Grant: Travel Awards - Institute Community Support

In recognizing the potential for the critical consciousness raising, resistance and resilience of young leaders in the HIV/AIDS movement, we examine how a group of Indigenous youth leaders take up the notion of leadership in the context of HIV prevention. Taking Action II is an Indigenous community based participatory action research project. Eighteen Indigenous youth leaders (including myself) were invited from across Canada to share their narratives about their passion for HIV prevention through digital storytelling. One-on-one semi-structured interviews were conducted with youth leaders after they developed their digital stories, and then again several months later. The youth told stories about the reasons for their passion for HIV prevention, leadership, activism, and engagement. Importantly, the youth had alternative definitions of leadership that moved away from mainstream ideas of power, status, and individualism. In contrast to dominant mainstream ideals, Indigenous youth have different ways of thinking about leadership that are linked to relationships with their families, communities, histories, legacies and health. Cultivating and supporting Indigenous youth leaders is an important part of the solution to tackling the devastating HIV statistics and making positive change within our communities.