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PurposeThis research considers the potential for renewable energy partnerships to contribute to Canada's efforts to overcome its colonial past and present by developing an understanding of how non-Indigenous peoples working in the sector relate to their Indigenous partners.Design/methodology/approachThis study is part of a larger research program focused on decolonization and reconciliation in the renewable energy sector. This exploratory research is framed by energy justice and decolonial reconciliation literatures relevant to the topic of Indigenous-led renewable energy. The authors used content and discourse analysis to identify themes arising from 10 semi-structured interviews with non-Indigenous corporate and governmental partners.FindingsInterviewees’ lack of prior exposure to Indigenous histories, cultures and acknowledgement of settler colonialism had a profound impact on their engagement with reconciliation frameworks. Partners' perspectives on what it means to partner with Indigenous peoples varied; most dismissed the need to further develop understandings of reconciliation and instead focused on increasing community capacity to allow Indigenous groups to participate in the renewable energy transition.Research limitations/implicationsIn this study, the authors intentionally spoke with non-Indigenous peoples working in the renewable energy sector. Recruitment was a challenge and the sample is small. The authors encourage researchers to extend their questions to other organizations in the renewable energy sector, across industries and with Indigenous peoples given this is an under-researched field.Originality/valueThis paper is an early look at the way non-Indigenous “partners” working in renewable energy understand and relate to topics of reconciliation, Indigenous rights and self-determination. It highlights potential barriers to reconciliation that are naïvely occurring at organizational and institutional levels, while anchored in colonial power structures.

With over three decades of attention drawn to the health of Indigenous peoples in Canada and around the world, an outpouring of health research has been undertaken, much of which has emphasized the experience of disparity at the expense of recognizing strengths. In this case study, we challenge the damage-centred rhetoric of mainstream health research by reporting the findings of 20 qualitative interviews on community strength and health with members of Pictou Landing First Nation, a Mi’kmaw nation located in Nova Scotia, Canada. We then relate and compare these findings with the emerging conceptualization of Indigenous social capital, which is a concept that has been associated with positive health outcomes in a variety of contexts. Our findings indicate that Pictou Landing First Nation is strengthened by qualities of familiarity, reciprocity, safety, and solidarity, which are rooted in the value of family and embedded within a broader Mi’kmaw worldview. The nature of these strengths aligns in part with the concept of Indigenous social capital, which we suggest may be better harnessed to be a means for conducting strengths-based health research. To this end, our findings support the need for reworking social capital conceptualizations to more strongly centralize cultural identities and worldviews in order to authentically and comprehensively affirm Indigenous and decolonizing health research practices.

Numerous tools for addressing gender inequality in governmental policies, programs, and research have emerged across the globe. Unfortunately, such tools have largely failed to account for the impacts of colonialism on Indigenous Peoples’ lives and lands. In Canada, Indigenous organizations have advanced gender-based analysis frameworks that are culturally-grounded and situate the understanding of gender identities, roles, and responsibilities within and across diverse Indigenous contexts. However, there is limited guidance on how to integrate Indigenous gender-based frameworks in the context of research. The authors of this paper are participants of a multi-site research program investigating intersectoral spaces of Indigenous-led renewable energy development within Canada. Through introspective methods, we reflected on the implementation of gender considerations into our research team’s governance and research activities. We found three critical lessons: (1) embracing Two-Eyed Seeing or Etuaptmumk while making space for Indigenous leadership, (2) trusting the expertise that stems from the lived experiences and relationships of researchers and team members, and (3) shifting the emphasis from ‘gender-based analysis’ to ‘gender-based relationality’ in the implementation of gender-related research considerations. Our research findings provide a novel empirical example of the day-to-day principles and practices that may arise when implementing Indigenous gender-based analysis frameworks in the context of research.

Current institutional frameworks in sex- and gender-based analysis (SGBA) are promising, but significant gaps remain in their relation to recent developments in research praxis. In this paper we draw from our own experiences with a national health research funding agency, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), to critically examine the uptake and implementation of its current frameworks and practices of sex and gender analysis in health research. We conducted semi-structured interviews with a cohort of 18 health researchers alongside an institutional policy analysis to show how sex and gender have been understood, integrated, and addressed within the agency and initiative. Our findings reveal that attention to date has focused on representation (human and data) while deeper justice issues that are attentive to intersectionality, positionality and reflexivity—remain ambiguous. Finally, we discuss possible strategies for institutions to improve the uptake of knowledge, training, and policy to better support intersectional and culturally-relevant frameworks across the diverse research community.

To date, research on social capital in Indigenous contexts has been scarce. In this quantitative study, our objectives were to (1): Describe bonding social capital within four distinct First Nations communities in Canada, and (2) Explore the associations between bonding social capital and self-rated health in these communities. With community permission, cross-sectional data were drawn from the Canadian Alliance for Healthy Hearts and Minds study. Four reserve-based First Nations communities were included in the analysis, totaling 591 participants. Descriptive statistics were computed to examine levels of social capital among communities and logistic regression analyses were performed to identify social capital predictors of good self-rated health. Age, sex, education level, and community were controlled for in all models. Across the four communities in this study, areas of common social capital included frequent socialization among friends and large and interconnected family networks. Positive self-rated health was associated with civic engagement at federal or provincial levels (OR=1.65, p, Highlights • Indigenous social capital manifests uniquely, grounded in cultural worldviews. • Strong familial networks and social ties are major strengths among First Nations. • Significant differences in social environment and capital exists across communities. • Thus, definitions and measures of social capital must be adapted to each community.

Settler colonialism implicates settler and Indigenous populations differently within ongoing projects of settlement and nation building. The uneven distribution of benefits and harms is a primary consequence of settler colonialism. Indeed, it is a central organizing feature of the settler state's governance of Indigenous societies and is animated, in part, through pervasive settler ignorance and anti-Indigenous racism, which has manifested in persistent health disparities amongst Indigenous peoples. This broader socio-political context surrounding medical schools, which are seeking to develop teaching and learning about Indigenous health presents a significant challenge. Understanding the cognitive and affective tools that settler educators use when grappling with questions of race, racialization, and Indigenous difference is an important step in addressing anti-Indigenous racism in health care provision. This paper reports on findings from in-depth semi-structured interviews with educators at one Canadian medical school. Our intent was to elicit respondents' understandings, experiences, and attitudes regarding Indigenous-settler relations, Indigenous health and healthcare, and the inclusion of Indigenous health in the curriculum as a means of identifying facilitators and barriers to improving Indigenous health and health care experiences. Respondents were generally sympathetic and evinced an earnest desire to include more Indigenous-related content in the curriculum. What became clear over the course of the data collection and analysis, however, was that most respondents lacked the tools to engage critically with questions of race and racialization and how these are manifested in the context of asymmetrical settler colonial power. We argue that this inability, at best, limits the effectiveness of much needed efforts to incorporate more content relating to Indigenous health, but worse yet, risks re-entrenching anti-Indigenous racism and settler dominance.

Background Health service administrators make decisions regarding how to best use limited resources to have the most significant impact. Service siting models are tools that can help in this capacity. Here we build on our own mixed-method service siting model focused on identifying rural Canadian communities most in need of and ready for palliative care service enhancement through incorporating new community-driven insights. Methods We conducted 40 semi-structured interviews with formal and informal palliative care providers from four purposefully selected rural communities across Canada. Communities were selected by running our siting model, which incorporated GIS methods, and then identifying locations suitable as qualitative case studies. Participants were identified using multiple recruitment methods. Interviews were transcribed verbatim and the transcripts were reviewed to identify emerging themes and were coded accordingly. Thematic analysis then ensued. Results We previously introduced the inclusion of a ‘community readiness’ arm in the siting model. This arm is based on five community-driven indicators of palliative care service enhancement readiness and need. The findings from the current analysis underscore the importance of this arm of the model. However, the data also revealed the need to subjectively assess the presence or absence of community awareness and momentum indicators. The interviews point to factors such as educational tools, volunteers, and local acknowledgement of palliative care priorities as reflecting the presence of community awareness and factors such as new employment and volunteer positions, new care spaces, and new projects and programs as reflecting momentum. The diversity of factors found to illustrate these indicators between our pilot study and current national study demonstrate the need for those using our service siting model to look for contextually-relevant signs of their presence. Conclusion Although the science behind siting model development is established, few researchers have developed such models in an open way (e.g., documenting every stage of model development, engaging with community members). This mixed-method study has addressed this notable knowledge gap. While we have focused on rural palliative care in Canada, the process by which we have developed and refined our siting model is transferrable and can be applied to address other siting problems.

Background Pictou Landing First Nation (PLFN), a small Mi'kmaw community on the Canadian east coast, has had a relationship with a tidal estuary known as A'se'k for millennia. In the 1960s, it became the site of effluent disposal from a nearby pulp mill. Almost immediately, health concerns regularly and consistently reverberated throughout the community. Objectives The Pictou Landing Native Women's Group (PLNWG) formed a community-based participatory research (CBPR) partnership with an academic team to conceptualize community well-being in the context of environment and human health connections. This paper documents Mi'kmaw Elders' stories of A'se'k before it became contaminated. Methods Using narrative inquiry vis-a-vis oral histories, we carried out conversational interviews with 10 Elders from PLFN. These interviews were thematically analyzed and 're-storied' through a process of (w)holistic content analysis. Results Our findings present four broad story layers, recounting the themes that emerged through analysis and presenting a broad Mi'kmaw narrative of A'se'k. These story layers share: what A'se'k originally provided, the historical/cultural context of PLFN, changes to land and health after the mill was put in, and reflections on the past and future of A'se'k. Conclusions Our research offers a novel contribution to the literature by showing how Mi'kmaw perspectives on the pollution at A'se'k reveal the close connection between Mi'kmaw livelihood, local ecologies, and health and well-being. Our research also provides insights into the way the research relationship developed between the PLNWG and the academic team, providing a pathway for others seeking to decolonize the research landscape.

Geography is a product of colonial processes, and in Canada, the exclusion from educational curricula of Indigenous worldviews and their lived realities has produced “geographies of ignorance”. Transformative learning is an approach geographers can use to initiate changes in non-Indigenous student attitudes about Indigenous epistemologies and ontologies. This study explores non-Indigenous student perspectives concerning a field school and digital storytelling as transformative experiences within the context of an “Indigenous Perspectives on Environmental Management” course; they were asked to reflect on their course experience. Findings indicate that students found both to be effective and important steps in the transformation of their own worldviews.

Background : Designing an effective survey for gathering primary health data using a community-based participatory research (CBPR) approach in Indigenous communities in Canada has its challenges. Yet, the Pictou Landing First Nation (PFLN) Native Women’s Group (NWG) and academic research partners achieved a 59% response rate. Objectives : To share lessons learned with both campus and community-based research teams engaged in CBPR involving Indigenous communities on the process of team development, and particularly survey development and execution, as well as the factors that led to a reliable and valid household level environmental health survey that achieved a 59% response rate. Methods : Multiple debriefings conducted over the course of the 12-month data collection period allowed us to modify our protocol to fit with community oscillations. Results/Lessons Learned : Unique aspects of CBPR allowed for the development of a culturally appropriate survey protocol and culturally relevant variables that reflected the concerns of the NWG, and presenting preliminary data to the community also encouraged community buy-in to participate. Conclusions : Sharing lessons learned in this project are intended to have positive implications for future CBPR projects wanting to collect primary health survey data involving Indigenous communities.

Community-based participatory research (CBPR) is generally understood as a process by which decision-making power and ownership are shared between the researcher and the community involved, bi-directional research capacity and co-learning are promoted, and new knowledge is co-created and disseminated in a manner that is mutually beneficial for those involved. Within the field of Canadian geography we are seeing emerging interest in using CBPR as a way of conducting meaningful and relevant research with Indigenous communities. However, individual interpretations of CBPR's tenets and the ways in which CBPR is operationalized are, in fact, highly variable. In this article we report the findings of an exploratory qualitative case study involving semi-structured, open-ended interviews with Canadian university-based geographers and social scientists in related disciplines who engage in CBPR to explore the relationship between their conceptual understanding of CBPR and their applied research. Our findings reveal some of the tensions for university-based researchers concerning CBPR in theory and practice.

Environmental justice research is predominately an anthropocentric endeavour, and it is unclear whether this research captures injustices to other species or the integrity of ecological systems that support all life on earth. The purpose of this article is three-fold. First, we systematically review the environmental justice literature to identify the epistemological perspectives from which environmental justice is conveyed. Second, we examine definitions of environmental justice to determine how the concept is operationalised across these paradigms. Third, we document under what conditions these definitions purposely acknowledge the interdependency of all species in order to elucidate the place (or absence) of ecological integrity in our understanding of environmental justice. We conclude with a discussion of the value of going beyond mainstream expressions of environmental justice that typically do not include ecological integrity as a way to begin addressing the problem in a more holistic way.

Drawing on recent debates pointing to the value of mixed methods research in human geography, the authors revisit a quantitative location analysis model previously created to site palliative care services in rural British Columbia, Canada. The original quantitative model posited that population (i.e., number of residents in the community), isolation (i.e., travel time to existing specialized palliative care), and vulnerability (i.e., number of residents older than 65 years in the community) are three factors that must be accounted for when siting palliative care services in rural areas. Using qualitative interview data, the authors refine this model to include a newly identified factor: community readiness. They conclude with a discussion of the benefits of adopting a mixed methods approach to location analysis model development.

Huu-ay-aht First Nation has been undergoing treaty negotiations with the governments of British Columbia and Canada for the past 15 years. A settlement will allow Huu-ay-ahts to re-introduce their traditional forest management practices based on Hishuk Tsawak—a worldview that means “everything is one/connected.” Despite centuries of oppression from colonial and postcolonial forces, Hishuk Tsawak remains strong among Huu-ay-ahts and is lived as both a set of spiritual beliefs and a set of daily practices, enacted through a series of defined cultural protocols. Most importantly, Hishuk Tsawak displays an ability to be resilient in the physical location of the Huu-ay-aht traditional territory, while at the same time challenging and resisting (acting around the “edges” of) its social location imposed by those same dominant colonial and postcolonial forces. Worldviews, such as Hishuk Tsawak, have the potential to conceive of an alternative way of seeing forestry in the province.

Scientific research occurs within a set of socio-political conditions, and in Canada research involving Indigenous communities has a historical association with colonialism. Consequently, Indigenous peoples have been justifiably sceptical and reluctant to become the subjects of academic research. Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) is an attempt to develop culturally relevant research models that address issues of injustice, inequality, and exploitation. The work reported here evaluates the use of Photovoice, a CBPR method that uses participant-employed photography and dialogue to create social change, which was employed in a research partnership with a First Nation in Western Canada. Content analysis of semi-structured interviews (n ¼ 45) evaluated participants’ perspectives of the Photovoice process as part of a larger study on health and environment issues. The analysis revealed that Photovoice effectively balanced power, created a sense of ownership, fostered trust, built capacity, and responded to cultural preferences. The authors discuss the necessity of modifying Photovoice, by building in an iterative process, as being key to the methodological success of the project. 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

This article reports on findings from a study that explored how a group of leading health researchers who do Indigenous community-engaged research (n = 20) in Canada envision enacting ethically sound research with Indigenous communities, as well as the concomitant tensions associated with doing so. In particular, we explore how institutional metrics for assessing merit and granting tenure are seen to privilege conventional discourses of productivity and validity in research and, as a result, are largely incongruent with the relational values associated with decolonizing research through community-based participatory health research. Our findings reveal that colonial incursion from the academy risk filtering into such research agendas and create a conflict between relational accountability to community partners and academic accountability to one’s discipline and peers.

Environmental issues are being discussed through social media with increased frequency. Researchers are starting to question whether social media demonstrates a green virtual sphere: a virtual public space to discuss environmental issues that is not governed by a single authority and that anyone can access. We investigate why people use Twitter to communicate about two Canadian-based environmental issues using interviews with 10 highly engaged users. We found that they used Twitter to access news and engage in debates; however, they also raised a number of concerns: the potential for overestimating the impact of their own and others’ online activities; the prospect of harassment from other users; and the possibility of being labelled an extremist. Given these findings, we conclude that in this case, Twitter only partially demonstrates the characteristics of a green virtual sphere because it increased access to information and provided a space for debate but access to the space was not equal and users were aware that discussions were likely being monitored.

Ethical tensions exist regarding the value and practice of acknowledging Indigenous contributions in community-based participatory research (CBPR). Semistructured phone interviews with researchers documented their perspectives on authorship in the scholarly dissemination of their community-based participatory Indigenous research. Thematic analysis resulted in four key ideas: (1) current practices regarding methods of acknowledging community contributions; (2) requirements for shared authorship with individual versus collective/community partners; (3) benefits to sharing authorship with collective/community partners; and (4) risks to sharing authorship with collective/community partners. Findings suggest an emerging but inconsistent practice.

Current challenges relating to water governance in Canada are motivating calls for approaches that implement Indigenous and Western knowledge systems together, as well as calls to form equitable partnerships with Indigenous Peoples grounded in respectful Nation-to-Nation relationships. By foregrounding the perspectives of First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples, this study explores the nature and dimensions of Indigenous ways of knowing around water and examines what the inclusion of Indigenous voices, lived experience, and knowledge mean for water policy and research. Data were collected during a National Water Gathering that brought together 32 Indigenous and non-Indigenous water experts, researchers, and knowledge holders from across Canada. Data were analyzed thematically through a collaborative podcasting methodology, which also contributed to an audio-documentary podcast (www.WaterDialogues.ca).