Grant: Indigenous Gender and Wellness Development Grants

From an Indigenous perspective it is well understood that intimate details of the land play a foundational role in the totality of Indigenous identity. Furthermore, from an Indigenous perspective, language is born of a specific place. It serves to describe with powerful accuracy all the particular life existing therein, and all the sacred histories and events that happen thereupon. Place and language thus provide the context and source of knowledge by which a person can identify or communicate social constructs of identity including gender, community and governance. Those who do not know the language of a particular land are impoverished; without knowing place and language they are challenged to fully identify themselves as that land. Interruption of this connection through colonization has profoundly and negatively impacted Indigenous peoples' ability to articulate a healthful, holistic identity. Indeed the disrupted connection has become a general marker of ill health. The purpose of this project is to develop land, language, and community-based activities in an Indigenous context to support reclamation of wellness based in local understandings of identity and health. Developing established relations with three Coast Salish Indigenous partner entities, this project will utilize funds to create meaningful community programs to support the engendering of Indigenous identity for wellbeing.