Indigenous Knowledge Translation: Baseline Findings in a Qualitative Study of the Pathways of Health Knowledge in Three Indigenous Communities in Canada

• Focus groups and follow-up focus groups
• Key informant interviews
• Document inquiry
• Community Consultations

This study used a participatory action research framework to look at how health information was disseminated and used within three Indigenous communities. The communities involved in this research included one urban Inuit community, one urban Métis community, and one semi-rural First Nations community in Ontario, Canada. Findings point to the importance of understanding local Indigenous contexts and localized processes for how knowledge is created, disseminated, and utilized.

• Community research agreements were established and addressed issues of project governance, community expectations and benefits, ownership, control, access, possession of information, and dissemination of project results
• Respected appropriate community governing bodies
• Community representatives identified community research team members who subsequently assisted with recruitment, data collection, data analysis, synthesis, and approval of the study results.
• Language interpretation was provided even when English, readily understood by participants
• Key assumptions of research framework included: (a) Prior to colonization, Indigenous peoples had their own systems of health knowledge and services. (b) These systems were rooted in diverse local ecosystems and therefore are themselves diverse. (c) These systems were epistemologically distinct from modern biomedical scientific traditions, which purposefully decontextualize knowledge from local contexts in an effort to discover generalizable principles and cures. (d) Indigenous systems of health were actively suppressed and outlawed as part of colonization. (e) The health of Indigenous peoples was and continues to be negatively affected by colonization. (f) Contemporary health knowledge and health behavior among Indigenous individuals and communities are influenced by an interplay of precolonial systems of health, historic and ongoing processes of colonization, and exposure to non-Indigenous systems of health. (g) A decolonizing process involving critical examination and dismantling of individual and systemic assumptions and power relationships, including the suppression of Indigenous systems of knowledge, is required to improve the health of Indigenous communities. (Smylie, J., Kaplan-Myrth, N., McShane, K., Métis Nation of Ontario-Ottawa Council, Pikwakanagan First Nation,, & Tungasuvvingat Inuit Family Resource Centre, 2009, p. 437-438)
• Research results were distributed as community reports for review and approval by each community.

Knowledge translation (KT) acknowledges that understanding local Indigenous processes of knowledge creation, dissemination, and utilization are necessary prerequisites to change the ways in which Indigenous health and illnesses are conceived by Western and colonial health systems.

Community leadership and participation in KT activities is consistent with ongoing
advocacy of Indigenous groups for self-determination of health community programs and services. KT engages community members in health KT interventions. Community stakeholders reported a better understanding of community strengths and barriers in the dissemination and implementation of health information.

Transcript analyses, digital photographs, health information documents from each site

Draft findings from preliminary focus groups, key informant interviews, and document inquiry were presented at follow-up focus group meetings

"A major reason for the ineffectiveness of public health programs in Indigenous communities is that externally imposed strategies fail to take into consideration local understandings of health and illness and local mechanisms of sharing knowledge" (p. 436)

Health
Indigenous Health