I am a Cree First Nations man fromMontreal Lake First Nations in Saskatchewan. I am currently completing my Master's of Indigenous Social Work degree at First Nations University in Saskatoon and am very passionately committed to working with Indigenous youth and local organizations serving youth in Saskatoon.I carry with me, extensive community-based research experience andam currently the Saskatoon research project coordinator for thenational “Pathways to Indigenous Youth health and Resilience”project.
The performing arts can be a powerful means of wellness, identity exploration, and positive socia... more The performing arts can be a powerful means of wellness, identity exploration, and positive social representation for Indigenous young people. In this article, we outline the results of a year‐long collaborative study that explored Indigenous young peoples’ relationships between the performing arts, wellness, and resilience. Twenty in‐depth interviews were conducted with 10 Cree and Métis youth about their participation in the Circle of Voices theater program at the Gordon Tootoosis Nik̄an̄iw̄in Theatre in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada. A strength‐based analysis focused on performing pimâtisiwin, that is, how young people learn to enact, protest, and play with a wide range of social identities, while also challenging racially stereotyped identities often imposed on them within inner‐city environments. This research critically engages performative theory to more readily understand aspects of Indigenous youth identity and wellness and offers new empirical and methodological directions for advancing Indigenous youth wellness in urban settings.
International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 2021
At the interface of Western and Indigenous research methodologies, this paper revisits the place ... more At the interface of Western and Indigenous research methodologies, this paper revisits the place of the “personal” and “autobiographical” self in qualitative visual research. We outline a community and partnership-based evaluation of a theater program for Indigenous youth using arts-based body-mapping approaches in Saskatoon, Canada, and explore the methodological limitations of the narrator or artist’s voice and representations to translate personal visual-narratives and personal knowledges they hold. In so doing, we describe how body-mapping methods were adapted and improvised to respond to the silent voices and absent bodies within personal visual-narratives with an epistemological eclecticism handling the limitations of voice and meaningfully engaging the potentiality of quietness. Extending the conceptual and methodological boundaries of the “personal” and “autobiographical” for both narrator and interlocutor, artist and observer, we contribute to debates on the processes and o...
From our standpoints as Indigenous and ally researchers in the social sciences and socio-legal fi... more From our standpoints as Indigenous and ally researchers in the social sciences and socio-legal field, we offer an autoethnographic, reflexive account of a three-year research collaboration about close relationships, disability, and social connection. After engaging in one structured reflection exercise, several informal reflective conversations, and a pipe ceremony that marked the beginning of our next research endeavour together, we outline three emergent issues, each representing a point of struggle that ultimately became a strength in our research approach and contributions to knowledge. We also put forward a fourth issue that emerged in light of the COVID-19 pandemic and that has deeply shaped our research and reflection since. Our paper is intended to function as both a specific examination of lessons learned and knowledge generated in our experience of community-engaged Indigenous research, and also as a broader ensemble of principles that can be useful for doing thoughtful an...
There is limited knowledge about the experiences of intimate relationship formation for those wit... more There is limited knowledge about the experiences of intimate relationship formation for those with disabilities, particularly amongst Indigenous populations in urban areas. In order to address this research gap, our project uses an Indigenous approach—talking circles facilitated by a Knowledge Keeper—to engage local community members in discussions about their challenges and journeys of relationship formation, and considerations of community-level efforts at improving socialization and safe meeting spaces for disabled Indigenous persons. Through a central aim of “story-catching” through semi-structured biographical narratives in talking circles, we demonstrate how Indigenous methods can be appropriately and effectively employed to generate rich qualitative data. Our research also underscores how qualitative Indigenous approaches work to foster an ethical space (Ermine, 2007) between researchers, participants, and their communities, and how this in turn encourages individual and co...
There is limited knowledge about the experiences of intimate relationship formation for those wit... more There is limited knowledge about the experiences of intimate relationship formation for those with disabilities, particularly amongst Indigenous populations in urban areas. In order to address this research gap, our project uses an Indigenous approach—talking circles facilitated by a Knowledge Keeper—to engage local community members in discussions about their challenges and journeys of relationship formation, and considerations of community-level efforts at improving socialization and safe meeting spaces for disabled Indigenous persons. Through a central aim of “story-catching” through semi-structured biographical narratives in talking circles, we demonstrate how Indigenous methods can be appropriately and effectively employed to generate rich qualitative data. Our research also underscores how qualitative Indigenous approaches work to foster an ethical space (Ermine, 2007) between researchers, participants, and their communities, and how this in turn encourages individual and co...
Perhaps more clearly than other research approaches, community-based research or engaged scholars... more Perhaps more clearly than other research approaches, community-based research or engaged scholarship involves both technical skills of research expertise and scientific rigor as well as interpersonal skills of relationship building, effective communication, and moral ways of being. In an academic age concerned with scientific precision, cognitive skills, quantification, and reliable measurements, the interpersonal skills required for research—and particularly community-based research and engaged scholarship—demand growing importance and resources in contemporary discourse and practice. Focused around the University of Saskatchewan’s Community Engagement Office located in the inner city of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, the authors draw on over 50 years of collective experience to offer critical reflections on the notion of interpersonal skills in community-engaged scholarship that manifest particularly in place-based contexts of Indigenous community partnerships. Overall, we argue that di...
Perhaps more clearly than other research approaches, community-based research or engaged scholars... more Perhaps more clearly than other research approaches, community-based research or engaged scholarship involves both technical skills of research expertise and scientific rigor as well as interpersonal skills of relationship building, effective communication, and moral ways of being. In an academic age concerned with scientific precision, cognitive skills, quantification, and reliable measurements, the interpersonal skills required for research—and particularly community-based research and engaged scholarship—demand growing importance and resources in contemporary discourse and practice. Focused around the University of Saskatchewan’s Community Engagement Office located in the inner city of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, the authors draw on over 50 years of collective experience to offer critical reflections on the notion of interpersonal skills in community-engaged scholarship that manifest particularly in place-based contexts of Indigenous community partnerships. Overall, we argue that di...
Saskatoon has nearly half of the diagnoses of HIV in Saskatchewan, Canada, with an incidence rate... more Saskatoon has nearly half of the diagnoses of HIV in Saskatchewan, Canada, with an incidence rate among Indigenous populations within inner-city contexts that is 3 times higher than national rates. Previous research does not adequately explore the relations between HIV vulnerabilities within these contexts and the experiences of illness disclosure that are informed by identity transformations, experiences of stigma, and social support. From an intersectionality framework and a constructivist grounded theory approach, this research involved in-depth, semistructured interviews with 21 Indigenous people living with HIV and/or AIDS in Saskatoon, both male and female. In this article, we present the key themes that emerged from the interviews relating to experiences of HIV disclosure, including experiences of and barriers to the disclosure process. In the end, we highlight the important identity transformation and role of being and becoming a “helper” in the community and how it can be s...
By bringing together two important areas of contemporary health research—resilience among Indigen... more By bringing together two important areas of contemporary health research—resilience among Indigenous youth and intersectionality theory—this study advances an intersectionality of resilience framework that exposes intersecting forms of oppression within inner city urban contexts, while also critically reframing intersectionality to include strength-based perspectives of overlapping individual, social, and structural resilience-promoting processes. Drawing on Indigenous methodologies, a “two-eyed seeing” approach, and Stake’s case study methodology involving multiple data sources (i.e., four sharing circles, 38 conversational interviews, four rounds of photovoice, and naturalistic interactions that occurred with 28 youth over an entire year), this qualitative study outlines three intersecting processes that facilitate youth resilience and wellness in various ways: (a) strengthening cultural identity and family connections; (b) engagement in social groups and service to self and commu...
The performing arts can be a powerful means of wellness, identity exploration, and positive socia... more The performing arts can be a powerful means of wellness, identity exploration, and positive social representation for Indigenous young people. In this article, we outline the results of a year-long collaborative study that explored Indigenous young peoples' relationships between the performing arts, wellness, and resilience. Twenty in-depth interviews were conducted with 10 Cree and Métis youth about their participation in the Circle of Voices theater program at the Gordon Tootoosis Nikānīwīn Theatre in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada. A strength-based analysis focused on performing pimâtisiwin, that is, how young people learn to enact, protest, and play with a wide range of social identities, while also challenging racially stereotyped identities often imposed on them within inner-city environments. This research critically engages performative theory to more readily understand aspects of Indigenous youth identity and wellness and offers new empirical and methodological directions for advancing Indigenous youth wellness in urban settings.
Background Population and environmental health research illustrate a positive relationship betwee... more Background Population and environmental health research illustrate a positive relationship between access to greenspace or natural environments and peoples’ perceived health, mental health, resilience, and overall well-being. This relationship is also particularly strong among Canadian Indigenous populations and social determinants of health research where notions of land, health, and nature can involve broader spiritual and cultural meanings. Among Indigenous youth health and resilience scholarship, however, research tends to conceptualize land and nature as rural phenomena without any serious consideration on their impacts within urban cityscapes. This study contributes to current literature by exploring Indigenous youths’ meaning-making processes and engagements with land and nature in an urban Canadian context. Methods Through photovoice and modified Grounded Theory methodology, this study explored urban Indigenous youth perspectives about health and resilience within an inner-c...
Photovoice has been widely used as a participatory visual research methodology within the social ... more Photovoice has been widely used as a participatory visual research methodology within the social sciences and health research. Given photovoice's critical and pedagogical potential, its advancement within Indigenous resilience and health research has been particularly prevalent. However, it has largely failed to prob-lematize the concept of 'voice' to the extent of theorizing and engaging with the 'voices' of other kinds of life with consequences for theory and method. In this paper we reexamine the methodological potential and utility of photovoice methods to include other-than-human 'voices' during the empirical study of place-making, human-nature relations, and resilience and health. We analyze photo-narratives from a community-based, participatory research project involving Indigenous youth in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan in order to revisit 1) what we did to produce those images and 2) what we saw and heard in images. Our results suggest that when photovoice methods consider a relational and affective understanding of subjective reality during research practice, they have the capacity to capture and handle other-than-human 'voices'. Accordingly, we discuss future directions when adapting photovoice methods for the study of environmental repossession and dispos-session within contested contexts of and encounters with methodological complexity, uncertainty, and emergence.
Relationships to land and nature have long been recognized globally as a central Indigenous deter... more Relationships to land and nature have long been recognized globally as a central Indigenous determinant of health. As more Indigenous peoples migrate to larger urban centers, it is crucial to better understand how these relationships are maintained or function within urban spaces. This article outlines the results of a year-long collaborative study that qualitatively explored Indigenous young peoples' connections between "land," nature, and wellness in an urban Canadian context. Thirty-eight semi-structured interviews were conducted with 28 Cree and Métis Indigenous youth living within Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. A strength based analysis focused on re-imagining miyo-wicehtowin; that is, the processes of youths' self-determination and agency that build positive human-nature relationships and enact "land-making" amidst their urban spaces. This research critically engages environmental dispossession and repossession to more readily consider decolonizing land-based approaches to health and wellness among urban contexts. Future empirical and methodological directions for exploring human-nature relationships in urban health research are also offered.
The performing arts can be a powerful means of wellness, identity exploration, and positive socia... more The performing arts can be a powerful means of wellness, identity exploration, and positive social representation for Indigenous young people. In this article, we outline the results of a year‐long collaborative study that explored Indigenous young peoples’ relationships between the performing arts, wellness, and resilience. Twenty in‐depth interviews were conducted with 10 Cree and Métis youth about their participation in the Circle of Voices theater program at the Gordon Tootoosis Nik̄an̄iw̄in Theatre in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada. A strength‐based analysis focused on performing pimâtisiwin, that is, how young people learn to enact, protest, and play with a wide range of social identities, while also challenging racially stereotyped identities often imposed on them within inner‐city environments. This research critically engages performative theory to more readily understand aspects of Indigenous youth identity and wellness and offers new empirical and methodological directions for advancing Indigenous youth wellness in urban settings.
International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 2021
At the interface of Western and Indigenous research methodologies, this paper revisits the place ... more At the interface of Western and Indigenous research methodologies, this paper revisits the place of the “personal” and “autobiographical” self in qualitative visual research. We outline a community and partnership-based evaluation of a theater program for Indigenous youth using arts-based body-mapping approaches in Saskatoon, Canada, and explore the methodological limitations of the narrator or artist’s voice and representations to translate personal visual-narratives and personal knowledges they hold. In so doing, we describe how body-mapping methods were adapted and improvised to respond to the silent voices and absent bodies within personal visual-narratives with an epistemological eclecticism handling the limitations of voice and meaningfully engaging the potentiality of quietness. Extending the conceptual and methodological boundaries of the “personal” and “autobiographical” for both narrator and interlocutor, artist and observer, we contribute to debates on the processes and o...
From our standpoints as Indigenous and ally researchers in the social sciences and socio-legal fi... more From our standpoints as Indigenous and ally researchers in the social sciences and socio-legal field, we offer an autoethnographic, reflexive account of a three-year research collaboration about close relationships, disability, and social connection. After engaging in one structured reflection exercise, several informal reflective conversations, and a pipe ceremony that marked the beginning of our next research endeavour together, we outline three emergent issues, each representing a point of struggle that ultimately became a strength in our research approach and contributions to knowledge. We also put forward a fourth issue that emerged in light of the COVID-19 pandemic and that has deeply shaped our research and reflection since. Our paper is intended to function as both a specific examination of lessons learned and knowledge generated in our experience of community-engaged Indigenous research, and also as a broader ensemble of principles that can be useful for doing thoughtful an...
There is limited knowledge about the experiences of intimate relationship formation for those wit... more There is limited knowledge about the experiences of intimate relationship formation for those with disabilities, particularly amongst Indigenous populations in urban areas. In order to address this research gap, our project uses an Indigenous approach—talking circles facilitated by a Knowledge Keeper—to engage local community members in discussions about their challenges and journeys of relationship formation, and considerations of community-level efforts at improving socialization and safe meeting spaces for disabled Indigenous persons. Through a central aim of “story-catching” through semi-structured biographical narratives in talking circles, we demonstrate how Indigenous methods can be appropriately and effectively employed to generate rich qualitative data. Our research also underscores how qualitative Indigenous approaches work to foster an ethical space (Ermine, 2007) between researchers, participants, and their communities, and how this in turn encourages individual and co...
There is limited knowledge about the experiences of intimate relationship formation for those wit... more There is limited knowledge about the experiences of intimate relationship formation for those with disabilities, particularly amongst Indigenous populations in urban areas. In order to address this research gap, our project uses an Indigenous approach—talking circles facilitated by a Knowledge Keeper—to engage local community members in discussions about their challenges and journeys of relationship formation, and considerations of community-level efforts at improving socialization and safe meeting spaces for disabled Indigenous persons. Through a central aim of “story-catching” through semi-structured biographical narratives in talking circles, we demonstrate how Indigenous methods can be appropriately and effectively employed to generate rich qualitative data. Our research also underscores how qualitative Indigenous approaches work to foster an ethical space (Ermine, 2007) between researchers, participants, and their communities, and how this in turn encourages individual and co...
Perhaps more clearly than other research approaches, community-based research or engaged scholars... more Perhaps more clearly than other research approaches, community-based research or engaged scholarship involves both technical skills of research expertise and scientific rigor as well as interpersonal skills of relationship building, effective communication, and moral ways of being. In an academic age concerned with scientific precision, cognitive skills, quantification, and reliable measurements, the interpersonal skills required for research—and particularly community-based research and engaged scholarship—demand growing importance and resources in contemporary discourse and practice. Focused around the University of Saskatchewan’s Community Engagement Office located in the inner city of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, the authors draw on over 50 years of collective experience to offer critical reflections on the notion of interpersonal skills in community-engaged scholarship that manifest particularly in place-based contexts of Indigenous community partnerships. Overall, we argue that di...
Perhaps more clearly than other research approaches, community-based research or engaged scholars... more Perhaps more clearly than other research approaches, community-based research or engaged scholarship involves both technical skills of research expertise and scientific rigor as well as interpersonal skills of relationship building, effective communication, and moral ways of being. In an academic age concerned with scientific precision, cognitive skills, quantification, and reliable measurements, the interpersonal skills required for research—and particularly community-based research and engaged scholarship—demand growing importance and resources in contemporary discourse and practice. Focused around the University of Saskatchewan’s Community Engagement Office located in the inner city of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, the authors draw on over 50 years of collective experience to offer critical reflections on the notion of interpersonal skills in community-engaged scholarship that manifest particularly in place-based contexts of Indigenous community partnerships. Overall, we argue that di...
Saskatoon has nearly half of the diagnoses of HIV in Saskatchewan, Canada, with an incidence rate... more Saskatoon has nearly half of the diagnoses of HIV in Saskatchewan, Canada, with an incidence rate among Indigenous populations within inner-city contexts that is 3 times higher than national rates. Previous research does not adequately explore the relations between HIV vulnerabilities within these contexts and the experiences of illness disclosure that are informed by identity transformations, experiences of stigma, and social support. From an intersectionality framework and a constructivist grounded theory approach, this research involved in-depth, semistructured interviews with 21 Indigenous people living with HIV and/or AIDS in Saskatoon, both male and female. In this article, we present the key themes that emerged from the interviews relating to experiences of HIV disclosure, including experiences of and barriers to the disclosure process. In the end, we highlight the important identity transformation and role of being and becoming a “helper” in the community and how it can be s...
By bringing together two important areas of contemporary health research—resilience among Indigen... more By bringing together two important areas of contemporary health research—resilience among Indigenous youth and intersectionality theory—this study advances an intersectionality of resilience framework that exposes intersecting forms of oppression within inner city urban contexts, while also critically reframing intersectionality to include strength-based perspectives of overlapping individual, social, and structural resilience-promoting processes. Drawing on Indigenous methodologies, a “two-eyed seeing” approach, and Stake’s case study methodology involving multiple data sources (i.e., four sharing circles, 38 conversational interviews, four rounds of photovoice, and naturalistic interactions that occurred with 28 youth over an entire year), this qualitative study outlines three intersecting processes that facilitate youth resilience and wellness in various ways: (a) strengthening cultural identity and family connections; (b) engagement in social groups and service to self and commu...
The performing arts can be a powerful means of wellness, identity exploration, and positive socia... more The performing arts can be a powerful means of wellness, identity exploration, and positive social representation for Indigenous young people. In this article, we outline the results of a year-long collaborative study that explored Indigenous young peoples' relationships between the performing arts, wellness, and resilience. Twenty in-depth interviews were conducted with 10 Cree and Métis youth about their participation in the Circle of Voices theater program at the Gordon Tootoosis Nikānīwīn Theatre in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada. A strength-based analysis focused on performing pimâtisiwin, that is, how young people learn to enact, protest, and play with a wide range of social identities, while also challenging racially stereotyped identities often imposed on them within inner-city environments. This research critically engages performative theory to more readily understand aspects of Indigenous youth identity and wellness and offers new empirical and methodological directions for advancing Indigenous youth wellness in urban settings.
Background Population and environmental health research illustrate a positive relationship betwee... more Background Population and environmental health research illustrate a positive relationship between access to greenspace or natural environments and peoples’ perceived health, mental health, resilience, and overall well-being. This relationship is also particularly strong among Canadian Indigenous populations and social determinants of health research where notions of land, health, and nature can involve broader spiritual and cultural meanings. Among Indigenous youth health and resilience scholarship, however, research tends to conceptualize land and nature as rural phenomena without any serious consideration on their impacts within urban cityscapes. This study contributes to current literature by exploring Indigenous youths’ meaning-making processes and engagements with land and nature in an urban Canadian context. Methods Through photovoice and modified Grounded Theory methodology, this study explored urban Indigenous youth perspectives about health and resilience within an inner-c...
Photovoice has been widely used as a participatory visual research methodology within the social ... more Photovoice has been widely used as a participatory visual research methodology within the social sciences and health research. Given photovoice's critical and pedagogical potential, its advancement within Indigenous resilience and health research has been particularly prevalent. However, it has largely failed to prob-lematize the concept of 'voice' to the extent of theorizing and engaging with the 'voices' of other kinds of life with consequences for theory and method. In this paper we reexamine the methodological potential and utility of photovoice methods to include other-than-human 'voices' during the empirical study of place-making, human-nature relations, and resilience and health. We analyze photo-narratives from a community-based, participatory research project involving Indigenous youth in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan in order to revisit 1) what we did to produce those images and 2) what we saw and heard in images. Our results suggest that when photovoice methods consider a relational and affective understanding of subjective reality during research practice, they have the capacity to capture and handle other-than-human 'voices'. Accordingly, we discuss future directions when adapting photovoice methods for the study of environmental repossession and dispos-session within contested contexts of and encounters with methodological complexity, uncertainty, and emergence.
Relationships to land and nature have long been recognized globally as a central Indigenous deter... more Relationships to land and nature have long been recognized globally as a central Indigenous determinant of health. As more Indigenous peoples migrate to larger urban centers, it is crucial to better understand how these relationships are maintained or function within urban spaces. This article outlines the results of a year-long collaborative study that qualitatively explored Indigenous young peoples' connections between "land," nature, and wellness in an urban Canadian context. Thirty-eight semi-structured interviews were conducted with 28 Cree and Métis Indigenous youth living within Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. A strength based analysis focused on re-imagining miyo-wicehtowin; that is, the processes of youths' self-determination and agency that build positive human-nature relationships and enact "land-making" amidst their urban spaces. This research critically engages environmental dispossession and repossession to more readily consider decolonizing land-based approaches to health and wellness among urban contexts. Future empirical and methodological directions for exploring human-nature relationships in urban health research are also offered.
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