Caring for Eeyou Istchee: Protected Area Creation on Wemindji Cree Territory is an edited and landmark volume for its in-depth, decade-long, detailed documentation and importance for protecting terrestrial and marine areas of Wemindjii Cree Territory through historical and political contexts and conditions of protected area development. Through the co-leadership of Chief Rodney Mark and anthropologist Colin Scott, who, with Monica Mulrennan and Katherine Scott, introduce this work, Caring for Eeyou-Istchee presents the findings and an analysis for a collaborative research program. This program is the Wemindji Protected Areas Project, which brought together Cree leaders and community members, faculty and graduate students, and staff from government agencies. This is also a history of contemporary developments of settler countries conserving nature through uninhabited national parks and other protected areas for their scenic wonder and conserving biological diversity, yet on Indigenous lands. Conservationists and government officials in these countries typically saw Indigenous peoples as threats to conservation, rationalizing their displacement and legitimized their appropriation of their territories as protected areas through nationalization and state governance. International attention through human rights advocates and treaty mechanisms, legislation and conservationists have joined Indigenous peoples in rejecting core assumptions, policies and practices in fortress conservation and calling for the rethinking of conservation through reform, design, governance and management. A new paradigm promotes respect for Indigenous peoples’ knowledge, values, collective tenure, stewardship, customary sustainable use and management of biodiversity, rights and responsibilities, participation in protected areas governance and informed consent to decisions that affect traditional lands and waters, wellbeing, and self determination. The IUCN and the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity is one piece of legislation that supports Indigenous peoples’ and local communities’ continuing self-governance, stewardship, and sustainable use of their territories as a foundation for protected area governance and management that respects their worldviews, knowledge, values, institutions, and practices. Cree Nation of Wemindjii, envision Cree-led protected areas as a means of safeguarding the ecological integrity of key parts of its territory of Eeyou Istchee in eastern James Bay from unwanted mining and other impacts. The two areas are Paakumshumwaau-Maatuskaau Biodiversity Reserve in Quebec and proposed federal Tawick Conservation Area.