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

Abstract

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.