Grant: Project Grant

This project builds on the strengths of our prior research and community work in hopes of building strong relationships and finding new paths in partnership with Indigenous communities and organizations. We aim to address the ongoing lack of control over access to traditional and culturally safe foods in long-term care homes. Cultural barriers continue to prevent Indigenous Peoples from accessing foods that meet their needs and likes. This is even more of a problem for Indigenous residents of long-term care homes because they can no longer shop, grow, hunt, gather, or prepare their own meals and are away from their community. Indigenous Peoples are living longer yet they tend to have many health challenges connected to barriers to culturally informed care, including a lack of access to foods that are in line with their traditional preferences. It is important for long-term care homes to offer culturally relevant foods so that Indigenous residents feel safe and welcome living there. Indigenous Peoples must be able to see themselves, their history, and their culture in their care. This project brings together Indigenous and non-Indigenous researchers and community partners to identify and share new ways of thinking about how long-term care for Indigenous Peoples can be transformed by Indigenous wisdom, knowledge, and cultures, to promote access to cultural relevant food. We will review policies, and use sharing circles, photos, interviews, and visits to Indigenous-led long-term care homes and community food programs to learn through experiencing, storytelling, and seeing. We will bring together many different views and experiences and make sure that the teachings of Indigenous elders and knowledge keepers and the voices of Indigenous women are heard. This project will create roadmaps for long-term care homes to help them better serve Indigenous residents in hopes of supporting aging in line with Indigenous understandings of wholistic food, health, and wellbeing.