Grant: Project Grant

The climate crisis continues to impact FNMI Peoples across Turtle Island significantly and disproportionately, and worldwide. Some of the major issues faced are threats to reserve lands, food sovereignty, and access to traditional employment. The burden of harms caused by climate change have been placed on Indigenous youth as they are uniquely both the future and current traditional caretakers and land defenders of Turtle Island, a responsibility that can take a toll on the mental health of FNMI youth. Yet youth perspectives are rarely included in scholarly literature, research, or decision-making on environmental policy, which needs to change. This project will extend findings from a climate crisis development project carried out by Waakebiness Institute for Indigenous Health (Ontario) and the Institute for Circumpolar Health Research (NWT). This research project responds to the need for the inclusion and empowerment of Indigenous youth perspectives on the ongoing climate crisis and investigates its impacts on Indigenous youth mental health to generate solutions to address and end the mental health crisis such as anxiety, depression, and suicide along with policy solutions to end environmental genocide. A mixed method approach of qualitative and survey data will be utilized as driven by local and national community partners in Ontario, Alberta, NWT, and BC to gather data with youth to develop, implement, and evaluate mental health programming aimed at youth mental wellness, as well as conduct a national impact assessment of Indigenous youth mental health where youth are doing well. FNMI leadership and data governance frameworks will be determined by community partners, Elders, and youth. The project's impact will provide Indigenous Knowledges solutions for the climate crisis, health practice, interventions and policy, that will help redress and remove these barriers both at individual and system levels for improved mental health outcomes for FNMI youth.