Grant: Catalyst Grant: Indigenous Approaches to Wellness Research

The land is a place of healing for Inuvialuit. Rather than sending community members in need of treatment and support away to treatment centres thousands of kilometres away, the Inuvialuit Regional Corporation (IRC), which represents the Inuvialuit - the Inuit of the Western Arctic, has shown strong leadership by engaging in the culturally safe practice of having healing take place through an on-the-land program. Project Jewel is five to seven day on-the-land program that is offered six times a year. The proposed research represents a partnership between the IRC, academic researchers, and knowledge users. This diverse group proposes to use community-based research and Indigenous ways of knowing to answer the questions, "How does Project Jewel work? Could it work better? How can it be evaluated in a way that is culturally safe?" Our objectives are as follow: i) better understand how Project Jewel's on-the-land programming offers culturally safe and trauma and violence informed programs that meet the self-identified needs of residents of the Inuvialuit Settlement Region; ii) identify the specific components of Project Jewel's on-the-land programming that foster resilience in participants; iii) identify/adapt research methods and forms of knowledge translation so they are congruent with Inuvialuit values and ways of knowing; iv) assess the experiences of past and current Project Jewel participants; v) strengthen Indigenous health research leadership in the region; vi) use the knowledge shared to mobilize residents in this region and others to achieve further resilience and wellness; vii) inform the development of an initial evaluation approach or framework for on-the-land programming in the NWT; viii) build on this foundation to develop a larger future study to further refine and test our findings.