Solutions are a journey. The ENVISION project has involved residents sharing their connections with local environments and opening up about the challenges surrounding resource management across diverse interest groups. We initiated this project to understand the perspectives of local residents around Denali National Park and Preserve and Denali State Park in Alaska, but had not fully appreciated the difficulties of in-depth conversations about topics that were central to people’s identities and heritage, as well as steeped in the lived experiences of a contentious history. In our first focus group, we visited the Native Village of Cantwell to learn about the notoriously mixed relationships residents had with management agencies of nearby lands. Our presence was met with resistance among those who had felt previously betrayed by public participation events. These residents spent more than two hours sharing their frustrations about what appeared to them to be more disingenuous outreach; concerns were shared that not all voices had been heard in the past and that land use policies often failed to represent all people, including Native Alaskans. After this event, we dedicated the following weeks to building relationships with these individuals and discussing their concerns. By the end of our visit, attendees felt comfortable enough to speak openly with us about their values, with the hope that our project would provide a pathway for them to communicate more directly with decision-makers. This experience helped us to appreciate the complexities of deep-seated historical relationships between people and places, and the need for an open dialogue to understand how residents respond to agencies that manage public lands in Alaska. Over the next two years, our research process involving listening sessions, surveys and planning workshops has been open to these honest (albeit difficult) appraisals of conflict around landscape change given their power to build a constructive conversation grounded in appreciation and respect for others. The ENVISION project continues to work toward greater understanding and enhanced communication about diverse interests and how they are (or are not) represented in environmental policies. The continual set of actions adopted through our research thus provide a guide for all stakeholders – including residents, scientists and resource management agencies – for their journey of co-creating inclusive conservation solutions in the Denali region of Alaska, US.