Grant: Team Grant: Indigenous Gender and Wellness Team Grant

Despite making up only 5% of the general population, over 30% of people incarcerated in Canada's federal prisons identify as First Nations, Métis, or Inuit (Zinger, 2020). This project aims to take an action-oriented, community-based approach to understanding the perspectives of previously incarcerated Indigenous women, men, and 2SLGBTQQIA+ people, as well as service providers at Indigenous and criminal justice advocacy organizations. Using Indigenous research methods, this project will establish an Ontario-wide Indigenous guidance council to inform the design and delivery of research activities to ensure balanced power dynamics, increased trust, and a sense of project ownership. To facilitate reciprocal relationships and rapport building, care packages that were created with community input will be given to partners to distribute to previously incarcerated clients. We will host talking circles (Brown & Di Lallo, 2020) with council members throughout the project's duration. Additionally, we will conduct one-on-one interviews with both Indigenous and non-Indigenous criminal justice-related service providers as well as individuals with experiences with incarceration who have used healing or re-entry programs since their release to gain knowledge about interconnectedness of incarceration, gender, family relations, and reintegration into their community(s). This will be done with an intersectional lens that incorporates the Medicine Wheel teachings and accompanying knowledge from an Algonquin perspective (PI and Elders contributing). We are interested in learning if there are differences in gender and family-inclusive policies for those who were previously incarcerated and how to assist with reintegration and healing after their release.