Grant: Project Grant

For the Mi'kmaq of Pictou Landing First Nation (PLFN), the estuary adjacent to our community, known as A'se'k (and now known in English as Boat Harbour), and the surrounding landscape have provided us with the foods, medicines, transportation, shelter, and tools we have needed to survive and thrive since time immemorial. But for 50 years, a nearby mill has been piping its effluent directly into the waters of A'se'k and pumping its particulate matter out the stacks into the prevailing winds, which directly target PLFN. Concerned about our children's health, the Pictou Landing Native Women's Group (PLNWG) mobilized in 2010 to undertake community-based participatory health research. We were concerned for our community's physical, mental, emotional and spiritual health in relation to the industrial pollution. Bringing academics in, our team has worked together since then to implement a Two-Eyed Seeing approach to research the women's question: "Are we getting sick from Boat Harbour?" To date we have been researching the mill's health impacts using a number of Indigenous and western research methods to meet this goal. Throughout, we have been documenting our journey by collecting film footage for the production of a documentary film. Now we want to share our novel health-related knowledge vis-à-vis a documentary film about our integrative research. Using the film as a catalyst, we want to investigate how university-based and community-based researchers across disciplines, professions, and sectors can begin to conceptualize a Two-Eyed Seeing approach in their own research in the spirit of healing and reconciliation in Indigenous health. Our overarching goal for this Project is to foster a Two-Eyed Seeing approach across the four health pillars at CIHR that will ultimately translate into improved Indigenous health knowledge, services, and outcomes in Canada, and move us all towards reconciliation and healing for a shared future.