“Because we have really unique art”: Decolonizing Research with Indigenous Youth Using the Arts

Abstract

Indigenous communities in Canada share a common history of colonial oppression. As a result, many Indigenous populations are disproportionately burdened with poor health outcomes, including HIV. Conventional public health approaches have not yet been successful in reversing this trend. For this study, a team of community-and university-based researchers came together to imagine new possibilities for health promotion with Indigenous youth. A strengths-based approach was taken that relied on using the energies and talents of Indigenous youth as a leadership resource. Art-making workshops were held in six different Indigenous communities across Canada in which youth could explore the links between community, culture, colonization, and HIV. Twenty artists and more than 85 youth participated in the workshops. Afterwards, youth participants reflected on their experiences in individual in-depth interviews. Youth participants viewed the process of making art as fun, participatory, and empowering; they felt that their art pieces instilled pride, conveyed information, raised awareness, and constituted a tangible achievement. Youth participants found that both the process and products of arts-based methods were important. Findings from this project support the notion that arts-based approaches to the development of HIV-prevention knowledge and Indigenous youth leadership are helping to involve a diverse cross-section of youth in a critical dialogue about health. Arts-based approaches represent one way to assist with decolonization for future generations.

Decolonizing Research Methods for Family Science: Creating Space at the Center

“…Findings from these projects were used to formulate a more complex and dynamic concept of domestic violence in these families and paved a way for the development of innovative intervention and prevention programming for this population. Similar benefits have been seen in research on education (Shahjahan, 2011), mental and physical health (Walters & Simoni, 2009), gender studies (Hamza, 2004), and youth identity (Flicker et al, 2014). These studies focused on how the process and outcome of the study can positively affect families and community members who are directly affected by these studies.…”

Land and nature as sources of health and resilience among Indigenous youth in an urban Canadian context: a photovoice exploration

“…Albeit diverse based on various unique histories, cultures, and languages, Indigenous perspectives of resilience are often grounded at a cultural level and are focused on the relationships that exist between community, identity, land, and culture across generations and geo-graphical settings [22,[45][46][47][48]. Indeed, notions of resilience here illustrate a strong link with culture and community and are largely based on processes of resistance to a history of oppressive colonial systems, discrimination, and loss.…”

Biographical Collage as a Tool in Inuit Community-Based Participatory Research and Capacity Development

“…Although there are few examples of collage being used in research with Indigenous peoples, currently, many arts-based methods are considered appropriate as part of decolonizing methodologies (Flicker et al, 2016;Gabel, Pace, & Ryan, 2016;Veroff, 2012;Yuen, 2016). Arts-based methods can provide an opportunity to address the historical mistrust and power differences between researchers and Indigenous communities, whereby Indigenous knowledge has been previously exploited or discounted (Hammond et al, 2018).…”