Indigenous health research is beginning to become more prominent with an endeavour by a network from the University of Saskatchewan (USask) to improve health and wellness in Indigenous communities.
With funding from the Network Environments for Indigenous Health Research (NEIHR) and the Canadian Institute of Health Research as well as a partnership with Station 20 West in Saskatoon, USask researchers can soon begin to approach Indigenous communities to see what their priority for research is.
“The move to Station 20 West is wonderful for us,” said Dr. Caroline Tait, professor at USask and leader of NEIHR Saskatchewan network. “Because it makes us more accessible for our partners that come in from out of town, but as we come out of COVID we’ll be hiring community research facilitators. So, we’ll be hiring one in Saskatoon, one either in Prince Albert or north of Prince Albert – either La Ronge or La Loche. We’ll be hiring a northern community research facilitator as well as one in the south, which most likely will be out of Regina. And those individuals, their jobs- they’ll be First Nations and Métis people, and we’re hoping they’ll be people who have language skills in at least one Indigenous language. And those individuals will be going to different First Nations and Métis communities and working with the community health leaders to determine what their research priorities are.”
Once the community research facilitators determine what their communities research priorities are, they’ll be tasked with matching that research need with the expertise of researchers.
“They may match them with somebody who works in population health or somebody who works in clinical research, or someone who works in qualitative research,” said Dr. Tait. “The idea for the community research facilitator is to do that matching process and then what our center will do is we’ll support those communities to go after funding. We’ll be going to national sources of funding through government and non-government sources. And the idea in Saskatchewan over the next five years is we’ll at least double the amount of funding coming into the province for Indigenous health research.”
Dr. Tait hopes to move forward the discussions of health inequity, systemic racism, and health disparity, as these are topics that are in desperate need of address and action.
One way research leaders will try to get these discussions started is by having the communities control the narrative to be shared of what health, wellness, and healing is to them.
“Our job will be to working with the community partners and helping them to answer the researcher’s questions,” said Dr. Tait.
“But, not only that, to make sure that they have control of the narrative. What are the narratives around health and wellness and healing and that. Because often that narrative is controlled by other people and people make decisions about what knowledge is shared and make decisions about what images are shared. I our research, that’s all in the hands of the Indigenous communities in Saskatchewan.”
Indigenous communities will the ability to decide what research needs to be addressed, what information is shared, and community members will be able to be apart of research as well as having a chance to be employed during the period of research. Research leaders want Indigenous communities and people to have some control because they’re the ones being researched and also to take way some of the stigma that surrounds the idea of research.
“It’s really important that we destigmatize research,” said Dr. Tait. “You’ll probably have heard this many times when First Nations and Métis people say that they’ve been researched to death. People talk about research as something that exploits people, that people come in and they take information and they leave, and they never come back. There’s a lot of uncertainty about research, a lot of mistrust about research. And so, with our centre we have nineteen First Nations PhDs, so we have this really strong group of Indigenous scholars who are associated with our team, who are trained in Indigenous-based community research and have worked with communities for many, many years.”
Another important aspect to destigmatize anything, is education. Lack of knowledge in any topic can come about with generalizations and misinformation often exacerbates that. But with this research team, not only do they plan to let indigenous people take control, but they plan to help communities understand the importance of research.
“One of the things we wan to do, including being located at Station 20 West is to help educate First Nation and Métis people about research,” Dr. Tait said.
“Why is research valuable, what is the purpose of research, what are the Indigenous methodologies versus western methodologies of research, and the different types of research like, population, clinical, qualitative, and when you would need to have a population health researcher versus having a clinical researcher, what would be the context in why you would need that. We also want to train students, so it’s very important that we train Indigenous students.”
Dr. Tait hopes to have at least ten community-based researchers who are First Nations and Métis, so that when the research takes place the researchers will have a closer tie to the people that they’re collecting data from.
The ability to speak the same language and being trained not only in western protocol, but also Indigenous methodology will likely make community members feel more comfortable and less wary about the researchers intentions, especially since they’ll have a say on what gets shared.
Indigenous researchers would also have more knowledge on the importance of community protocol, cultural/ceremonial customs, how to interact with people, such as elders.
It’s also a way to create employment in the north and other Indigenous communities that are isolated from metropolitan areas, thus having less employment opportunities.
“We’ll have this group of people that then can be employed once these grants are in place and they can be employed to collect data,” said Dr. Tait.
“And this is creating more jobs for First Nations and Métis people in the province… if the community wants to train someone in their community to collect research data, we’ll support that person to get the training that they’ll need and to continue to upgrade their skills in terms of training. We definitely want to see communities not only partner in research, but to build their own internal capacity for data collection and for knowledge dissemination.”
Some grants for research can be multi million-dollar grants and Dr. Tait wants that money to not only be spent on the research but to go into the communities by providing honorariums to research participants, ordering from local businesses for catering, buying gas, paying for hotels/lodging, and as many supplies as they can from the communities.
Not only will these research endeavours provide information into health inequity in Indigenous communities, they’ll also be helping the economy of these communities. And although COVID-19 has stalled their abilities to visit northern communities, as Dr. Tait said, they’re “looking for ways to reach out to northern communities.”
Regardless of how long this pandemic lasts, these researchers are committed to their work.
