Surviving a Cultural Genocide: Perspectives of Indigenous Elders on the Transfer of Traditional Values

The purpose of this ethnographic study was to examine how Indigenous elders perceive traditional values. This study employed Portraiture, which allowed Indigenous elders to share their stories in a culturally tailored and relational manner. The authors’ captured and present richly detailed stories that describe the intersects between human experiences and sacred beliefs. The scholars eloquently braid the first authors experiences at three (3) traditional Indigenous ceremonies with the words of Indigenous elders to tell a story about overcoming an attempted cultural genocide. The ceremony participation and elder visits helped identify ten traditional values encasing spirituality displayed in the Hoop of Traditional Blackfoot Values presented in the English language and the Blackfoot language.

Indigenous practitioner vignette

This chapter emphasizes nursing the environment and the family, including their pets, as Connie Paul's advice about nursing in an Indigenous community. It discusses Elder care, which involves consulting Indigenous elders directly, which means protecting their safety as they define it. It also analyzes the reason why consulting with elders in their homes, community, and their environment is important; which has to do with the trauma that many older people in First Nations communities are living with. The chapter cites the Snuneymuxw First Nation health centre that is making changes to the ways that healthcare is provided in order to take the trauma, as well as the existing knowledge of the community, into account. It discusses the provision of care to Indigenous and non-Indigenous clients that increases the circle of care and transforms knowledge to include the wealth of knowledge that resides within the community itself.

Disability as a Colonial Construct: The Missing Discourse of Culture in Conceptualizations of Disabled Indigenous Children

This paper explores the concept of disability through a critical disability lens to understand how Indigenous ontologies are positioned within the dominant discourse of disabled peoples in Canada. This paper draws on the inherent knowledge of Indigenous (predominantly Anishinaabek) communities through an integration of story and relational understandings from Indigenous Elders, knowledge keepers, and community members. Indigenous perspectives paired with academic literature illustrate the dichotomous viewpoints that position Indigenous peoples, most often children, as ‘disabled’ within mainstream institutions, regardless of individual designation. Such positioning suggests that the label of disability is a colonial construct that conflicts with Indigenous perspectives of community membership and perpetuates assimilation practices which maintain colonial harm.

Knocking, Unsettling, Ceding

This paper explores a reflexive decolonizing framework, arising from a teachers` first four years of teaching practice in an Indigenous community in the North of what is commonly known as Australia[A1]. The paper seeks to frame a connection between the already-established field of teacher self-reflection, and a need for decolonizing ways of knowing in education, to respect and recenter othered knowledge systems. Autoethnography and open-ended interviews are implemented with Indigenous elders, to explore the self-reflection that a non-Indigenous teacher must embrace to begin to decolonize their practice. Drawing on theories of whiteness (Moreton-Robinson, 2000), othering (Staszak, 2009) and the Cultural Interface in settler-Indigenous discursive spaces (Nakata, 2007), this work documents an extended process of teacher self-reflection. Reflecting on Karen Martin’s (2008) work Please Knock Before You Enter, and in response to Laenui’s Processes of Decolonisation (2000), starting points are proposed from which teachers can think deeply about their practice concerning ongoing coloniality. The epistemological underpinnings of teachers’ practice are explored as the place where decolonizing work must occur across all educational spaces.

Calls to Action: Climate Change and Indigenous Food Sovereignty in Arctic

<p>This study is responding reconciling Indigenous climate change and food sovereignty in Arctic<strong>.</strong> We will explore, how recent climate change (and interpretation) is challenging to Indigenous food sovereignty sources; and what is at stake in processes such as hunting consultation, impact assessment, regulatory hearings, approvals (including negotiation of benefits), monitoring? and what reformed processes can build Indigenous community capacity and supports robust decisions? The outcomes will assist policy makers and communities to guide future consultations and impacts assessment guideline and climate change planning initiatives. We (as an interdisciplinary research team of Indigenous Elders, knowledge-keepers, Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars) will focus on Indigenous understanding of Indigenous philosophies of climate change and the connectivity between climate change and food sovereignty and sustainability related to the interactions and inter-dependencies with health security, Indigenous environmental and cultural value protection. Indigenous knowledge-ways have much to offer in support of resiliency of climate change and water infrastructure in Indigenous communities, intercultural reconceptualization of research methodologies, environmental sustainability, and educational programs which support Indigenous communities.</p><p><strong> </strong></p><p><strong>Action Plan: Objective: </strong>Supporting Indigenous perspectives on climate change impact management and food sovereignty. This includes involving members of Indigenous community to offer insight into Indigenous cultural and community responsibilities of Indigenous climate change impacts management to inform food sovereignty performance review policy development. <strong>Contribution: </strong>The designing, coordinating, and hosting an interdisciplinary Focused Dialogue Session on the relationship between climate change impacts management and food sovereignty. This Dialogue Session creates new scholarly knowledge about pipeline leak impacts and food sovereignty processes. <strong>Objective:</strong> Developing effective and trustful engagement dialogs to build capacity among Indigenous Elders, Knowledge-keepers, and scholars. <strong>Contribution: </strong>This objective supports Indigenous perspectives through specific, policy-orientated research that positively impacts their vision and allow them to develop new ways of climate change impacts and food sovereignty. This reveals climate change impacts management and food sovereignty policy and practices in Arctic. <strong>Objective: </strong>Mobilize knowledge and partnership for reconciliation (specifically translate research results into evidence for policy-making) through developing an impact assessment policy guideline. <strong>Contribution: </strong>The impact assessment policy guideline shares knowledge and implications of climate change impacts management policy documents local, provincially, and nationally and assist in the articulation and practice of food sovereignty source protection, as culturally and community informed.</p>

Importance of Indigenous elders’ contributions to individual and community wellness: results from a scoping review on social participation and intergenerational solidarity

Objective Wellness is a challenge for Indigenous peoples, partly because Western services do not adopt a holistic approach. By devaluing traditional knowledge, Indigenous values and beliefs, these services lower Indigenous power and affect cultural identities. Indigenous elders participate in intergenerational solidarity by transmitting knowledge, values, and culture in a holistic approach. Despite widespread acceptance of the importance of Indigenous elders’ contributions to wellness, a rigorous synthesis of knowledge has never been done. This study aimed to provide a comprehensive understanding of how Indigenous elders’ social participation contributes to individual and community wellness. Method A scoping review was conducted with Indigenous elders and stakeholders in Québec (Canada). Sixteen databases were searched with 57 keywords. Data from the documents retrieved were analyzed, organized, and synthesized based on the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health. Synthesis A total of 144 documents were examined, comprising 74 scientific papers and 70 sources from the gray literature. Indigenous elders contributed to wellness mainly through relationships and interactions with other community members and non-Indigenous people (72.2%); intergenerational oral and written communications (70.1%); community, social and civic life (45.8%); volunteering and jobs (35.4%); and family life (29.9%). Elders transmit traditional knowledge, strengthen social cohesion, and help to develop positive attitudes such as reciprocity. Their actions favour disease prevention and health promotion, as including traditional approaches increases the acceptability of health and social services. Conclusion This scoping review highlights the need for longitudinal studies with mixed-method designs involving Indigenous communities at all stages of the research to deepen understanding of the contributions of Indigenous elders to individual and community wellness.