Grant: Operating Grant: Indigenous Gender and Wellness - Knowledge Sharing

Colonialism has had significant consequences for the health and well-being of Indigenous Peoples generally, and boys and men specifically. The health of Indigenous boys and men is relationally connected to the wellbeing of Indigenous communities more broadly, including girls and women, Elders, children and youth, and Two-Spirit people. This project employs a Cree-centred, strengths-based perspective to re-story the relationship between Cree values and practices and the health and well-being of Cree boys and men by sharing and activating knowledge gathered through a three-year CIHR Indigenous Gender and Wellness grant. The original project included a series of day-long and multi-day intergenerational sharing circles (n=9) with Cree Elders, knowledge holders and youth. One of the themes to emerge from the sharing circles was that the knowledge gathered be shared with the Cree community, and Cree boys and men specifically, as well as Indigenous peoples more broadly. In these meetings it was decided that the mode of sharing was critically important and needs to "meet boys and men and community where they are at," and it was determined that a series of short films were the most relevant and wide-reaching mode of achieving these objectives. The objective of this project is thus to share knowledge gathered through film and to foreground: community-centred stories of Indigenous masculinities as resilient, strong, and resurgent; provide Indigenous boys and men with a pathway to Cree values, roles, and responsibilities; and, to work collaboratively with Indigenous film makers to produce several short films about the relationship between Cree values and practices, identity, healing, health, and well-being of boys and men.