Grant: Operating Grant - HIV/AIDS CBR Program - Indigenous

There is a critical need to understand the journey that northern Manitoba First Nations people living with HIV are navigating. The rates of HIV infection and disease are increasing in the Indigenous population in Canada and Manitoba. In discussions and meetings with First Nations in northern Manitoba we recognized that we know and understand very little about the experiences of First Nation people who are living with HIV and are navigating the HIV care cascade. Engaging individuals living with HIV into early antiretroviral treatment will delay progression to AIDS and importantly reduces the risk of HIV transmission in heterosexual and homosexual couples. First Nations in northern Manitoba experience barriers to HIV testing, treating and care which include stigma, access to services, geographic isolation and barriers derived from historical racism and trauma, colonialism, poverty and personal and community circumstances. There is limited understanding of culturally appropriate best practices for HIV testing and care for northern Manitoban First Nations people and a perceived lack of integration of First Nation cultural ways of knowing and healing practices with western medicine practices. We propose to build on existing relationships between northern First Nations knowledge keepers (people and organizations), academia, Provincial and Federal health organizations and the Manitoba HIV Collective Impact Network to establish ethical spaces and use a two-eyed seeing approach to investigate the complexities of how First Nations and northern residents come to be tested, linked to care, and supported to live with HIV. We will work collectively to develop culturally appropriate interventions, tools, programs and polices that can be used by communities, northern First Nation health organizations, and provincial and federal HIV related programs to better support northern First Nations people living with HIV.