Grant: Travel Awards - Institute Community Support

Active aging has become the common framework for aging well in order to address seniors' health and social needs. It includes optimizing the opportunities for health, lifelong learning, participation and security to enhance the quality of life as people age. Active aging is supported and enabled through the development of age-friendly cities. The city of Ottawa is considered an Age-Friendly Community; however, Indigenous seniors in Ottawa are still very marginalized. Their health and social needs need to be addressed to ensure that they have equal opportunities for active aging, but from their perspectives and based on their own experiences, beliefs, values, and cultures. Limited research has been conducted to understand what active aging means for Indigenous seniors and what they consider to be an age-friendly community, especially from a cultural safety perspective. A cultural safety lens allows for the recognition of the social, political, and historical structures resulting from colonialism that shape Indigenous seniors' experiences with old age and their quality of life and privileges their knowledge as expert knowledge. In this presentation, I will present preliminary findings from my doctoral research. These findings will show how Indigenous seniors and health and social services staff who work with them define aging well and will explore some of their enablers and barriers to aging well. I hope to address how Ottawa can indeed be an age-friendly city for all seniors, including Indigenous seniors.