Building on Strengths: Collaborative Intergenerational Health Research with Urban First Nations and Métis Women and Girls

• Published in: International Journal of Indigenous Health
• Main Authors: Cooper, Elizabeth, Driedger, S Michelle, Lavoie, Josée
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Waakebiness-Bryce Institute for Indigenous Health 2019
• Subjects: First Nations
• Online Access: https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijih/article/view/31932; https://doi.org/10.32799/ijih.v14i1.31932

Little research has focused on how Indigenous girls and their familial female caregivers negotiate issues pertaining to wellbeing and decision-making practices. To address this gap, we employed a novel intergenerational Indigenous partnership methods using various decolonizing action and arts-based activities, to allow participants to guide and modify the direction of the research throughout data collection. We report on three separate activities: a physical game to address concepts of wellness, a memory game that focused on harm reduction and an art project that explored self-esteem. Within each of these activities, female family members and girls worked together to unpack issues of importance within their lives. We conclude that a flexible participatory research design within an intergenerational setting can meet not only the proposed research objectives, but participants’ ever-changing questions and concerns pertaining to health and wellbeing, while still producing rich data to answer important research questions.