Grant: Travel Awards - Institute Community Support

Active aging and successful aging have become the common frameworks for aging well in order to address seniors' health and social needs. They identify what it means to "age well" and guide the development of communities that support seniors to do this; however, these frameworks have been critiqued for their Western perspective that does not take into account the experiences and perspectives of older adults from diverse non-Western cultural backgrounds, including Indigenous older adults. Using community-based participatory research, semi-structured interviews, focus groups, and Photovoice were conducted to explore aging well from the perspectives of Indigenous seniors in an urban community in Canada. The findings show how Indigenous older adults define aging well and explore some of the enablers and barriers to aging well, which can be used to further develop key frameworks related to aging and guide urban communities in supporting the aging Indigenous population.