Grant: Travel Awards - Institute Community Support

The ability to envision oneself in relation to ancestral cultural heritage may be relevant to how Indigenous youths envision their futures, and may deter negative developmental outcomes (Chandler & Lalonde, 1998). The way youth envision the future can also positively impact development, as optimistic outlooks are related to academic success (Chemers, Hu, & Garcia, 2001) and career insight (Rottinghaus et al., 2005). Since the Public Health Agency of Canada identifies education and literacy and employment and working conditions as two of the twelve key health determinants in Canada (Ning & Wilson, 2012), understanding how Indigenous youth envision their futures, which include their perceptions about education and careers, can provide more insight into the development of these two key health determinants in Canadian youth. By examining both Indigenous and non-Indigenous youth, this study also explores factors that potentially contribute to understanding discrepant health outcomes between these two populations. In this study, 66 First Nations and 28 Euro-Canadian youth from two communities in northern Quebec completed the Biculturalism Involvement Questionnaire (Szapocznik, Kurtines, & Fernandez, 1980), the Self-Perception Profile for Children measuring scholastic competence and global self worth (Harter, 1985), the Career-Related Goal Setting questionnaire (Mu, 1998), and the Life Orientation Test - Revised measuring optimism (Scheier, Carver, & Bridges, 1994). Final grades were also collected. For non-Indigenous youth, optimism was positively correlated with scholastic competence, r(69) = .415, p < .001, while for Indigenous youth, optimism was positively correlated with global self-worth r(41) = .341, p < .05. The findings suggest cultural differences in the way Indigenous and non-Indigenous youth envision a positive future. Future research could explore how these differences contribute to educational and occupational outcomes, and consequently, health outcomes.