Grant: Travel Awards - Institute Community Support

"Mâmawoh kamâtowin: Coming Together To Help Each Other: Honouring Indigenous Nursing Knowledge is the result of coming to know and understand Indigenous nurses experience while working with four Indigenous nurse scholars Alice Reid, Evelyn Voyageur, Madeleine Dion Stout, and Lea Bill. Using Indigenous Research Methodologies I draw from the collective experience and attend to the question of how Indigenous knowledge manifests itself in the practices of Indigenous nurses and how it can better serve individuals, families and communities. This research framework centers Indigenous principles, processes, and practical values at the center of the design. It inclusively captures four key components of the entire research process, which are based on Cree/Métis understandings of creating respectful research activities; enacting ethical relationships; being responsible for the gathering, documenting and analyzing the data, and ensuring that mutual reciprocity is honoured. The findings from this research were four main threads of understanding including roots of being, entanglement of roots, on nursing terms and living the practice. These were further articulated through ontological and epistemological considerations. What was central to this study was that Indigenous knowledge has always been fundamental to the Indigenous nurses' ways of undertaking nursing practice regardless of the systemic and historical barriers faced when providing health care for Indigenous Peoples. The outcomes of this research showed many important aspects to building Indigenous knowledge in nursing scholarship such as how nursing education and the delivery of nursing service to Aboriginal communities needs to ensure that local Indigenous peoples and the community knowledge systems are at the core of nursing standards and healthy public policy.