Ceremonies of Relationship: Engaging Urban Indigenous Youth in Community-Based Research

• Interviews
• Conversational / talking circles
• Storytelling
• Photograph taking

Based on the authors’ experience with their 2-year Youth Resilience Project in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, this article focuses on research methods and the process of forming ethical relationships. The authors use the term "ceremonies of relationships" to talk about responsible and meaningful engagement with youth collaborators in the research process. Through these ceremonies of relationship, knowledge generation and relationship-building come to hold a sacred or spiritual significance.

• Forming of ethical relationships and responsible practices of engagement with members of a community
• Youth have the capacity to make significant and important contributions to research approaches and knowledge generation
• Application among research team members of spiritual qualities and attitudes like compassion, respect, humility, kindness, and trustworthiness
• Employed aspects of Indigenous cultural and spiritual practices throughout, mostly those from a Plains Cree perspective
• A community advisory research committee (CARC) comprised of local Indigenous parents, older Indigenous youth (aged 19–25 years), and local Indigenous elders was established to guide and drive the research and engagement process
• Youth participate as co-researchers
• Decided that the Saskatoon Tribal Council (STC) would become the stewards and owners of all emergent "data" as community representatives of Treaty 6 territory where the research takes place
• Acknowledged that the youth collaborators have the final say in what happens with their stories of resilience and wellness
• Tobacco was offered to elders at research meetings following an important protocol among many Indigenous communities in Canada

"Ceremonies of relationship" signify a sacred character to knowledge generation as well a relationship building with youth, community members, parents, elders, and community-based organizations in social change.

Researchers' observations, interviews' notes and transcripts; digital photographs

Artists' statements were printed in the exhibition catalogue, not beside the
artwork; art texts used as an exploration of the stories Indigenous youth tell about living within an urban environment.

"The importance and value of traditional cultural practices and knowledge systems and what we call ceremonies of relationships, existent within Indigenous communities around the world, and how [Indigenous] integration in research processes can support constructive and meaningful engagements with Indigenous youth research collaborators" (Bird-Naytowhow, K., Hatala, A. R., Pearl, T., Judge, A., & Sjoblom, E., 2017, p. 1).

"Resources, knowledge, and capabilities required to support the health and wellness of Indigenous youth are already present within inner-city contexts and the young people themselves and thus need only to be collaboratively identified, learned about, and fostered". (Bird-Naytowhow, K., Hatala, A. R., Pearl, T., Judge, A., & Sjoblom, E., 2017, p. 3)

Qualitative Research Methods
Adolescent development