The Mi’gmaq of Gespeg are an aboriginal community with no assigned territory. This situation amplifies their desire to reclaim the territory and its resources encountered by First Nations in Canada. This desire has been embodied in forest co-management agreements with the Government of Quebec. To understand this transformative process, we carried out a case study based on a collaborative and partnership approach with the Mi’gmaq of Gespeg. Following the identification of their expectations and their vision about forest, we considered their socio-historical forest context, then analyzed their progress in forestry over the last twenty years, more particularly their commitment to co-management. We then developed a framework for analyzing forest governance, identifying in particular the conditions on which the community can act to realize its vision. We have found that community involvement in forestry seems to be a means to begin transforming the governance of their ancestral forest land. This strategic pathway, circumscribed by the co-management framework, would constitute a transition to indigenous territorial governance in Gespeg, in co-management with local partners, in which the mig’maq community assume an institutional entrepreneur role. The Mi’gmaq of Gespeg would thus exercise a function of transformative agent on the actionable conditions of the governance of the public lands towards the achievement of their vision of governance of the ancestral territory.