Local Wisdom of Indigenous People in Leadership: A Systematic Review

This Systematic Literature Review (SLR) examines the local wisdom of indigenous people in leadership. This area continues to receive growing scholarly attention, yet remains conceptually fragmented and insufficiently synthesized. The increasing relevance of Indigenous leadership practices in contemporary governance, community empowerment, and sustainability debates underscores the need for a structured analysis that consolidates existing evidence. The review addresses this gap by identifying how traditional knowledge, cultural norms, and community-based values inform leadership models among Indigenous populations across diverse regions. Guided by the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) protocol, the study conducted an advanced search in two primary academic databases, Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus, using the keywords “local wisdom, Indigenous People, Leadership.” The screening process identified a total of 31 primary studies, published between 2015 and 2025, that met the inclusion criteria and were analyzed through qualitative thematic synthesis. The findings reveal three dominant themes shaping current research in this field: (1) Indigenous Leadership, Governance, and Social Empowerment, which highlights collective decision-making, moral authority, and the role of elders in sustaining community coherence; (2) Local Wisdom, Environmental Management, and Sustainability, which emphasizes ecological ethics, land stewardship, and cultural rituals guiding resource governance; and (3) Local Knowledge Transmission and Cultural Continuity, which underscores intergenerational learning, symbolic practices, and the preservation of cultural identity. The review concludes that Indigenous leadership grounded in local wisdom provides holistic, culturally embedded, and sustainability-oriented frameworks that offer valuable insights for modern leadership theory, policy development, and community-centred governance. The synthesis also identifies methodological limitations within existing studies and recommends broader cross-cultural, multilingual, and participatory research approaches to strengthen future scholarship in this field.