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At a time of ecological emergency there are pressing reasons to develop more responsive wellbeing-led governance frameworks that engage with both human and more-than-human wellbeing. Attempts to incorporate wellbeing indices into wellbeing-led governance include the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations, the Gross National Happiness index of Bhutan, and a variety of emerging wellbeing-led governance frameworks in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Some of these frameworks have begun to include more-than-human wellbeing indices in their toolkit, but like many geographers and Indigenous scholars, we are wary of the dangers of universalising and abstractionist ‘indexology’ ( Ratuva, 2016 ). In this paper, we review wellbeing-led governance frameworks with a view to more-than-human wellbeing and Indigenous knowledge. We outline an emerging pluriversal and prefigurative project where Indigenous scholars engage with partners in co-creation methods in place, incorporating Indigenous-Māori cultural perspectives into more situated and holistic wellbeing tools. We argue that while critique is important, so too is engaging in Indigenous-led research interventions fortransformative metrics and tools, particularlyin these times of socio-ecological crisis. As we ‘stay with’ this trouble ( Haraway, 2018 ), we hope to contribute to a culturally specific place-based set of wellbeing indices and tools to inform wellbeing-led governance for more-than-human wellbeing.

In New Zealand, the Crown and Local Authorities are required to engage with iwi in resource management matters, yet iwi engagement is a widely recognised weakness in many resource management professionals' skillsets. Coloniality permeates many interactions with iwi, and reflects a profession where practitioners' skillsets have not kept pace with developments in resource management legislation that better recognise the rights and interests of mana whenua. This article explores the real‐life impacts of this skill paucity on Ngāi Tahu environmental kaitiaki, and, through a Braided River methodological approach comprised of Kaupapa Māori research and Narrative Inquiry, offers recommendations for best practice mana whenua engagement. The article concludes by discussing the coloniality of planning, and how this impacts practitioners' ability to implement these best practice recommendations.

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This editorial introduction outlines the political and intellectual territory for a Special Issue on Tikanga rua: bicultural spatial governance in Aotearoa New Zealand. The term ‘spatial governance’ refers to deliberative systems with an impact on social and spatial outcomes, including environmental management, town planning, urban design and city‐making. Authentic tikanga rua bicultural spatial governance delivers processes and outcomes aligned with the perspectives, values and knowledge of both tangata whenua (people of the land) and tangata Tiriti (people of the Treaty). The research discussed in the Special Issue traverses multiple geographies and contexts and demonstrates the manifold possibilities for biculturalism in contemporary spatial governance. This introduction summarises the contents of each of the substantive papers and provides a Māori‐English glossary to assist readers with the key terms used within the issue.