NWT RESEARCH DATABASE

Regions: North Slave Region

Tags: social sciences, environmental change, Tlîchô, indigenous youth

Objective(s): to co-create community driven major output(s) to celebrate and share teachings about childhood and family life for Tli?cho people (such as a book, website, art project, film, other); to publish work on the experiences and impacts of settler colonialism on Indigenous child-rearing, family life, policy, and programming in the Canadian north; document and share Tli?cho knowledge, concepts, places, and practices for raising children well with Land and in language, culture, and way of life; to contribute to the creation and evaluation of resources, programs, and interventions to raise children who are strong in Tli?cho language, culture, and way of life; and, to innovate and share methodologies for doing locally-driven research with Indigenous communities in support of their rights, sovereignty, and self-determination.

Project Description: This licence has been issued for the scientific research application No.5215. This is a two year project that will fund community meetings, family story gathering, and creative and academic work in two communities in the Tli?cho region, Wekweètì and Gamètì. This initial work will contribute to the development of a bigger project involving the entire Tli?cho region and all four communities (Behchoko`, Whatì, Wekweètì, and Gamètì) to accomplish the following goals: The research team will co-create community driven major output(s) to celebrate and share teachings about childhood and family life for Tli?cho people (such as a book, website, art project, film, other); The team will publish work on the experiences and impacts of settler colonialism on Indigenous child-rearing, family life, policy, and programming in the Canadian north. The team will document and share Tli?cho knowledge, concepts, places, and practices for raising children well with Land and in language, culture, and way of life. The team will contribute to the creation and evaluation of resources, programs, and interventions to raise children who are strong in Tli?cho language, culture, and way of life. The team will innovate and share methodologies for doing locally-driven research with Indigenous communities in support of their rights, sovereignty, and self-determination. This research will be Tli?cho-driven and community-engaged. As described above, this project works across identified priorities for research and early childhood within the Tli?cho Government. A team has already conducted initial community engagement in all four communities in the region. During the summer of 2022, we hosted family playgroups and meetings in Wekweètì and Gamètì to talk to families, community members, and leadership about family life and what is needed. We also hosted “Celebrating Families” tables at events in Whatì and Behchoko` to engage the public in stories of family life over time and to share ideas about what is needed for families today. This initial work also drew on local expertise for research and project development: will have the assistance of Tli?cho people with expertise in early childhood, language and culture, and photography, and sought to develop their research skills at the same time. Building upon these initial successes, the Principal Investigator (PI) propose to train and mentor a team of Tli?cho researchers to do Indigenous and community-driven research towards gathering family stories and co-creating scholarly and public outputs in Wekweètì (year 1 – 2023/24) and Gamètì (year 2 – 2024/25). In each community, the research team will begin by securing support from local leadership for the project. Following that, the team will convene local Elders to advise and oversee the approach. The research team will work with local Elders to develop each community approach and oversee the research. Guided by these Elders, the team will host community meetings to share project plans, invite participation, and decide on community-driven outputs together. Finally, members of the team will meet individually with community members to gather 10-15 “family stories” in each community – resulting in approximately 30 extended narratives and experiences about childhood and family life in the communities. These family stories will lead to the community-identified outputs to celebrate and share families and children, and will be analyzed for insights to inform Tli?cho curriculum, policy, and programming. Summer student and/or Tli?cho researchers will also review existing sources in the archives of the Northwest Territories and the Tli?cho Cultural Commons Digital Archives to complement and further inform the community family stories. These sources may include audio recordings, reports, photographs, or video that give insight to childhood and family life in the region. Finally, in year 2 of the project, a graduate student will begin research on settler colonialism and family life in the Canadian north using archival and previously published sources. This will explore and theorize approaches to early childhood policy and programming from within the analytic of settler colonial studies and in historical perspective. It is hoped that this work will provide a knowledge base and publication to share the specifics of this interrelationship from a northern perspective. This project is designed to exchange knowledge among community members, Indigenous government, and academic audiences to support research and program development within the Tlicho region. The PI currently participates in monthly meetings with a Tli?cho Government Early Childhood Working Group and quarterly meetings with the Tli?cho Research and Training Institute. These are established mechanisms to share findings at all stages of the project. Although it focuses on two communities in the first two years, future research will expand to the whole region and contribute to building an ecosystem where community knowledge and experience continues to inform program development and policy within the region, especially within Early Childhood. It is intended to change the dynamic to start with Tli?cho knowledges and experiences in designing Early Childhood policy and programming. This will also strengthen knowledge and capacity for community driven research within an anticolonial frame going forward. Research outputs from the proposed two year project will include: two community determined outputs (one in Wekweètì in Year 1, one in Gamètì in Year 2); one comprehensive report on relevant findings for Early Childhood program planning in the Tli?cho region in Year 2; two presentations on relevant findings for Early Childhood program planning in the Tli?cho region (one in each year of the project); two scholarly articles or chapters (one in each year, one to be coauthored with graduate research assistant); one presentation at an academic conference (with graduate student in year 2). These outputs will also provide a basis for development of future research, relationships, and capacity in this subject area, in this region, and with the Tli?cho. The Principal Investigator also maintains productive working relationships with Government of the Northwest Territories Department of Health and Social Services, Aurora College Early Learning and Childcare Program, Hotiì ts'eeda: NWT SPOR (Strategy for Patient Oriented Research) Support Unit, and the NWT NEIHR (Network Environments for Indigenous Health Research). These organizations will facilitate knowledge mobilization to other audiences within the NWT, the Canadian North, and beyond. The fieldwork for this study will be conducted from July 11, 2023 to December 31, 2023.