Grant: Operating Grant: Indigenous Gender and Wellness - Knowledge Sharing

In Canada, colonial policies disrupted Indigenous peoples' relationships to land, kinship, and ceremony. These legacies continue to shape the health of Indigenous women, girls, Two-Spirit, trans, and gender-diverse people, who face disproportionate risks for HIV and sexually transmitted and blood-borne infections (STBBI). While Indigenous doulas have re-emerged as vital helpers, their role in HIV/STBBI prevention, care, and healing remains largely unexplored. The Kotawêw project builds on a community-led study that gathered 40 stories through Indigenous Storywork and ceremony, showing doulas as kin, cultural anchors, harm reductionists, and advocates. The study revealed urgent needs for training in HIV prevention, harm reduction, advocacy, land-based practice, and emotional sustainability. This next phase will hold five ceremony-led workshops with 150 participants, who will co-create 15 digital stories, 10 zines, and 8 artworks. Activities will be grounded in ceremony (smudging, songs, prayers, offerings, land-based teachings) and co-designed with Indigenous doulas, people with lived experience, Elders, Kôhkoms, and Knowledge Holders. A 12-member Community Guiding Circle will ensure cultural integrity and accountability. The project will produce a community-facing knowledge bundle to support Canada's first peer-led HIV doula training program at Ka Ni Kanichihk's Mino Pimatisiwin Sexual Wellness Lodge (located in Winnipeg, Manitoba), and be used in health education and advocacy. By centering Indigenous gender understandings and narrative sovereignty, this initiative will build capacity, strengthen intergenerational ties, and return knowledge to communities in culturally safe, non-extractive ways. This project is an investment in Manitoba's future, an investment in Indigenous communities, people with lived experience, and Indigenous scholars and doulas whose knowledge and care will transform HIV/STBBI, sexual, and reproductive wellness for generations to come.