Grant: Catalyst Grant: Indigenous Approaches to Wellness Research

This project is an academic and community-centered collaboration with Metis researchers and Metis knowledge keepers. The purpose of this study is to document and to build evidence showing that the methodological and theoretical application of Metis Ways of Knowing, such as Keeoukaywin, is part of achieving good, healthy and respectful relations known as miyo-wicehtowin . In addition, keeoukaywin is part of upholding whakotowin (the overarching laws governing all relations). The research will privilege Keeoukaywin as a feasible methodology to achieve holistic wellness within Metis Women's kinship systems. In addition, the methodology privileges Metis cultural and artistic practices as embedded in Indigenous ways of knowing, being and doing. Art from an Indigenous worldview is known as reflections, the artist is considered as the one who reflects. Given this understanding of artistic practices, the project highlights an artistic creative approach embedded in a Metis perspective.The project's broader aim is to breathe life into governance principles, diplomatic gestures, systems, laws and ethics that derive from Metis values embedded in whakotowin laws. The laws uphold life instructions, such as roles and responsibilities, to achieve individual and community wellness, wholeness, and healing. Given this, it is vital to define these roles and responsibilities from a Metis women's worldview in order to achieve improved wellness for Metis women, their communities and their families. There are few studies about Metis women's perspective of health and wellbeing. This study will research, more specifically, the special kinship roles and responsibilities of Auntie/Mataants/Gawesuk for the purposes of growing an inter-generational land-based approaches to better equip our Métis families and communities to care for all one's life stages from maternal health, to children's wellbeing, to the trajectory of aging well.