Grant: Doctoral Research Award: HIV/AIDS CBR - Aboriginal Stream

Aboriginal youth are over-represented in the HIV epidemic due to legacies of colonization, as well as social, political and economic isolation. Alternative strategies are needed to address sexual health promotion and HIV prevention with Aboriginal youth, which is imperative to priorities 1, 2 and 3 of CIHR's HIV/AIDS Research Initiative Strategic Plan 2008 - 2013. A number of policies and programs have been created to encourage youth leadership in preventing HIV. One such program is the Taking Action project, which is the result of a partnership between the Canadian Aboriginal AIDS Network (CAAN), the Native Youth Sexual Health Network (NYSHN), Gendering Adolescent AIDS Prevention (GAAP), CIHR and several academic institutions. This doctoral research will take data from the digital stories (3-5 minute visual narratives that fuse images, video, audio recordings of voice, music and text to create compelling accounts of experience) produced by and the individual interviews conducted with the 20 youth participants in phase 2 of the larger Taking Action project. This research will examine how Aboriginal youth leaders understand their identities, and perceive the potential for solidarity building approaches within HIV prevention. Research questions include: 'How does a sense of identity (race, gender, sexuality, community affiliation, colonial history etc.) impact the work these young HIV leaders do and why they do it? 'How do Aboriginal youth leaders view alliance building between different aboriginal communities and across other ethnic/racial lines within the HIV prevention movement? What barriers and facilitators to such community alliances are identified by the youth? 'In what ways do these youth understand the comparisons and contrasts of different communities' vulnerability to HIV? This research will provide a greater understanding of the potential for Aboriginal youth leadership in the resource sharing and solidarity building approaches of HIV prevention.