Grant: Travel Awards - Institute Community Support

Community driven research has shown the potential to positively impact health outcomes for individuals, families, and communities. Considering historical, ongoing, and localized contexts for Indigenous families in Canada, additional impact may come from the inclusion of Indigenous ways of knowing, being, feeling, and doing into research. The implementation of these core principles in research can counter colonial structures, impositions, and assumptions that have perpetuated "research as usual". This presentation will share stories from the development and implementation of the Winnipeg Boldness Project, a social innovation initiative founded upon these principles. The project is working towards a Bold Goal: Children and families in Point Douglas will experience dramatically improved wellbeing in all aspects of self: physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual. Ceremony, relationships, and relational accountability have guided the direction of the project from the beginning. This includes in the use of iterative and responsive processes to design and use methodologies and methods that centre voices, experiences, and contexts of families and leaders in the community. For example, community processes to identify and define what success and wellbeing looks and feels like for children and families were a critical starting point for the research. We will consider key areas of learning and adaptation that have occurred in the design and implementation and will suggest how this could further build the field of community driven research founded upon Indigenous methodologies.