefits of integration in providing better understanding and explanation, however, should help in reducing the strains caused by the need to change.
