Grant: Team Grant: Indigenous Gender and Wellness Team Grant

Colonialism continues to have lasting effects on gender and childbirth within Inuit communities, creating ongoing challenges and barriers that can impact wellbeing. For example, women must leave their families and communities to give birth. They receive limited perinatal care, support, and access to resources/information in their first language. These circumstances are inherently stressful, and create isolating contexts for women at a time when they are most vulnerable. The role of gender within Inuit perinatal wellbeing is often overlooked. Wellness studies have also typically involved an evaluative framework developed by non-Indigenous researchers and has not focused on gender. Inuit in Arviat, Nunavut, perceive perinatal wellbeing as a priority, yet issues continue to go unaddressed in policy and program delivery. Co-designed with Arviarmiut and aimed at improving perinatal wellness, the Ilagiingniq project involves a pilot program of support and study that aim to strengthen the relationship between gender, wellness, and cultural traditions/activities. Rooted within Inuit values and knowledge, this three-year project aims to create knowledge concerning gender and perinatal wellness, and facilitate knowledge sharing activities that amplify Inuit voices, and build upon existing capacity within the community. Ilagiingniq will be developed within/underpinned by Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit (IQ) (Inuit traditional knowledge) and involve the hiring and training of community-based perinatal support workers. Research will focus on Inuit-specific wellness indicators and follow the Aajiiqatigiingniq research methodology developed by the Aqqiumavvik Wellness Society, which outlines four stages to research according to Inuit cultural systems: 1) relationship-building, 2) reach shared understanding, 3) share lived experiences, and 4) relational consensus-building. Insights from the study will be shared to benefit the community and bolster existing initiatives.