This research speaks to the important role that cultural continuity plays in shaping MĂ©tis journeys with mental health. There is a need for continued support for the maintenance of MĂ©tis cultural practices, language revitalization, and Elder-youth engagement opportunities for increased cultural continuity for MĂ©tis people, families, and communities in BC.

In this context, a research network, called the Transformative Health & Justice Research Cluster (THJRC), based out of Vancouver, British Columbia, has formed to disrupt status quo research practices, bringing together Indigenous and non-Indigenous Peer Leaders, Elders, academics, community advocates and student trainees, and support the empowerment of people who have been incarcerated. In this reflective piece, Nicolas Crier, one of the THJRC Peer Leaders, will provide an overview of the who, what, why, when and how of the THJRC, reflecting on the impacts and strengths of the collaborative community in general, as well as within the specific context of COVID-19. Co-authors, representing diverse positionalities and perspectives within the THJRC, will weigh in when relevant.

In this study, Community approval was sought from the Community Research Advisory Committee and network sampling was used for co-researcher recruitment. Co-researchers included individuals in sustained recovery of 12 months or more (n=5), Elders and Knowledge Keepers (n=2), and physicians (n=1).

The results presented in this paper, while exploratory, are a meaningful addition to the existing scholarship in this field. They may be used as a departure point for future research on the topic of Indigenous language learning and how it impacts Indigenous well-being.

This compilation of digital stories (link below) was a unique opportunity to capture the personal experiences of community members as they embarked on a journey to return to a Traditional Haudenosaunee Diet (Healthy Roots Community Initiative). The Healthy Roots Community Initiative was based on the Haudenosaunee Food Guide, designed specifically for this challenge (Gordon et al., 2018). This diet highlights foods that are cultivated in the Traditional Haudenosaunee territory, using Traditional ways of gathering and preparation.

Shared decision-making and collaboration through-out the entire research process are central to ensuring that research fits harmoniously with Indigenous com-munities’ values and worldviews. Community-based participatory research (CBPR) is an approach that engages researchers and community members as active partners throughout the research process (Is-rael et al., 2005; Macaulay et al., 1998).

Indigenous communities want to provide more positive learning experiences and positive identity through reconceptualizing educational curricula. They are exploring ways to indigenize the educational experience by igniting cultural resurgence through the integration of Indigenous languages, knowledge, culture, and history by reconnecting students to their Elders, land, and communities.

Limitations to Counting Coup as a goal-setting tool include the need for program facilitators to have a relationship with participants due to Counting Coup’s foundation in relational accountability and that the environmental context may pose difficulties for participants in moving towards healthy behavior change.

Specifically, the paper draw on three examples – an urban hospital, a university food and medicine garden, and a men’s prison – to illustrate how Indigenous Knowledge, ceremony and land-based learning can be incorporated into these institutions and spac-es to foster healing and improved wellness for Indigenous People. With increasingly urbanizing Indigenous populations in Canada, and around the world, these findings are important for the development of healing places for Indigenous Peoples, regardless of where they live.

This paper argues that understanding more about epistemologies of power will help illuminate a pathway by which Indigenous Peoples and Canadians of settler ancestry can better understand one another, creating the shift in these relationships that is required in order to gather large-scale support for reconciliation and for ethical distribution of power resources in Canada.