Worldwide, social-ecological systems (SES) are facing unprecedented challenges stemming from global environmental change, and the ways in which individuals and communities respond to these changes and challenges have sparked intense interest from the research community. Social scientists seeking to understand individual and community responses to global environmental change have explored methods of assessing environmental stewardship, and whether individuals and communities may be changing their stewardship practices over time. One of these assessment concepts, dubbed Ecological Identity, or “EI,” explores the degree to which individuals and communities view themselves as an integrated component of their natural environment, engage in environmental stewardship, or associate with others who do the same. All of these traits have implications for the efficacy of resource management and conservation initiatives. To this end, researchers have produced a variety of scales which assess and evaluate various aspects of EI. However, though debated and refined within separate fields, EI has yet to be examined through an interdisciplinary SES lens. Nor have researchers considered EI as a mechanism by which individuals and communities maintain biocultural diversity and resilience to disturbances within SES. This research examined the relationships between EI, Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK), and social-ecological systems resilience (SESR) within a specific social-ecological system in Nepal. Fieldwork was conducted through interviews with resource-proximate study participants within the Magar indigenous ethnic community in the rural mid-hills region of Nepal. Interviews sought to determine the extent to which individual study participants view themselves as a member of an integrated SES through assessing the “strength” of their Ecological Identities. Additionally, in my fieldwork I sought to uncover how EI might or might not operate as a social mechanism of resilience in SES. I utilized a mixed methodology towards answering three main research questions, pertaining towards (1) the efficacy of existing EI assessment scales, (2) potential methods by which researchers might mitigate the shortcomings of existing scales, and (3) proposing EI as a mechanism of SESR in its own right. This included evaluating EI using an existing peer-validated scale, and collecting a series of short answer questions, a demographic questionnaire, field observation notes, and the creation of individual Seasonal Rounds. In particular, Seasonal Rounds are a participatory method novel to this field and were created in collaboration with each study participant, seeking to mitigate drawbacks to contemporary EI assessment scales and inform on food and ecological management practices which may contribute towards the maintenance of biocultural diversity and social-ecological systems resilience within systems in general. The study discovered that the resource-proximate individuals in the case study community score lower than the global average on Clayton et al.’s (2021) Environmental Identity (EID) questionnaire, and express confusion about the structure of the questions, as well as their nature. However, study participants concurrently demonstrate through the remaining analyses that contrary to their relatively low EID scores, they view themselves as an integrated and vital component of their surrounding social-ecological system. These outcomes suggest that if our goal in assessing EI is to determine the likelihood and efficacy of environmental stewardship initiatives, then existing methods for assessing EI are not yet sufficient, at least when working with resource-proximate individuals and communities, such as smallholder farmers, herders, and hunter/gathers in the mid-hills of Nepal. The findings also imply a role for individuals and communities to act as both benefactor and beneficiary within a complex system by leveraging EI and subsequent ecological management practices. In this way, strong Ecological Identities aid individuals and communities in meeting their needs, while contributing to the welfare and functionality of a bioculturally diverse and resilient social-ecological landscape. I recommend further inquiry into the operation and description of social mechanisms of social-ecological systems resilience, such as Ecological Identity, Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK), and the structure and dynamics of institutions in the future. Additionally, further experimentation and refinement is needed concerning methodologies centered on Seasonal Rounds and their application towards the assessment and description of TEK, ecological management practices, and their potential as a tool for building adaptive capacity to social and environmental disturbance and perturbation.